{"id":241,"date":"2026-02-15T22:49:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T22:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pilgrims.org.uk\/wp\/?p=241"},"modified":"2026-02-15T22:49:00","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T22:49:00","slug":"seeking-unity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pilgrims.org.uk\/wp\/2026\/02\/15\/seeking-unity\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeking unity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Common Ground Song 57 \u2018I come with Joy\u2019<br><\/strong>Words: Brian Wren \u00a9 Stainer &amp; Bell Ltd \/ Music traditional<br>YouTube recording: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=rVGjrMgiH5U\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=rVGjrMgiH5U<\/a><br>Featured image: \u2018Breaking bread together\u2019 from learn.e-limu.org<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our church (St Peter\u2019s in Bramley) jointly decided that this year, one of our priorities is to look at what \u2018complete unity\u2019 in the Church might look like. There are many places in the Bible where the essential unity of all who follow Jesus Christ is stressed, both despite and because of our many differences. For the period of Lent (but starting today on the Sunday before Lent), we are having a sermon series based on the Church of England\u2019s \u2018Pastoral Principles\u2019 (I will be preaching two of them). These Principles are about finding a positive way to engage with other people who share a faith in Christ, but are different in some obvious way. That might be cultural or ethnic background, class, gender or sexuality, or just personal preference for styles of worship \u2013 something that sadly continues to cause argument and division in some churches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This question of unity comes most sharply into focus in the service of Holy Communion (or Mass, or whatever you prefer to call it). As we share the broken bread or individual wafers that have been consecrated together, we recognise that there is something, or rather someone, who holds us together with bonds stronger than any attempt at division can break. Brian Wren\u2019s hymn puts this into words very clearly. \u2018As Christ breaks bread, and bids us share, each proud division ends\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That unity is not just sentimental, it is practical. As the Mass ends with the dismissal (in the Church of England service, \u201cGo in Peace to love and serve the Lord\u201d), we go our different ways for the week but remembering that unity as we serve Him in our many ways. To quote Wren again, \u2018Tother met, together bound, by all that God has done, We\u2019ll go with joy to give the world the love that makes us one\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>N.B. The recording linked above is set to the same tune as used in Common Ground, which is called \u2018Dove of Peace\u2019 and described as an American folk melody in 6\/8 time. But I had previously come across the song in the \u2018Sing Praise\u2019 hymnbook, where it is set to an English tune called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/shorts\/DpWkaZ3J2YM\">St Botolph<\/a> in 3\/4 time. I prefer the latter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Common Ground Song 57 \u2018I come with Joy\u2019Words: Brian Wren \u00a9 Stainer &amp; Bell Ltd \/ Music traditionalYouTube recording: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=rVGjrMgiH5UFeatured image: \u2018Breaking bread together\u2019 from learn.e-limu.org Our church (St Peter\u2019s in Bramley) jointly decided that this year, one of our priorities is to look at what \u2018complete unity\u2019 in the Church might look like. There [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":242,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[94,119],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-common-ground","tag-holy-communion","tag-unity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pilgrims.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pilgrims.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pilgrims.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pilgrims.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pilgrims.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pilgrims.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":243,"href":"https:\/\/pilgrims.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions\/243"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pilgrims.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pilgrims.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pilgrims.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pilgrims.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}