The Hope for Reconciliation (cont.) 2.

Biblical and Theological Foundations of Reconciliation

Amidst the world’s profound brokenness, God’s peace in the risen Christ is now powerfully at work, seeking to reconcile humanity to God’s intended purposes for union with God, one another, and the material creation, resulting in the flourishing of all.  From Genesis to Revelation, Scripture witnesses to God’s total mission “to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven” (Colossians 1:15-20).  The fullness of reconciliation is friendship with God in Jesus Christ, witnessed to in Christ’s two-fold command to love God and neighbour (Matthew 22:37-40).  Christ has prepared the way for reconciliation by abolishing the dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile, making of the two one new humanity, establishing peace (Ephesians 2:11-18).  Reconciliation is a sign of God’s presence in the world, of the kingdom of God drawing near.   

The wholeness that God seeks to bring to all areas of brokenness is captured by the rich Scriptural notion of shalom.  This is shalom as rooted within the full biblical story and not in any nationalistic or politically partisan sense.  From the original wholeness of God’s creation, broken by the Fall, to God’s response to initiate restoration through covenant, to Christ tearing down the Jew-Gentile barrier, shalom proclaims peace as God’s peace in distinction to the world’s:

“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.  Not as the world gives do I give it to you” (John 14:27).  Shalom as God’s peace envisions the wholeness, well-being and flourishing of all people and the rest of creation both individually and corporately in their interrelatedness with God and with each other.  Shalom as God’s peace encompasses all dimensions of human life, including the spiritual, physical, cognitive, emotional, social, societal and economic.  Shalompursues mercy, truth, justice and peacefulness through both personal conversion in Christ and social transformation.[4]

Because God created all persons in God’s image, reconciliation also proclaims God’s love for every human being.  One crucial implication is that Christians must stand against any destructive or dehumanizing barriers built up by one person or group of people against another, whether they are Christian or not.

One theological implication of the above three paragraphs is this: God’s mission of holistic reconciliation is the overall context for evangelism and making disciples.  Reconciliation with God is essential and Christians must be agents of that restoration.  However, to stress evangelism without also being agents of holistic reconciliation betrays the full truth of the gospel and the mission of God.

In view of all this, Christians are called to faithfully embody God’s total reconciling mission.  Through new life given in Christ, the Holy Spirit’s power, the church’s faithful teaching, and on-going Christian practices, people can be deeply transformed toward loving God, neighbour and enemies.  Only in this radical journey of conversion can Christians develop the skills to resist destructive conflicts and live out a way of being which, over time, can heal and reconcile.

The church’s ministry of reconciliation flows from a call to being a reconciled community.

Christ prayed for the visible unity of the church, and intimately connected Christian unity to Christ being known as the One sent from God: “I pray . . . that all of them may be one, 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” (John 17:20-23).

We are led by Christ crucified to fully engage painful historical conditions and by the risen Christ to explode walls and barriers and build new forms of common life.

The church’s ministry should also be profoundly shaped by the truth that Jesus is fully human and fully divine.  Christian discipleship is led by the crucified Christ to fully engage the painful historical conditions of separation, animosity, and destruction in the earthly realm, refusing “cheap grace” and  shallow resolutions.  Christian discipleship is also led by the risen Christ to live in ways which explode old walls and barriers and build hopeful new forms of Christian community and just society between divided peoples.

Reconciliation and the quest for justice go hand in hand.  There cannot be reconciliation if sin is not named, judged publicly and condemned.  In the face of oppression, to reject vengeance is a double injustice — to the afflicted and to God’s wrath against evil.  What is crucial is how we appropriate vengeance: “Do not take revenge…but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge, I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Romans 12:19).  In Jesus’ death, God judged all sins, abuses and atrocities.  God’s forgiveness in Christ “while we were yet sinners” guides our pursuit of justice toward healing.  One mark of holistic reconciliation is a commitment to pursuing justice that is primarily restorative rather than retributive, keeping open the hope for future common life between enemies and alienated peoples.

At the same time, we must heed Scripture’s exhortation that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood.”  It is crucial to recognize an unseen, heavenly dimension to the quest for reconciliation in the world, a struggle against certain destructive forces and their ideologies, against “rulers,” “powers of this dark world,” “spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:10-18).  This calls for a deep life of prayer and discernment “in the Spirit” (Ephesians 6:18) at the centre of Christian ministry amidst destructive conflict and proclaims that reconciliation is ultimately a matter of God’s power and victory.

