Sunday Service | Reconciliation: August 30, 2020
Technical difficulties may have interrupted our time together for a few minutes, but it did not stop our connection as a church through the chat feature of our platform. It was such a joy to watch us rally around each other as we waited for audio + video to come back up. A HUGE shoutout to our team for making this experience happen week in & week out!
Lydia shared a strong word of encouragement this morning, reminding us to stay the course and to not give up on the dreams and words God gave us before this season. It can be difficult to do so. It’s easy to take our eyes off Jesus and turn them to just how difficult this season is and how everything around us seems to be falling apart. But it’s not. God is still working. Let’s hang onto him; he will bring his promises to pass in his perfect timing.
We continue our journey of discovering how to become a good neighbor this week by looking at reconciliation. The Levite & the priest in Luke 10 passed the man in need of mercy because it didn’t benefit them or their purpose. But the Samaritan, the good neighbor, shows us that there’s another way to live: a way of love, that lives and shows mercy according to the value that another person has, regardless of how or if we relate to one another. The good work of reconciliation is to connect with one another.
What is reconciliation?
A change of enmity for friendship
A mutual agreeance to connect
Repairing what sin tears apart
Connecting despite differences
Reconciliation is a deep, powerful, and ongoing process. It is a living, active, and shared experience--not a one-time event. It requires active dealings with one another.
This will often be risky and lead to hurt. We might feel isolated in the process of reconciliation. But we’re still called in; Jesus calls us into this way of love.
Reconciliation is a verb.
It is restoring hurt relationships. It is the work of the resurrection, the way of the cross, and the way of Jesus.
2 Corinthians 5.14-21 shows us how the work of reconciliation is the work of the resurrection. It is something God starts, something he initiates, and then he passes the ministry and the message of it onto us to act upon.
For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
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. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 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. 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. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
This is the call of hope: God stirs in the broken places, the situations that seem finished. He brings new life into them, into us, into one another.
Disconnection is not our story because of this reconciliation God started and continues. None of us are “too far gone”--there is room for transformation. But in order for us to be good neighbors, we must not only believe this truth for ourselves, but for those around us--even those we don’t connect with or relate to or even agree with--because they are our neighbors. The path to becoming a good neighbor is not by having good ideology in these truths, but it ends with us actually interacting and engaging with one another, just as God has interacted with us!
How do we begin to practice reconciliation?
By following Jesus. By daily interacting with the old question: “What would Jesus do?”
Jesus himself sets this example, as he expressed in John 5.19-20:
Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed.
We are following his example and story--and, remember, it ends with resurrection!
Jesus has called us into deep, intimate connection with himself and with others, and ultimately, reconciliation looks like following Jesus as HE takes down the walls + systems + injustices that separate and harm us and our relationships with him and with one another.
Jesus empowers, comforts, and heals us as we follow him.
Again, we see Jesus’ own examples of reconciliation in John 20-21.
Jesus’ disciples themselves played out the role of the Levite & priest in Jesus’ own suffering. They walked past him, choosing their fear, comfort, and security, over the mercy they could’ve showed him as his friends by not running away or denying him.
But Jesus doesn’t hesitate, he doesn’t delay--immediately after his resurrection, he goes straight to reconciling with his disciples.
He starts with Mary Magdalene as he speaks with her near his own tomb.
Then, he goes into the locked upper room to bring peace to his disciples.
He breathes the Holy Spirit upon them: empowering them to be ministers of the same reconciliation he has showed them.
Thomas missed this experience in the upper room. Jesus meets him a week later to answer his doubts and let him feel his wounds.
We are like Thomas. We want others to meet us in our pain and wounds, which are real and valid, but Jesus shows us his, meets us with his, to show us how he can radically change our own circumstances and struggles through resurrection.
And then Jesus meets Peter, challenging him to live as he was created.
Reconciliation takes action & a willingness to dig in. Watching Jesus in these stories of John draws us into hope & into the desire for reconciliation. It shows us how he acted on it in his own hurt relationships.
Here’s the difficulty of reconciliation: we cannot control how others will respond.
The Samaritan had no idea how the man he was helping would react--but he showed mercy anyway.
Here’s the truth in this difficulty: mercy and hope do not have to be well-received in order to be powerful.
Read that again: mercy and hope do not have to be well-received in order to be powerful.
Reconciliation requires both parties. But pursuing it does not mean it will always happen. Still, we must persevere. Because when we do this as individuals, it will impact our community, and when our community rallies around reconciliation--it will impact our city and the systems that need to see justice and mercy in them.
We can be partners with Jesus in this.
How do we participate?
There isn’t an exact answer.
We work at it together,
we work at it in love,
and we work at it looking to Jesus.
Two questions to ask ourselves:
When is the point Jesus should stop trying to reconcile with us?
Do I hole this same threshold with others?