When God called me to pursue ordination in the Anglican Church, He also called me to go to a specific place for the next three years of preparation for ministry—Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, in Ambridge Pennsylvania (in the Diocese of Pittsburgh where the Archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America, Bob Duncan, is now seated). I was overjoyed to learn that there was an Anglican seminary that was both theologically orthodox and spiritually alive. Going to Trinity in 1986 was a great adventure for Jen and me and our new baby, Andrew, who was six months old when we started there. God did many amazing things in getting us on the ordination track and in providing an excellent place in which to prepare for ministry in His church. I learned by first-hand experience that when God calls He also wonderfully provides.
Once we arrived at Trinity, I began to be exposed to people who shared the same faith in Jesus to which I had been drawn and yet expressed their faith in very different ways. At times this was very challenging for me. But I needed to be stretched in this way. One day I was struggling in my heart about one of my professors. He was teaching about the Gospels and I found his approach very different from the way I approached Scripture. Yet I did not find any grounds to believe that he was not orthodox in his faith. How to reconcile this? As has been my custom for many years I took this to the Lord in prayer and asked Jen to pray with me also. As Jen prayed, the phrase “united in love” came into her mind and she remembered it was part of a verse of Scripture. As it turned it out, it was from Paul’s letter to the Colossians.
Paul writes: “I want you to know how much I am struggling for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not met me personally. My purpose is that they be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” (Colossians 2:1-3 NIV)
The Lord used this passage of Scripture to settle my heart and to teach me something very important for my relationships with all other believers. I realized that my professor and I shared a love of the same Lord Jesus Christ, crucified, risen and ascended, and for God’s Word written. We were indeed united in the only thing that ultimately matters, our love for Jesus. I realized from this passage that Paul is saying that we need mutual encouragement of heart and unity in Christ’s love in order to have all the riches of complete understanding of all that God has for us in and through Christ and of all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that are hidden in Christ. To put it simply, we need each other in all the richness of our different approaches, temperaments, personalities, giftings, callings, backgrounds, preferences—all the grounds on which we are different. Why? Because it’s only as we interact with one another as believers with all our differences that we can begin to grasp the richness of who Jesus Christ is and all that God has done and will do through Him.
If we strive continually to interact with only those who are similar to us, we miss the fullness God has for us. We have struggled mightily to form an expression of Anglicanism that reinforces the idea that God calls us to have relationships based one of the most basic and pervasive differences between people, male and female. Those who are called to marriage are to have their most intimate relationship with a creature who, though sharing a common humanity, is very different inwardly and outwardly. This union of opposites is indeed the biblical sign of the union of God through Christ and His people—again a union of beings of an entirely different order, Creator and created. Here is the pattern for all our relationships—differences are from God and are brought together and indeed kept from flying apart only through the love of God the Father that is revealed to us in Jesus and made available to us through the Holy Spirit.
This same phrase “united in love” came back into my mind a few weeks ago during the Sunday morning worship. I did not feel a release to give it publicly at that time. More recently when our bishop, Charlie, was with us, he noticed that I was looking for something in the Bible and he asked me if I had a word for us that morning. I said yes and Ray David asked me to give it. I find it interesting that this happened when Charlie was with us since the Bishop is a sign to us of the unity of the Church across time and space.
I knew I should also write down this word I had been given (and elaborate on it) and I had been wondering what the appropriate timing would be. Yesterday, October 31, the Lord reminded me that the next day would be All Saints’ Day and that would be the time to share about the unity in love that all believers in Christ through time and space have with one another. For many years I have felt a fondness for the theme of All Saints’ Day and the light it sheds on a time of year where our culture seems to celebrate darkness. Thanks be to God that His light overcomes all darkness and His unity brings together all that fallen humanity and the devil would try to separate.
It also seemed to be the right time to write on this theme as Jen and I start a new adventure assisting our Archdeacon, Paul Charbonneau, at our sister church of St. Hilda’s in Oakville. We go with a wonderful sense of being blessed and sent from one vibrant congregation to another and with the continuity of the love of Jesus that we all share. Jen and I go with many precious memories along with mutually encouraging relationships that will not end. We have been enriched and have grown in our mutual love and understanding of Jesus through our time together with you. These blessings are eternal in nature—“an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you” and us. (See 1 Peter 1:3-5).
Ray David has been very supportive of our ongoing ministry and has encouraged me to use the resources of St. George’s as I am led. In this vein, I do hope to make a blog posting from time to time.
With much love and affection in Jesus,
Greg and Jen McVeigh