Difference itself, or differences, are not necessarily the problem calling for reconciliation.  In many ways, diversity of peoples and cultures is a gift, such as another language opening up a new world to us, or another culture as a gift to enrich us.  Often the problem is how the will to dominate exploits the differences.  While God’s mission of reconciliation does not obliterate human diversity, it does seek to bring friendship with God and neighbour in a way which transforms human cultures.  We must carefully and locally discern where the gospel affirms culture, where it opposes, and where it encourages transformation.  Christians are called to lives of hospitality, to open themselves to the stranger, the alien, the outcast, and the enemy.  Such openness radically changes one’s relationship to one’s culture, and how one engages cultures in transforming ways.  The pursuit of reconciliation is an ongoing struggle.  This quest should not be expected to end conflict in this world, but rather to transform it.  True reconciliation and shalom is only in the eschaton, when all things are reconciled in Christ.  While full reconciliation does not happen in this life, there is hope of substantial healing.

The Scope of Reconciliation

Every act seeking reconciliation, no matter how small, matters greatly to God.  The scope of reconciliation runs from healing in one person’s life, to two individuals overcoming animosities, to nations and long-divided peoples seeking to do so.

This work of becoming peacemakers between divided peoples is not secondary or optional, but is central to Christian mission along with planting churches and making disciples.  Indeed, this costly work and the persecution it may bring bears witness to some who are otherwise unable to hear the gospel, and is at the core of making disciples who “obey everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:20).

This peacemaking work must be theologically grounded.  In our emerging world, some are seeking a common ground of universality to provide meaning for “one world.”  Scripture testifies that God in Jesus Christ alone is the centre of hope for the world’s peace, and also that all of humanity is created in God’s image.  Following Jesus’ definition of our neighbour (Luke 10:25-37), Christians are called to seek truthful engagement, peacefulness and just community with all people — especially strangers, enemies, the poor and those considered outcasts both ethnically and religiously.

At the same time, there is a qualitative difference between how reconciliation can be pursued outside versus inside community with Christ.  The Lordship of Christ claims the whole lives of persons and alienated groups, something no other authority including the state can demand.  Christ offers forgiveness and healing which no legal effort or human attempt can effect and calls His disciples to a repentance and joy which is radical.  Christ calls for far more than admitting guilt, but deep contrition, and a costliness and depth to healing broken relationships that goes far beyond tolerance or peaceful coexistence.

This witness begins at home.  For the church to make peace, she herself must embody God’s peace as a living sign of God’s reconciled community.  Baptism identifies believers as one church family, the body of Christ.  Within their families, local churches, and the larger Christian family and our tragic divisions, Christians are called to a special witness of fidelity, sacrificial love, boundary crossing, and common prayer, seeking to heal conflicts following our Lord’s words in Matthew 18:15-20.  Wherever Christian leaders will not pray together and seek reconciliation, the church’s mission is seriously harmed.

Biblical reconciliation also leads Christians beyond church circles to vigorously analyze, engage and influence our local communities, nations and world as witnesses for reconciliation and just community.  Without sacrificing our Christian convictions, we should seek to partner creatively with people of good will to promote peace, including with people of other faiths.  At the heart of the church’s public engagement is a prophetic responsibility to call political authorities to account.  Governing authorities are subject to the sovereign Lord for their conduct in ensuring just order and peaceful relations.

Certain legal, governmental and national efforts can bring a cessation of hostilities and public pursuit of truth and just practices that the church alone cannot bring and for which the church should advocate.  Christian partnership with such efforts can even elevate their outcomes in profound ways (as with South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the 1990s).  Yet involvement with governmental efforts should not become the primary end or determinative sphere of the church’s reconciling mission.  They must be approached carefully, critically, and provisionally.  The church must never compromise its identity or prophetic voice.  

The Process of Reconciliation

Reconciliation is a long and costly process.  Reconciliation is not a one-time event, or a linear journey of progress, but addresses multiple causes and relations that intermingle.  Christians are called to be intentional and energetic in pursuing reconciliation, to go out of their way to love their neighbour who is difficult to love.

