So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
To answer the first question in the outline, Why did Paul and his associates write these words about reconciliation that we just heard, and confessed, from his second letter to the Corinthian churches? here’s a thumbnail sketch of why: Paul and the missionary team wrote their First Letter to the Corinthian Christians, basically because the Corinthian Christians were so mad at each other. Paul and the missionary team then wrote Second Corinthians, and these words in particular about reconciliation, because, the Corinthian Christians were mad at Paul and his missionary team, as a result of reading First Corinthians.
Now if the apostles’ job was just to make everybody happy with each other, then we’d have to say they blew it with that first letter. But I actually think they have shown very principled and effective leadership. It’s like when the nurse says, “Be prepared; this injection I’m about to give you will hurt a bit.” Children fear the pain and blame the nurse. It takes an adult to understand that the injection will hurt a million times less than the disease it’s treating.
Even with all that anger and alienation aimed at him, Paul does not say, “Let’s reconcile,” or “Be reconciled to us.” Instead, he says, “We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.” That’s because Paul and his missionary partners know that they are not the real problem in Corinth. Their real argument is with God. Or that God is God and the Corinthian Christians are not, even with all their great spiritual gifts. Their estrangement from Paul and from each other stems from the fact that they are not reconciled to God’s Reconciling Nature that we call The Trinity. Nor are they reconciled to God’s Reconciling Work in the world, that we call “the kingdom of God.” Nor are they reconciled to themselves and each other, as both saints and sinners, as those in dire spiritual straits, and yet also the beloved sons and daughters of God. That’s why Paul and his partners wrote these words about reconciliation.
I say all that about the Corinthian Christians both because of clues I get reading Paul’s letters to the Corinthian Christians, and because of my fifty-nine years of experience with human nature, myself being Exhibit A. To be human is to be a mystery, a stranger, to oneself. The alienation and estrangement that we call sin goes deep within, so that we’re never done needing God’s reconciling grace. Life often confronts us with another part of the self that is not reconciled to God as God, nor to ourselves as simply human. One of the most basic statements of Alcoholics Anonymous and other Twelve Step Groups, which also sounds ridiculously obvious, is also the easiest one to forget: That there is a God, or a Higher Power as they put it, who can bring harmony, health and sanity into our lives, and He is not me. But the tempter drove a wedge between ourselves and God, and a wedge within ourselves, whenever we first fell for the lie that “we can be as God, knowing good from evil” for ourselves, and by ourselves. And my, how we take to the class. As long as we hold to any shred of desire to be God, and to take God’s role, we are at odds with God as God, and at odds with our own true selves, as God’s handiwork, not self-created, self-reliant beings, but simply human creatures, marvelous in so many ways, but made to be worshipers, not to be worshiped.
That’s why I’m so grateful for the words at the end of Zion’s vision statement, our covenant to grow together toward, “reconciliation with God and others.” When I think about the greatest need in our world that this vision statement addresses, the words at the end of the statement, reconciliation, come to mind, reconciliation with God, of course, and reconciliation with others, which also implies reconciliation with ourselves. There’s nothing like five years of civil war in Syria with no end in sight, 60 million displaced persons around the world, a deteriorating planet with a climate veering toward extremes, a stubborn history of racism that is always rearing its head in new forms, churches and denominations in conflict, and an election year in America, to remind us how much we need reconciliation with God, with others and ourselves.
As I look ahead at the Bible passages in this year’s lectionary scripture schedule for preaching, reconciliation jumps out again at me as a prominent theme, especially from the Gospel of Luke. So, this year, the Pastoral Leadership Team and I would like to highlight the theme of reconciliation and our ministries of reconciliation. We started it by having a retreat this weekend in which we looked in depth at Jesus’ Parable of the Prodigal Son, to see in what ways are we like the rebellious younger son who demanded his inheritance and left home, in which ways and when are we like the resentful older brother who rejected his penitent brother, and how are we doing at becoming the merciful, mothering father, who wants both the wayward son and the resentful older brother just to come home from the distance and the darkness to the bright lights of the Father’s house, where can be heard the sounds of laughter, feasting, singing and dancing?
