CHEAP RECONCILIATION IS NO RECONCILIATION
I Corinthians 5:16-19
Matthew 5:21-24
In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself.
God has entrusted the message of reconciliation to us.
Twenty years
ago this year, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established and
mandated by Parliament to spearhead the process of reconciliation in
post-apartheid South Africa. Soon the
TRC attracted global interest, and was daily referred to in the media here and
abroad. It was meant to complete its
work in two years, but only did so in six when, in 2002, it submitted its final
report to President Mbeki. While it
continued to attract attention, especially among scholars, many of them beyond
our borders, by then most South Africans seemed to have lost interest and tired
of the subject, many victims who gave evidence at its hearings were disillusioned,
perpetrators were desperately trying to get amnesty for themselves, and the
government was not taking some of its main recommendations seriously. The process of reconciliation seemed to
stagnate. We can't blame the TRC for
this. Rather as South Africans we,
especially those of us who are white along with the government, must blame
ourselves for failing to grasp the opportunity the TRC gave us. It would have saved much anguish today if we
hadn't. But instead, the impetus towards
reconciliation weakened and the word, like the Rand, was devalued.
So now,
twenty years later, reconciliation has become a dirty word for many angry young
blacks who regard all talk about reconciliation as cheap talk, and have
concluded that whites who say they are for reconciliation are not really serious. Reconciliation-talk, for them, simply benefits
those who have made it in the new South Africa rather than contributing to
significant changes on the ground for those who are poor or unemployed, young,
black and uneducated. Nothing has really changed they chant. Some have even turned
their backs on the national icons of reconciliation, Nelson Mandela and Desmond
Tutu, saying that they sold them down the river.
These young
people, for whom reconciliation has become a symbol of oppression rather than
transformation, are almost all "born-frees." They did not grow up
under apartheid, nor did they participate in the struggle against it. Many are college or university students who,
like young people the world over are critical of their elders, and articulate
in their criticism. At one level they have come of age like young people
everywhere. But they are not without
cause. They may not have grown up under apartheid, but they experience its
legacy in too many ways. They are daily
aware of the gap between rich and poor, between the growing middle-class and
the unemployed, between the skilled and unskilled, the educated and less
educated, the well-housed and shack dwellers -- inequities that largely mirror
the divide between black people and white, or those who have benefitted from
Black Economic Empowerment and those who have not. Reconciliation for them, has simply come to mean
that whites and blacks can now be friends on Face Book, play in the same rugby
teams to fill quotas, go to the same restaurants and churches if they wish,
ride on the same trains, and even intermarry.
So reconciliation-talk has become suspect, and the word itself is
becoming unusable along with the words "God" and
"Christianity" with which it is usually associated. It is much like Donald Trump telling us that
he is a Presbyterian and proud of it! I
doubt that many Presbyterians welcome his affirmation, but in saying this Trump
has debased the word. This is what has
happened to the term "reconciliation." It now conveys to many young and angry blacks
what is wrong with South Africa, not what is right.
I am not
pessimistic about the reconciliation process.
I think we have come a long way in the past twenty years, but it is not
nearly far enough to meet the expectations of many people, not least young
blacks. So all of us who believe in and
work for reconciliation have to sit up and take notice of their anger and the
bored yawns of those who have lost interest or are indifferent. This is a particularly urgent challenge for
us Christians for whom reconciliation is the core message of the gospel which,
as St. Paul tells us, has been entrusted to us.
When Paul wrote
that "in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself," he was not
just speaking about Jesus' death on the cross, but reminding us that throughout
his ministry Jesus was the agent of God's work of reconciliation. He is saying that in Jesus, God took the
initiative to reconcile and heal the world. In Jesus' every act of healing, every protest
against injustice, every challenge to the hypocritical religious elite of his
day, as well as to the rich and powerful, every parable about the coming of
God's reign of justice, every embrace of the outsider, the despised and the
vulnerable, God was at work "reconciling the world to himself." And it was because of this costly ministry of
reconciliation in which Jesus confronted the dehumanising and destructive powers
of evil, that he was crucified. This is
what the gospel of reconciliation is about, and why it is costly, not cheap. For cheap reconciliation is no reconciliation. Reconciliation is not just being nice to one
another, though that always helps! It is
about the deep healing of broken relationships and enmities through grace and
forgiveness; it is about the deep healing of society through working for
justice and therefore social and economic transformation.
Jesus tells
us that we cannot worship God if we are estranged from other people because of
what we have done to them. Like the
prophets of old, he tells us that faith in God is meaningless unless we love
our neighbours and seek God's justice in the world. So when we say that the church exists in
order to witness to God's reconciliation of the world in Christ, this is what
we are committed to doing. It is the only promising way into the future, not
just for us in South Africa, but for the world, as becomes ever more obvious
each day as we watch the news on TV. And
that is why we here at Volmoed continue to be inspired in our ministry by the
story that gave birth to the Community of the Cross of Nails to which we
belong.
During the
Second World War, Coventry Cathedral in England was totally destroyed by German
bombs. In retaliation, in an act of vengeance
that had no strategic importance, the Royal Air Force destroyed the German city
of Dresden. After the war, as an expression of penitence and reconciliation,
the Dean of Coventry invited young Germans from Dresden to come to Coventry where
they worked alongside local young people to clear the ruins of the Cathedral. In doing so, they discovered some Medieval
roof nails lying in the rubble. They
made a cross from two of them and placed it on the damaged altar as a sign of the
process of reconciliation to which they were committing themselves. So the Community of the Cross of Nails was
born, which now has over two hundred affiliates across the world including
Volmoed, each working for justice and peace in places of conflict, enmity and
violence. So today we reaffirm our core conviction:
that "in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself" and renew
our commitment to "the message of reconciliation" he has entrusted to
us. And as a sign of that commitment we say the Litany which every community
associated with the Community of the Cross of Nails says every week.
All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God
Father forgive
the hatred that divides
nation from nation, race from race, class from class.
Father forgive
the covetous desires of
people and nations to possess what is not their own.
Father forgive
the greed which exploits
the work of human hands and lays waste the earth.
Father forgive
our envy of the welfare
and happiness of others.
Father forgive
our indifference to the
plight of the imprisoned, the homeless, the refugee.
Father forgive
the lust which dishonours
the bodies of men, women and children.
Father forgive
the pride that leads us to
trust in ourselves and not in God.
Be kind to each other,
tender-hearted, forgiving each other, as God in Christ forgave us.
John de Gruchy
Volmoed 28th January 2016
No comments:
Post a Comment