This costly journey requires hope, nurtured in practices where we listen to God in worship, Scripture reading, and prayer.  As we open to the pain of a broken world, we hear God’s word that ultimately, in the eschaton, all things will be reconciled in Christ.  In the meantime, we do our part.  It is this hope that keeps the process moving forward.

In biblical understanding, no one party in a historic conflict — whether majority or minority, powerful or powerless, aggressor or afflicted — has the greater burden to take the first step toward reconciliation.  The initiative for reconciliation begins wherever people find the courage to “lose themselves” and take ownership of pain: to no longer deny the conditions of trauma, to embrace the predicament of division, and to join the struggle for transformation by discovering the human face of the “other.”

Too often, we ask forgiveness of God without asking forgiveness of people.  Following the example of Jesus’ love for enemies and forgiveness for undeserving sinners, Christians are unconditionally called to seek within themselves for and to actively offer both heartfelt confession and genuine forgiveness.  We do this without promise that our action will be received or reciprocated, or that justice will occur.  Establishing a social atmosphere of relative safety and security is crucial for such actions to become widely possible, especially for those who have been marginalized.

While confession or forgiveness can come from one direction, reconciliation between divided peoples requires a risky, mutual journey of intentional relationship-building in which all groups are transformed and called to costly sacrifices.  Reconcilers may be seen as traitors by their own people, and often become a bridge painfully walked on by both sides.

Both perpetrators of destructive conflict and bystanders who remain safely silent and privileged are called to accept responsibility for the condition of those wounded and afflicted.  Their confession and sorrow opens a conversation about the conflict and its genuineness is often tested in a willingness to take actions of reparation to counter the consequences of harm.   One further barrier to reconciliation is the residue of unresolved bitterness toward people and groups who have offended us.  There is a need to face the residue and pain inflicted upon us as first steps toward reconciliation.  Such courage cannot be forced.  Yet many of history’s most powerful reconciliation movements have been birthed among Christians of the historically marginalized and afflicted who proclaim Christ’s triumph over evil, speak truth without demonizing the other side, pray for and engage their persecutors, seek forgiveness and work for a future of just community and common life across the lines of division.

 Indications of Reconciliation

 Only God knows what true reconciliation looks like, and the fullness when a countless multitude from every people and language will worship before the Lamb (Revelation 7:9-10).  Since reconciliation is an ongoing quest, the challenge is to point out where we are and to mark signs of hope.  As reconciliation efforts move forward, conflict and resistance may often increase.  Yet indications of reconciliation can become the very signs of God’s kingdom breaking into this world.  Christians should eagerly seek these indications of hope, from the church living the alternative, to practices of faithfulness, to changes in society.

The church itself ought to be a key indication of hope, a living alternative, infusing and challenging the social sphere with a more radical vision of God’s reconciliation.  Examples of the church visibly living the alternative include: across long-divided lines, Christians form holy friendships, offer hospitality, share meals, pray and read Scripture together, celebrate holy communion, mutually confess and forgive, and forge common mission; unlearn habits of superiority, inferiority and separation; celebrate together, and praise and worship God while engaging the world’s pain and working towards shalom; free Christian institutions of discrimination and unjust use of resources; show remarkable joy amidst difficult work; marry across ethnic boundaries and divided lines, with blended families becoming a sign of a new community.  At the heart of the church’s alternative witness is the birth and perseverance of blended congregations where historically separated peoples share deep, common life.

Christians understand faithfulness as shaped by the cross, as a costly discipleship that re-defines effectiveness.  Faithful practices of social engagement, even if they seem to result in no visible change, are also profound indications of hope amidst destructive conflicts.  Examples are when Christians forgive persecutors; prophetically challenge unjust situations; aid afflicted neighbours; absorb evil without passing it on; witness to Christ amidst hostilities; offer hospitality across divides; continue seeking peace even when called traitors; suffer, or even die, rather than participate in destruction.

The church should also eagerly work for indications of reconciliation in society.  These include: enemy leaders enter dialogue, violence stops, persecution is reduced, or hostilities cease; crimes and destruction by all sides are brought to light in a context of restorative justice; loved ones and the larger society learn the fate of victims; deeper truth around a painful shared history is appropriately and communally remembered; a state of tolerance is achieved where estranged groups agree to live peaceably; more just societal structures and practices emerge; children of hostile groups begin to go to school and play together; inter-marriage increases across historic lines of separation; neighbourhoods become blended communities of shared, peaceful life.