That image, of the welcome home party in the father’s house, is for me a powerful image of reconciliation. But before I go any further, let’s consider the second point in the outline: Why do we need reconciliation? In one of our oldest human poems, The Illiad and the Oddyssey, by the ancient Greek poet, Homer, the long lost and traumatized Odysseus returns home to ancient Greece twenty years after taking part in the war against Troy, only to find that people have given him up for dead, and would-be suitors of his wife, Penelope, are eating her out of house and home and trashing his wealthy estate. Odysseus reveals his identity to his son, they take up their weapons, and kill the suitors. The sons and brothers and uncles of the dead suitors then attack Odysseus, his household and his allies. And just when it looks like the war against Troy has come home to consume the Greeks for generations to come, the goddess Athena comes down from Mount Olympus and tells all of them, in effect, “Knock it off, you clowns, or I’ll crack all your heads together!” So they all slink off home, ashamed and resentful.
Well, Homer was more poetic than, “Knock it off, you clowns, or I’ll crack all your heads together!” but that’s the gist of Athena’s message. When I read the Odyssey some time back, I thought, for such a rip-roaring, well-constructed, beautifully poetic story, what a lame ending! It tells me that once Homer set the cycle of violence and vengeance in motion in his story, he didn’t know how to stop it. If threatening to destroy everybody is all that heaven and humanity can come up with, to quench our lust for revenge, and to break the cycles of resentment, recrimination and retaliation, then there’s no hope for anybody.
Here again why we need reconciliation. In over 1400 years, human nature alone has failed to heal the rift between Sunni and Shiite Islam, and this year, that gulf only seems to be widening again. This year, the Black Lives Matter movement confronts us with the enduring legacy of racism and slavery, and the unfinished business of the Civil Rights Movement, that won’t stay swept under the rug. And then there are cut-offs and estrangements and unresolved slights and injuries in most of our family systems, some of them going for generations. Without reconciliation, we are doomed to ever-widening gulfs of estrangement and hostility, and to endless cycles of retaliation.
What brings me to the third point of the message outline: What reconciliation is not. From many television shows, you’d think that reconciliation can happen within an hour, make that, 40 minutes after the commercials, just by using the latest computer technology to figure out who did the crime, or when the right people fall in love with each other, the doctor saves the patient, or Judge Judy and Dr. Phil humiliate the clueless bad guy, and the victims get vindicated before a live audience. (and No, I don’t spend any hours watching daytime TV).
I would call such things resolution, of sorts, temporary resolutions, at least. But resolutions like that do not constitute reconciliation. Not the kind that today’s passage and our vision statement call for. Not what the world needs to stop the endless, accelerating cycles of violence and vengeance.
We may hear the word “reconciliation” bandied about, say, after the business management and the workers’ union hammer out an agreement on pay, benefits and working hours for another year or two. And that’s a good thing. Call it arbitration, or mediation, or negotiation, or coming to a compromise, perhaps. But don’t call that reconciliation, especially not in companies or factories where mutual antagonism and adversarial relationships between labor and management are the norm, even after labor contracts get hammered out.
Then there are the TV shows and movies which tell us that victims of crime or injustice can come to reconciliation with what happened to them when the bad guy dies, or goes to prison. That we might call revenge, or punishment, but not reconciliation. We get a little closer with VORP, Victim/Offender Reconciliation Programs. In those, the victim of a crime, and his or her offender, work out the terms by which the offender will recompense the victim and make restitution for their crime. Usually those are property crimes. When the homeowner’s window is repaired or her stolen property is paid for, then at the very least you have restitution. The restitution of stuff, at least.
