During the 2023 Christmas season, the local Christian radio stations played traditional and modern Christmas music.  On Christmas day, the radio hosts spoke movingly about Jesus’ birth as the Messiah Incarnate.  Their messages made Western Christianity seem to proclaim the very same beliefs about Jesus Christ born of the Virgin Mary as do Eastern Christians.   

Inspired by the Lenten season, that season of changing one’s mindset and returning to God- sometimes even in a complete one hundred and eighty degree turn- Christian unity sounds simpler when returning to Jesus’ teaching about how His Church is being built together.

There is an applicable dialogue between Jesus and Peter which is written in three of the four Gospels.  Here is a portion of it as it is written in the Gospel of Matthew 16.13-18.

“When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, “Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?”  So they said, “Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”  He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus answered and said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church…”

Jesus validates Peter’s faithful response with a pun filled proclamation, ‘…you are Peter (his name means rock in Aramaic and Greek) and on this rock (the rock solid revelation that Jesus is the Christ) is the foundation upon which I will build My (emphasis mine) church.’

Jesus says He is the one who builds people into this group He calls ‘church’ based on their own confession that He is the Christ (Messiah), the Son of the Living God.    

Because Lent invites us to change our mindset to return to God, church leaders would change how they have been thinking about the criteria for unity. Doing so would make it possible to announce in our lifetime that Eastern and Western Christian unity has already happened by Jesus the Christ Who builds people into His church when they confess belief in His rock solid criteria as expressed above.

Such an announcement of unity may also acknowledge that the many and serious disagreements between Christians’ theologies and traditions will continue to be studied and possibly some of them even solved with God’s grace and guidance in our theological dialogues as we live and grow together as His one church.

*For an idea of what the three Christian Churches could exist like as one, please read “A Three in One Solution for Christian Unity” in this list of posts.