Around One Presence

Finding Christian unity by drawing closer to Christ by Dr Ian Watson

5-Minute Read

I was recently reading a Gospel reflection on the Christian Art website that led me to think about two striking images that Scripture places side by side. One shows the people of God gathered around the Lord’s presence. The other shows them sent into the world with almost nothing in their hands. Together, I think they say something important about Christian unity.

The first image comes from the Book of Numbers. When Israel camped in the wilderness, the twelve tribes were arranged around the Tabernacle, the tent of meeting where God chose to dwell among his people. Everything about the camp was organised around that reality. God’s presence was not simply part of Israel’s life; it stood at its very centre.

It is safe to say that their unity was never the product of diplomacy between the tribes. Anyone who has read the wilderness narratives knows how quarrelsome they could be. What held them together, I believe, was a shared orientation. They were one people because they gathered around one presence; in other words, their unity came from their common orientation towards the Lord’s presence.

Centuries later, the sixth-century monk Dorotheos of Gaza captured the same insight with an image of his own. Picture a circle, he said, with God at its centre and our lives as lines running from the circumference towards the middle. The further the lines remain from the centre, the further they are from one another. But the nearer they draw to the centre, the nearer they draw to each other. Israel’s camp was that picture traced upon the floor of the desert.

For Christians, the image points beyond the Tabernacle itself. When Jesus chose twelve apostles, he deliberately echoed the twelve tribes, gathering a renewed people of God. This time the centre was no longer a tent of goatskin and acacia wood but Christ himself, the true Tabernacle, Emmanuel, God with us. The pattern remained, but its centre had become a person.

In my work as County Ecumenical Officer across Norfolk and Waveney, I have repeatedly seen this truth confirmed. Christians draw more closer to one another during a single hour of shared prayer and worship than through months, sometimes years, of committee meetings. I have also, however, experienced the temptation to remain around the circumference; to continue negotiating between traditions as though unity depended chiefly upon agreement.

Dorotheos suggests we begin somewhere else. Christian unity is first a gift to be received before it becomes a task to be undertaken. It is given as we draw together towards Christ.

The Gospel then offers the second image that deepens the first. Having gathered the Twelve around himself, Jesus now sends them out carrying almost nothing: no bread, no bag, no money in their belts. By ordinary standards this seems a reckless way to begin a mission. Every experienced traveller knows what the journey requires; however, Jesus strips his disciples of all of it. Their fruitfulness will depend first upon the One who sends them and only secondarily upon what they carry.

In my view, Jesus’ instructions embody an important truth about human flourishing, one that the thinker Alasdair MacIntyre articulated in philosophical terms. In Dependent Rational Animals, he argues that modern society has become captivated by the illusion of self-sufficiency. We imagine that maturity consists in needing less and less from others. MacIntyre turns that assumption on its head. Human beings, he insists, are dependent creatures from beginning to end, and among our greatest virtues are what he calls the virtue of acknowledged dependence. Learning to recognise our need of others is not a mark of weakness but an essential part of human flourishing.

Surely, this is precisely the lesson Jesus was teaching the apostles. By sending them out with almost nothing, he was not simply testing their faith but forming their character. Their empty bags became a daily reminder that the mission depended first upon God and, in very practical ways, upon the hospitality of those they encountered. They would proclaim the Kingdom not as self-sufficient individuals but as people who had learned both to receive and to give.

We live in a culture that prizes preparation and wants every contingency to be covered. Prudence is indeed a virtue, and nothing I say here encourages carelessness; however, there is a danger that trying to live a life completely sustained by its own resources leaves little room for God to act. Our most fruitful moments often come when our limitations requires us to rely upon His strength and, at times, upon the generosity and compassion of others. And, as we all know, hands already full cannot receive.

I believe Christian traditions face exactly the same temptation. We often travel heavily laden with our denominational habits, settled assumptions and confidence in our own completeness. Such baggage quietly hinders ecumenical encounter, because a church convinced it has nothing to learn has little reason to receive anything from another.

The movement known as receptive ecumenism, however, begins with a different question. Instead of asking what others should learn from us, it asks what our own tradition still needs to receive. It is the ecclesial expression of MacIntyre’s virtue of acknowledged dependence, and it echoes the travelling instructions Jesus gave to the apostles; namely, we come to one another most fruitfully when we come with open hands.

For me, the two biblical images describe the same spiritual movement. God’s people become one not by fixing their gaze on one another but by gathering around Christ, and they remain faithful by travelling in dependence upon him rather than on their own sufficiency.

That is why the wisdom of Dorotheos of Gaza remains fresh as his circle metaphor is not simply an attractive illustration but an important insight. As Christians move towards the living Christ at the centre, they find themselves (often unexpectedly) moving closer to one another. Unity is therefore less something we manufacture than something we discover as we are drawn into the presence of the One who already holds us together. 
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Perhaps every ecumenical journey, then, begins not with the question: How can we become more like one another? But with the simpler and more demanding question: How closely are we prepared to stand together before Christ?

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References
Dorotheos of Gaza. Discourses and Sayings. Translated by Eric P. Wheeler. Cistercian Studies Series 33. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1977.

MacIntyre, A. (1999) Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues. Chicago, IL: Open Court. 

Notes
​Numbers 2:1–17, where the tribes of Israel are commanded to camp around the Tabernacle, with the Levites encamped immediately around the Tent of Meeting (cf. Numbers 1:53)

​John 1:14 – “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us…” The Greek verb (eskēnōsen) literally means “pitched his tent” or “tabernacled among us,” making this a powerful New Testament fulfilment of the Old Testament imagery.

Article by Dr Ian Watson, County Ecumenical Officer for Norfolk and Waveney, whose lay views are his alone. The concept was prompted by a recent Gospel meditation on the Christian Art website on the Tabernacle. These reflections by Patrick van der Vorst can be found there: Christian Art – Today’s Gospel Reading

Image generated by Dr Ian Watson with the help of OpenAI.

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