But restitution is still not reconciliation until the relationship is restored to where the victim starts to feel safe again and has reason to trust the offender. That requires the offender to recognize, fully and truthfully, the nature of his or her crime, admit to it, request forgiveness, and restore what was lost, both in terms of property, and in terms of the victims’ sense of safety, trust and security. We are approaching reconciliation more like that which Paul enjoins upon the Corinthian Christians when the offender feels and displays true remorse and repentance, and makes restitution, and when the victim starts to forgive and experience trust and a sense of safety. More than just settling the accounts or closing the books on a grievance, reconciliation involves the restoration of a broken relationship. Sometimes there is even a better relationship after the offense, as the offender and victim get to actually know each other, and do the kind of work together that leads them to care about each other, even to care for each other.
You understand why we must not demand such a relationship between victim and offender in all cases, especially not in those of violence and abuse. If the victim needs to never see the offender again, we have to respect that. And yet, in North Minneapolis lives a woman next door in the same duplex to the man who murdered her son 23 years ago. She has even adopted the killer of her son, emotionally, at least. Her name is Mary Johnson, his name, Oshea Israel. Like many residents of North Minneapolis, Oshea grew up amid drugs, gangs, under-functioning and under-served schools and high unemployment. Still, that shouldn’t reconcile anyone to what he did, when he shot Mary’s son to death. During his trial, Oshea seemed so callous, smart-alecky and superior that Mary just wanted to smack him around, so that he’d feel something of her pain.
And then she wanted to kill him.
Even with Oshea locked up in maximum security, Mary’s life was a hell of grief, and of fear and resentment toward her son’s killer. Oshea was becoming such superhuman monster in her thoughts and her nightmares, that she decided to go see him in prison, hoping that might cut him back down to life size. When she did, she was surprised to find not the hardened, smirking, smart-alecky young monster who ruined her life, but a fully-grown, thoughtful and remorseful man, who was humbled, grateful and not a little surprised that she would care to come see him. When she broke down crying in his presence and nearly collapsed, Oshea hugged her and held her up.
After the visit, Mary just stood mumbling to herself repeatedly, “I just hugged the man who killed my son.” The visits continued, and when Oshea’s prison term came to an end, Mary took him in and gave Oshea guidance and support as he got a job and started an entirely new life. And so they lived happily ever after.
NOT! If Mary doesn’t see Oshea nor hear from him for more than a few days, she’ll call him or come knock on his door and give him the what for? Because she knows that the streets are still calling to him with the sweet siren song of easy money. Mary says she has forgiven Oshea for her natural son’s murder, but Oshea admits that he’s still having trouble forgiving himself, even after all these years. And that concerns them both, because what will the pain of not being able to forgive oneself lead you to do, to others or yourself?
Mary has also started and runs an organization called “From Death To Life: Two Mothers/Two Sons,” which runs meetings and support groups for the parents of murdered children. In her story we see reconciliation not as a one-and-done deal, where, in forty minutes or less, with just the right techniques, gadgets and revelations, “they lived happily ever after.” “Happily ever after” is only guaranteed on the other side of the Pearly Gates.
And here’s where we come to the fourth point in the outline: What IS reconciliation? I’ve met Mary and talked with her, and I’m pretty sure she would say that, this side of the New Jerusalem, reconciliation is not a destination, but a journey. It’s not an event; it’s a way of life, a posture of our spirits, a way of being in the world. Or at least, of trying to be. Mary will never be reconciled to the murder of her son, or of anyone’s child for that matter. No one should. But she is working at living out her journey of reconciliation with her son’s murderer, by forgiving him, loving him, mothering him, and helping other parents of murder victims. Oshea does his part too, also teaching, talking and helping Mary’s ministry any way he can. In those ways, Oshea is reconciling not with his own crime—again, no one should—but with himself, with God, with Mary, and with the community. Because neighbors know that a killer lives among them.
