‘See how these Christians love one another!’ wrote the North African theologian Tertullian (c.160-220 CE). Tertullian, a lawyer who converted to Christianity in his forties, defended his new faith in essays called Apology and To the Gentiles. He imagined pagans looking at Christians in amazement, saying, “See how these Christians love one another (for [pagans] hate one another); and how they are ready to die for each other (for [pagans] are readier to kill each other)!” 

It's a pity we have departed so far from these auspicious beginnings that we now have a formal ‘Week of Prayer for Christian Unity’ every January, acknowledging the sorry way that over time the Christian Church has fragmented into so many different branches and denominations. That ‘Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity’ was first proposed by a Roman Catholic monk, Fr Paul Wattson, in 1908; nowadays it is celebrated worldwide and co-ordinated by the World Council of Churches. The choice of dates is telling: it was originally conceived as stretching from the Feast of the Confession of St Peter (18 January) until the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul on 25 January.

And so it falls – highly appropriately - right in the middle of the Epiphany season, at a time when we’re celebrating God’s promise of redemption to the whole world, shown first in the presence of the three (foreign) Magi at the birth of Jesus, and then in the song which the old man, Simeon, sings in the Temple when Jesus is brought there at eight days old (Luke 2: 29-32):

‘Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,     

      according to your word; 

for my eyes have seen your salvation, 

which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, 

a light for revelation to the Gentiles     

     and for glory to your people Israel.’  (Luke 2: 29-32)

The promise of the song we call the Nunc dimittis - that in Jesus ‘all the families of the earth will be blessed’ - is taken up again after his death by the activity of his followers, working tirelessly to spread the good news of Christianity. St Peter, who with Jesus’s brother James became the leader of the Christian Church after Jesus’s death, directed his efforts particularly towards the Jewish Christian congregations. St Paul, on the other hand, became known as the Apostle to the Gentiles. It’s largely due to his vision and adventurousness that Christianity eventually spread throughout Asia Minor – which is why Tertullian, living in North Africa, could himself become a convert.

But Peter and Paul had to work hard to work together. Initially there was a lot of resistance to Paul’s missionary journeys, as the early Church wanted to maintain the distinctively Jewish quality of their faith – which had after all grown out of the Jewish scriptures, the Torah. The turning point came at the time of Peter’s dream – which you can read all about in chapter 10 of the Acts of the Apostles. ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane’ (Acts 10:15), a divine voice says to Peter – and moments later he is called upon to convert and baptize the Roman centurion Cornelius.

Peter and Paul were very different personality types, and no doubt there were all kinds of issues to do with power and control of the emerging church that came into play as they sought to work together. But they were united in their conviction that the world needed to hear what they had to say – and above all, they were united in their love for the God they had seen manifested in Jesus.

We live in a fragmenting age. We see it in the disintegration of large power blocks on the world stage, and in the polarization of left and right, rich and poor, black and white. We see it in the disintegration of the overarching narratives by which we make sense of the world. In the words of W. B. Yeats’ poem, The Second Coming (1919), ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; […] The best lack all conviction, while the worst /Are full of passionate intensity’.

And there are no easy solutions. A stress on orthodoxy will not do: the requirement that everyone should think and act in the same way will end not in world peace but in the nightmare world of George Orwell’s 1984. We have to learn to differ constructively, with our eyes set on a vision which enables us all to co-operate. For many at the present time that will be the saving of our planet. For Christians the vision is embodied in Paul’s promise in his letter to the Galatians (3:28-29): ‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.  And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.’

This week we are witnessing what promises to be a new start in the United States of America, as President Joe Biden takes his first steps towards re-integrating a nation bitterly riven by political and ideological disagreements. As we reflect and pray about Christian unity, we might usefully ask ourselves more generally about how best to bring unity out of discord, for the good of our world.  It will only happen if we accept that everyone has a point of view – however different from our own – and a right to be heard. It will not come about by pretending, and fudging, or by intimidating those who think differently. The principles of Truth and Reconciliation which informed the re-birth of South Africa in the 1990s might serve as a useful template.