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Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 24 August 2014


Icon of Christ Pantocrator

Icon of Christ Pantocrator

21st in Ordinary Time

I’ve just finished a whole series of Oxford Summer Schools, the last being the Theology Summer School which finished on Friday. It’s been an exhausting but fulfilling time and this last week, different Christians from all over the world have come together to study with tutors in the beautiful setting of Christ Church. We always end with a corporate act of worship. This time in the simple space of St Columba’s United Reformed Church we celebrated a short service of word, presided over by the Icon of Christ Pantocrator, the Messiah we worship as Lord and God. This was deliberate for it brought into our circle of faith the presence of the Eastern Christian community.

Here in a setting where different Christians ‘all feel welcome’, as one of our hymns put it, we expressed in word, song, music and silence our common faith as the disciples and family of God. Here we connected with Peter’s profession of faith in Matthews Gospel where by an inner and deeper insight he proclaims Jesus as messiah.

Like Peter's, our own faith is unfolding, how we proclaim and live out our faith in the Messiah is in process. Like Peter the cost of what it means to follow Christ has yet to be fully revealed.

This Gospel challenges us to bury our denominational differences and unite to proclaim to our world our belief in the Lord Jesus and the coming of his Kingdom!

Our task is to become truly ecumenical, to come together as the family and disciples of Christ, discerning more fully our call to proclaim Gospel in our lives. The Church is built on a rock, on our faith of Jesus as Lord, but a rock that causes many to stumble, the powers of this world, the greedy selfish ones, those who destroy lives, our planet's species and environment, other people's hope. We are to challenge and change that!

One pressing situation is the suffering and martyrdom of Christians in the Middle East. The silence of our European religious and secular powers about this is deafening. My good friend Andrew Bennett, Ambassador for Religious Freedom in Canada in an article in the Canadian National Post has forcibly spoken out for them, he is one voice, but where is ours? Peter today calls us to stand up in witness and support for the vulnerable family of Christ!

Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Chaplain for the Melkite Greek Catholics in Britain.

To read Andrew Bennett's article, see: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/08/22/andrew-bennett-canada-raises-its-voice-in-defence-of-middle-east-christians/

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