Mary and Oshea are Christians, and they can testify this morning that where human nature fails to overcome fear and the lust for revenge, God and his grace can take over, lead and empower. The cycle of resentment, recriminations and retaliation can be cut and stopped because someone did come down, not Athena from Mount Olympus, but the God of Abraham in the person of Jesus. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself,” today’s passage says. And instead of scapegoating the scapegoaters, Christ took the place of all scapegoats, on whom we project everything we fear about ourselves and each other, and returned our violence with love. “Father forgive them,” he prayed, “for they know not what they do.” Christ absorbed our scapegoating violence, and returned it as a blessing, when he said, “Peace be with you,” to those who had abandoned and denied him in his hour of need.
That gives us some answers as to what Reconciliation is: for one thing, reconciliation is a trait, a quality within the very nature and being of God. I’m getting in over my head here, but I think that the very source and power and energy of any reconciliation that happens in this world is in the relationship that the Son of God described with his Father, through the Holy Spirit, when he said, “Don’t you know that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. (John 14:10).” On the night before his arrest, Jesus prayed, in his high priestly prayer to the Father, “Just as you are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” So I dare say that all harmony, unity, right relationship and reconciliation in Creation and among us find their source and energy in the Trinity, in the love, harmony and union of the Father and Son sharing the love of their eternal union and communion with us through the Holy Spirit. So again, for what reconciliation is, it is something deep, inherent and intimate to the very nature of God, which God demonstrates to us in Jesus, and which God shares with us, through Jesus.
That makes Reconciliation not only the nature of God, reconciliation is also the work of God in Creation. The Creation litany in the first chapter of the Bible shows God bringing harmony out of darkness and the waters of chaos simply by means of His reconciling Word, “Let there be…” a word of blessing and of command. Bringing forth out of darkness and chaos a wonderful world of such variety and diversity, but with all the parts and pieces related to each in such harmony and interdependence, that’s a kind of reconciliation. After our fall into sin and estrangement, Creation’s re-creation out of our darkness and chaos broke into the darkness of Good Friday, when the very body of Christ was split with a spear, so that blood and water flowed from his side, after he said, “It is finished.” With the offering of the final, perfect Passover lamb, no one else now needs to be scapegoated and sacrificed to feed our endless cycles of resentment, recrimination and retaliation. In Christ, God has demonstrated and declared his reconciliation with us, whoever we are, whatever we have done. The question ever and always is, Will we be reconciled to this reconciling God?
Will we be reconciled to this reconciling God? That is a lifelong kind of question, one we must come back to at ever deeper levels even if we never have to face the kind of assault, injury or offense that Mary Johnson and her murdered son did. Sadly, we know some who have. But we all suffer hundreds of smaller slights, injuries and offenses every day, like customer service phone numbers fiendishly engineered to keep you from actually ever talking to a customer service agent, or rude and crude bumper stickers and car decals that you hope your six-year-old grandchild doesn’t see and ask you to explain, to simple facial expressions, body language and tones of voice that say, “I don’t know about you,” and “Go away!” even when the words are nice, or neutral.
Then there are the messages of rejection and estrangement constantly going on in our own heads, evaluating people, comparing them with each other or ourselves, labelling, ranking and dismissing them. Even if we recognize these mental habits and believe they are wrong, we are so like the man who told Jesus, “I believe, Lord; but heal my unbelief.” Who among us cannot identify with St. Augustine and his experience of struggling to reconcile his will and his behavior with God and God’s commands? He said, “The mind commands the body and is instantly obeyed. The mind commands itself and meets resistance.” So he confessed, in his Confessions, to having prayed, at earlier stages in his faith, “Give me chastity and self-control, but not just yet.”
The good news this morning is that the welcome home feast of reconciliation is still going on in the Father’s house, where the lights are yet glowing in the darkness of this world, from where come the sounds of singing, dancing, feasting and laughing. A friendly, welcoming, Firstborn Son has come to lead us home, and The Father of the household still says, “My child, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.” Our place at the feast of reconciliation is eternally secured, if we want it. There’s still a lot of ground to cover between here and there, inside every soul, and in every relationship. But reconciliation is the journey, just as reconciliation is the destination, because ours is a reconciling God, who is eternally reconciled to us.