Sunday, August 4, 2013

Reflecting on reconciliation.




"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God."

As broken and estranged from God and from one another, we are in constant need of a savior. In our broken relationships we are in need of the restoration that only He can give.

In the "High Priestly Prayer," (Jn 17), Jesus says, " I am not praying for the world but for those whom You have given me," meaning the believers of that day. Jesus specified to the Father that His prayer was particular to those followers and prayed that they, "may be one, even as We are one." It was His deep desire that Christian's oneness be in Him and in Him alone.  He later extended that prayer to include those who would come later.

So as those who have come later, we are called to oneness with our brothers and sisters in Christ. In Cost of Discipleship,  Dietrich Bonhoeffer says that peacemakers "maintain fellowship where others would break it off." We are called to oneness even when it would feel better to cross someone off of our fellowship list. For the cross and for the sake of the world, we are "partners in Christ's work of reconciliation" to reconcile person to person, people groups to people groups and ultimately people to God. We are called to the one fellowship and thus to the reconciliation found at the cross, where Christ Himself is peace.

I believe that our North Central team has taken the work of reconciliation seriously.  Last year, our motto, "unscripted" led us into unfamiliar territory as we set out to see what God was already doing in Honduras and to participate in it fully. We were lead to connect three groups, La Vega church, Solidaridad and the Isopo community to partner together to bring the gospel while empowering the Isopo community. We had already witnessed God's work in each of the communities, but never could have imagine how lives would change when they united. Because we took that injunction seriously, God has blessed those humble attempts in ways hard to have imagined 12 months ago.

In His prayer in John 17 Jesus prayed preemptively for future Christian believers. I believe he was praying for us, for all Christians who would come beyond his ministry on earth when he prayed for, "those who will believe in me." Quite boldly He asked that we, "may all be one, just as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be in Us..., that they may be one even as We are one, I in them and You in Me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that You sent Me and loved them even as you loved Me." His deep desire is that believers 'be as one.' In repeatedly asking for oneness He is emphatically emphasizing this oneness. But He doesn't stop there for He states the purpose for this oneness and this is, "that the world may know me."  It is for the sake of the world, that we strive toward oneness in Him.

As peacemakers, reconciling human to human and humans to God, this Honduran team from NC are acting, I believe, within the High Priestly prayer, and within the vision of these past two years. 

Peace,
Leslie Kenney