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12

RECONCILIATION

  God’s holiness brings him close to us. It is a false holiness that separates and creates distance between us and God and between one another. This was the false, phoney ‘holiness’ of the Pharisees. The very name Pharisee means ‘separated one’. Jesus warned against this kind of holiness: ‘If your virtue goes no deeper than that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you will never get into the kingdom of heaven’ (Matthew 5:20). The holiness of God brought God close to us in Jesus. He came in compassion to heal and renew, not to condemn, but to save. He came ‘not to be served, but to serve’ (Matthew 20:28). This is genuine holiness, real greatness, true divinity. All our inclinations are in the opposite direction.

  Consider the phenomenon of the personality cult. I believe this phenomenon reveals our terribly impoverished idea of what constitutes greatness, even divinity. It is instructive to watch what happens when people rise to great public fame. The more famous the person becomes, the more distant he or she is from the ordinary mortal in the street. A person appears with great gifts of leadership in politics or religion, in acting or in sport. The gifts bring acclaim, power, wealth and privilege. Gradually the famous person gets pushed away from ordinary people, is seen differently, is literally less seen. The famous one will travel in dark curtained cars and private jets, will be surrounded by bodyguards and have look-alikes to decoy fans or enemies. When seen, this rising star walks in a kind of glory. As this star gets pushed away from ordinary people and activities, there may be an occasional descent to earth and we all marvel as the media give us an exclusive shot of one of these ‘immortals’ holding a shovel or pouring a cup of tea or embracing a baby! This is meant to provoke admiration and wonder that such a ‘great’ should come so close and engage in such humble human activity.

  What is happening? The person is becoming godlike within our idea of divinity – distant, out-of-touch, free from suffering, having immense wealth, power, influence. And we are all involved, the new god or goddess, the media and promoters and we, the worshippers. There is no one innocent enough to say ‘the Emperor has no clothes’. Let us thank God for the true God, for Jesus who came to overthrow our infantile and conceited notions of divinity. ‘You know that among the pagans the rulers lord it over them, and their great men make their authority felt. This is not to happen among you’ (Matthew 20:25-26). Maybe this was the original sin, to want to be godlike, with our idea of what that might mean. Maybe Jesus is the supreme irony, inviting us to be like God in the true sense. God could have been smiling when he said, ‘Be holy, for I, Yahweh your God, am holy’ (Leviticus 19:2). Jesus knew he was proposing something difficult when he said, ‘Be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Matthew 5:48). But in truth, it is perhaps more difficult that we realised, because in asking us to be godlike he is asking us to come close to each other in compassion and self-emptying love.

  But this very self-emptying, unselfish love for each other is possible precisely because God is his kind of God and not our kind. The true God is close, is with us, is for us, is on our side offering us power to love to break down all the barriers we erect between ourselves and God and between each other. God in true holiness comes close in Jesus to enable us to become holy with a holiness which will show itself in destroying the distance between us, in making us one, in healing the wounds of division and enabling us to forgive one another. The scripture word for this is ‘reconciliation’.

  Here are some words from St. Paul on this: ‘For anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old creation has gone, and now the new one is here. It is all God’s work. It was God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the work of handing on this reconciliation. God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself, not holding men’s faults against them’ (2 Corinthians 5:17-19). Jesus is among us, restoring the old harmony between God and his people and between people themselves. God, who is love, keeps no record of wrong, he does not hold our faults against us. Paul begs us not to neglect this healing gift from God offered in Jesus. ‘The appeal that we make in Christ’s name is: be reconciled to God’ (2 Corinthians 5:20). God has done his bit by coming close to us in Jesus. We must do our bit and come close to him and accept the gift of reconciliation he offers. There are three components involved in being reconciled. There is my sin which separates me from God and my neighbour. There is God’s offer of forgiveness and healing in Jesus and there is my acceptance of the healing and forgiveness. Only one of these elements presents a problem; the third, my acceptance of healing and forgiveness.

