Prayer: Come Holy Spirit, come.  Take my lips and speak with them, take our minds and think with them, take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you.  In Christ’s name, we ask it.  Amen.

In his book Blood Brothers, a Palestinian priest named Elias Chacour recounts a Palm Sunday service at his church in a small town in Israel/Palestine.  His church, perhaps like some Episcopal churches these days, was full to the point of overflowing with people at odds with each other.  The community he lived and served in was impoverished and underserved by the Israeli government.  There was a serious lack of education and health care for the vast majority of the people.  Moreover, profound religious and political tension existed among the people of the village.  These and other societal factors had led to a painfully divided community, and that division and pain had infected Elias’ congregation like a disease leading to deep enmity among the people gathered in his church for that Palm Sunday service. 

At the end of the service, Elias made a startling decision.  He walked down the center aisle and at the back of the church locked the only two doors to the church and took the key.  He told the people that he loved them and that he was saddened to find them so filled with hatred and bitterness for one another.  Then, in the midst of stunned silence, he announced that only one person could work a miracle of reconciliation in their village: Jesus Christ.  So standing in front of the congregation Elias said: “On Christ's behalf, I say this to you: the doors of the church are locked.  Either you kill each other right here in your hatred, and then I will celebrate your funerals…or you use this opportunity to be reconciled together.  One or the other must happen before I will open the doors of this church.”  Ten minutes passed, and no one said a word. The people sat in silence, locked inside their church.

Finally, one man named Abu Muhib stood up.  Abu was a Palestinian villager serving as an Israeli policeman, and he was in his uniform.  Since he was an enforcer of Israeli law, Abu was perceived as being a traitor by many of his Palestinian neighbors.  Therefore, he was the target of much abuse.  Nonetheless, he stretched out his arms and said, "I ask forgiveness of everybody here, and I forgive everybody here. And I ask God to forgive me my sins."  With tears streaming down their cheeks, Abu and Elias embraced.  Within minutes, everyone in the church was crying, laughing, and embracing one another.

Elias then announced: "This is our resurrection! We are a community that has risen from the dead, and we have new life.  I propose that we don't wait until Easter to celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.  I will unlock the doors, and then let us go from home to home all over the village and sing of our Lord’s glorious resurrection!"

Elias’ community experienced a radical reconciliation.  In today’s New Testament lesson, Paul writes, “Everything old has passed away; see everything has become new.  All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.”  Reconciliation is the central defining work of the Body of Christ which is the church.

So what is reconciliation other than a word we hear tossed around from time to time in church?  Well, the New Century Version of the bible translates reconciliation as restoring peace between two people.  My personal working definition of reconciliation is transforming ruptured relationships into healthy, life-giving relationships.  Therefore, the ministry of reconciliation, to which the church has been entrusted, is transforming relationships that have fallen apart for whatever reason into relationships that call us into living into the fullness of our God given potential—relationships that help us become more like Christ in our everyday lives. 

The task of reconciliation is both difficult and complex, and I don’t want to over simplify it in this sermon.  Nonetheless, reconciliation is much of the time possible, and it is a task to which we are called as the people of God.  Therefore, I want to emphasize two aspects of reconciliation that are absolutely central to, at least, beginning the work of transforming ruptured relationships into healthy, life-giving relationships. 

First reconciliation can only begin when we recognize the humanity of the person with whom we are in some sort of conflict.  Perhaps you are familiar with the word ubuntu.  It is an African word that means, “I see you.”  And the appropriate response is, “I have been seen by you.”  The word was foundational in the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa.  This commission, led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and others, sought to accomplish the difficult task of reconciling people who suffered unimaginable abuse in Apartheid South Africa with their abusers.  Ubuntu is a key to the work of the commission because reconciliation begins when we literally see other people as being precious, valuable human beings created in the image of God—despite their imperfections.  You and I have to be able to see another person as really and fully human before there is any chance of meaningful work or conversation that can lead to a possible reconciliation.  Reconciliation begins with ubuntu, “I see you—and I have been seen by you.”

The second key component of reconciliation is a willingness to forgive those who have caused us pain or injury.  A wise priest once told me that the three most important words in any marriage are, “I am sorry.”  And I would agree.  However, “I am sorry,” must be complemented by three others words to have any real meaning, “You are forgiven.”  And this is certainly true for a relationship of any kind.  As in the story with which I began, the reconciliation of the people in Elias Chacour’s church began when one man stood up and said, “I ask forgiveness of everybody here, and I forgive everybody here.  And I ask God to forgive me my sins.”        

Philip Yancey who is an Episcopalian and a Christian author writes, “The word resentment expresses what happens if the cycle of pain and hurt goes on uninterrupted.  It means literally, ‘to feel again.’  Resentment clings to the past, relives it over and over, picks each fresh scab so that the wound never heals.”  You and I have the potential to end the destructive cycle of resentment by offering forgiveness to those who have hurt us.  C.S. Lewis writes, “Forgiveness goes beyond human fairness; it is pardoning those things that can’t readily be pardoned at all.”  In other words, forgiveness is not earned it is given.  It is an act of the will. 

Paul writes, “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself…For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”  Forgiveness is not earned it is given.  God chooses to give us forgiveness through the death and resurrection of Jesus not because we deserve it but because he first loved us.  Likewise you and I have the potential and power to forgive those who have injured us not because they deserve it but because we love them.  Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that forgiveness is not an act but and attitude.  The greater our appreciation for the forgiveness that God offers us through Jesus Christ, the greater our potential will be to move from an attitude of resentment to an attitude of forgiveness.

Corrie ten Boom was a Dutch prisoner of war during WW II in Ravensbruk concentration camp.  There she watched her sister Betsie die at the hands of the Nazi guards.  In her book “He Sets the Captives Free,” she recalls the moment when she came face to face with one of the former guards who had become a Christian and who had come to her to ask for her forgiveness.  Only through silently calling out for God’s help could she fight back the instinct to hate this man and do the impossible.  She wrote later, “At that moment, when I was able to forgive, my hatred disappeared.  What liberation!  Forgiveness is the key, which unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hatred.  It is the power that breaks the chains of bitterness and the shackles of selfishness.  What a liberation it is when you can forgive.”

The ministry of reconciliation, to which the church has been called, is the ministry of transforming ruptured relationships into healthy, life-giving relationships.  There are, at least, two keys to beginning the work of reconciliation.  The first is ubuntu—recognizing the humanity of the other.  The second is adopting an attitude of forgiveness because God through Christ first forgives us for all of our many indiscretions—and if we are honest we will admit there are many.  Who do you need to be reconciled with—God, a loved one, a colleague, a classmate or a friend?  I say to you today, on behalf of Christ, be reconciled.  Amen.

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