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From early on the church has had to face the reality that it is a corpus mixtum, a mixed body composed of both good and evil. To be sure, in times of persecution the imminent threat of martyrdom served to separate the wheat from the tares. But once Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, following the conversion of Constantine, the scandalous immorality which Christians had abhorred in the pagan world came home to roost in holy mother church.

Some sought to preserve their moral integrity by fleeing to the desert, to spend their lives in prayer and penance. In time the church developed a system of public penance, by which those convicted of grave sins were excluded for a time from the communion of the faithful. This system has left its mark on the observance of Lent, which we will soon be beginning.

It is not only the quest for moral purity which has divided the Christian church. Doctrinal purity has been the issue which has fragmented Christianity over the centuries. The Eastern and Western churches split over whether the holy spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, or from the Father alone. Protestantism and Roman Catholicism split over the issue of faith versus works.

Even within our own Anglican tradition there have been splits. The former National Director of the Prayer Book Society joined the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, one of the schismatic groups which rejected the ordination of women and the new service book.

In the 16th century the Church of England was very much a mixed body, including both the followers of continental Protestantism, especially in its Calvinist form, and those who remained attached to the pre-Reformation church.

High Church, Low Church, BAS, BCP—the Anglican Church always was, is now, and will forever be divided. The question is only: how do we live with these divisions? The answer is given to us in our epistle:

Put on mercy and compassion, kindness, humbleness of mind
meekness, long-suffering; forbearing one another, and
forgiving one another, if anyone have a complaint against any;
even as the Lord forgave you, so also do ye. And above all
these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.
Colossians 3:12-14

Let us not forget that the divisions in the church are paralleled in the hearts of each and every one of us. Each of us is a “mixed body,” composed of good and evil, of generosity and mean-spiritedness, of love and hate. The price of tolerance is tolerance. Just as our Anglican Church can only survive if we follow the Lord’s command, “Judge not, that ye be not judged” (Matthew 7:1), so we can only live our individual lives if we have compassion on our weakness and imperfection, while ever seeking to grow in the spirit.

The closer we move to God, the more aware we become of our shortcomings. The saints who seemed to others to be the embodiment of Christian perfection were filled with shame and horror at the darkness which they saw within themselves.

Finally, in the words of our epistle, “Let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful” (Colossians 3:15).

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