  I must say yes. I must accept the gift and trust this God who is so close, trust that he does forgive and forget and that he really does give me the power to forgive others. I must let go the evil, the sin, to experience freedom and peace. I must forgive myself. I must go in with my Father and celebrate like the prodigal son. The alternative is to magnify the sin, hang on to guilt and judgment of myself and others and thus exclude myself from the celebration.

  In Sri Lanka young boys catch monkeys in the forest to sell them as pets in the market-place. To capture the wild creatures they go to a place in the forest where they know the monkeys play in the trees above. They ignore the monkeys and begin to play with a hollowed-out coconut shell. They have made a small opening in the shell and have put a stone inside. The boys play with the shell as a rattle, knowing that the curious monkeys are peering down from the branches above. After a while they leave the shell on the ground and hide in the bushes. They have tied a string around the shell and hold the end of the string in their hiding place. Soon the chattering monkeys descend, pick up the plaything and rattle it in imitation of the boys. Then, urged on by curiosity, a monkey puts his paw into the shell to investigate the source of the rattle. He grasps the stone in side and tries to remove it. The hole is big enough for his paw to fit in, but now that the paw is clenched to hold the stone, it cannot come out. The boys behind the bush pull the string and drag the screeching monkey towards them. All the monkey has to do to be free is to let go the stone, open his paw, pull it out and race to the freedom of the trees. But this he will not do. He wants that stone. He will not let go and ends up in a cage.

  Do we not hold on to things, even very trivial things, and lose the freedom Jesus offers? It could be something between God and me, something that happened long ago for which I blamed God, some failure, some loss, a bereavement. Or it might be something between myself and another person, a quarrel, a deception, an insult. Even after many years, I hold on to a memory, some mind picture, a look, a sneer, a tone of voice. I hold on and am imprisoned by such things. Jesus invites me to let go, to be reconciled, to become a new creation. He does more than invite. He offers the necessary power. Paul reminds us that it is all God’s work. Of course we can expect to hear another voice whispering to us to hold on. ‘It was not your fault. You have your pride. You already made an approach and were spurned etc…’ We all know this voice. Hold on. But if we hold on and don’t let go, we end up in a cage. We can let go, we can be free. Not by our own power. If we could manage by our own power, why did Jesus come?

  But Jesus has come and is with us, offering us the freedom of the children of God. He himself says, ‘If the Son makes you free, you will free indeed’ (John 8:36). He came to set prisoners free. The worst kind of prison is the one we build around ourselves. Some years ago, I conducted a retreat for a group from Zambia’s university in Lusaka. In a reconciliation service we prayed for each other to receive the power to let go any anger we might have against those who had hurt us in the past. Later in the day, one of the group, a lecturer from another African country, came to me in great joy to share a blessing he had received. He first told me of the painful circumstances that had forced him out of his own native country in West Africa. Years before, in his own country, at a time of political upset, he was falsely accused of being involved in an attempted coup and was imprisoned. He knew the person responsible for the accusation. After some time he was released from prison but was exiled from his native land. Since then he had carried anger and hatred in his heart against his accuser. During the reconciliation service he felt empowered to surrender this anger and forgive the man responsible for his suffering. He did so and experienced great freedom and peace. This was how he described it to me. ‘Although I had been physically released for years from prison, I was not really a free man. I was still a prisoner in a prison of my own making. My heart was a prisoner of anger and hatred and this prison I brought with me wherever I went. Today with God’s help I have forgiven this man and today, for the first time, I feel completely free. I am no longer a prisoner.’

  Jesus came to set us free, to liberate us from all traps, prisons and cages, and to fulfil the beautiful words of the Psalmist:

'Blessed be Yahweh who did not let us fall
a victim to those teeth,
who let us escape like birds
from the fowler’s net.
He tore the net
and we escaped.'
Psalm 124:6-7

 

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