What might it mean for us to be ministers of reconciliation and bearers of the word of reconciliation?

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1 DIMENSIONS OF RECONCILIATION CCN Conference UK: Coventry Cathedral 1 You will have noticed the recent burgeoning of courses on the theme of mediation or conciliation and clearly there is a hunger for them in business and all sorts of other institutions - and this is surely no bad thing. Many Christians will be engaged professionally or informally in such work. There is a whole range of models and techniques of reconciliation which are being taught and learnt throughout the country and indeed the world. I want, for now, however, to reflect with you on the distinctive resources and inspiration we have as Christians. This conference brings together so much experience and so many stories. There is so much to learn from one another. Coventry itself has a pivotal story, known throughout the world and these stories will, I'm sure, encourage and inspire us. But the temptation to hold reconciliation 'out there' simply as something that other people need is actually to miss the point in quite a profound way. It is not, to name the elephant in the room, the room of the Anglican Communion (and of course there are almost identical fault lines in most other denominations which are not getting the publicity!) the room of our local church or cathedral or community life, the room of our own personal or family life. Let us be real. Real Christian community is not pious or righteous in any human sense; it is surely about being real with God and letting God 1 be real for us and it is about being real with one another. Real Christian community cannot actually be built by you or me, it can come from God alone, through lives yielded to him. 'So come to him and let yourselves be built into a spiritual house.' (1 Peter 2:5) 16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. 17 So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. 20 So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Cor.5:16-21 What might it mean for us to be ministers of reconciliation and bearers of the word of reconciliation? I want to reflect on this briefly in three overlapping themes deriving from the Scriptures: Space Hospitality Exchange SPACE Recently I came across these words from Colin Gunton in 'The Actuality of Atonement': 'The calling of the community of reconciliation is to be those who learn to live in the Creation as God 's creation, as gift, in the space won for the life of the world by the victory of Jesus. Thus and only thus will it be able to open up space in which others may find freedom.'

2 He brought me out into a spacious place, he delivered me because he delighted in me. Ps God makes space for us. In the first creation account in Genesis 1 (P) Creation first takes place by separation, separation of light from darkness, separation of the waters above the dome from the waters beneath the dome, separation of the waters from the dry land. These separations were to create space, space for God s creatures. In the space of the sky God puts the two great lights and the lesser lights; in the space of the air, birds; in the space of the waters, fish; in the space of the dry land, animals and finally human beings whom God blesses and to whom he gives dominion of His creation. In Creation God makes space for us to enjoy communion (right relationship) with Him, with one another, and with His creation. If Creation is about making space for humanity freely to enjoy our relationship with God, with each other and God s creation, so is our salvation. The root of the Hebrew - and Arabic word for salvation Jeshuah - Jesus...means 'be capacious, make wide, make spacious' (Brown, Driver and Briggs Hebrew lexicon) Joshua/Yasha/Jesus is the name of the one who delivers us from bondage into freedom, from confinement into space. In our fallen -ness, God comes to rescue us in Jesus Christ. Jesus, the Bridge whose life, death and resurrection has given space once more to enjoy the life and liberty as children of God. Miroslav Volf writes: ' On the Cross God renews the covenant by making space for humanity in God's very self ' Jesus the Bridge (this was an image that was found most helpful to CCN members working in very different contexts in Israel/Palestine, and this included those who saw things from an unequivocally Israeli perspective, including someone who is a survivor of a suicide bomb attack which killed many people and many Palestinians living in different contexts whose lives and livelihoods had been - and continue to be profoundly blighted by Israeli policies - epitomised perhaps above all by the wall.) As ministers of reconciliation we are called to offer that space in which others may find freedom in Christ. We offer that space because we have first been offered that space. The cavern slide - this is the space which God gives to those who make space for Him. Making space for God is not a desirable but an essential characteristic of the faithful. We are all, I 'm sure, aware of the dangers of activism, of constantly doing things for God which can eclipse the even more important being with God, of giving space to God, to let God be God in our lives. Hence, surely, the foundational priority that Jesus gives to all prayer. 'When you pray, go to your room, close the door and pray to your Father in secret, and your Father who hears you in secret will reward you openly.' As we give God space, he makes us more spacious. This is God s space, to which none of us have access by right but only by grace, it is God s space won for us by Jesus. It is not our space, it is God's space available to us through God's grace. Q. How much space do we give to God? It is the space made by God who created both Jew and Gentile; God who entered into covenant with the Jews, through Moses, and entered into covenant with all peoples through Noah. So God's space,

3 by definition, embraces difference and diversity but not division. We are in a spacious Cathedral the inspiration of which has been the spaciousness of God's love, the love so radical and inclusive that it embraces not only the alien and the stranger but even the enemy. As Provost Howard said in his Christmas broadcast to the whole nation only six weeks after the Nov.14th bombing of Coventry and the destruction of the Cathedral 'we must not seek revenge, we must seek to build a more Christchild-like world.' This extraordinary Cathedral is a wonderful and extraordinary testament to the God who created all peoples of every race and nation in His own image and who in Jesus has overcome the divisions of this world. People from so many races and nations have contributed not only to the physical building but to the ministry of this Cathedral here, nationally and internationally since it was built. It lives, breathes, speaks of God s love for and involvement in the oikumene, the whole inhabited earth. Its inspiration, as we know, has been and is the God who crosses boundaries, the God who in Jesus 'has broken down the dividing walls' (Eph. 2.14) who calls us out of the bunkers of our fear and prejudices into the glorious liberty of the children of God. God call us into a liberty and a space in which difference is valued. If God, the Creator is the One God of Israel and all peoples, of both Jew and Gentile and in his creating, 'saw that it was good ', God the Redeemer comes to rescue us in Jesus in whom the differences of race and gender and culture are embraced and the hostility and divisions of this world are healed. Paul who identifies the Christian life as one lived 'in Christ' fifty five times in his letters is clear that Judean Christfollowers do not have to stop being Jews and equally clear that Gentile Christ-followers do not have to become Jews. As Rom. 14 makes clear there is room for difference within the Body of Christ. Q. Can we make space for difference? For people not like us. Do we make space for God to be God in our lives and so to change us and make us different? Of course, if we are not giving God access and authority in our lives to change us, our evangelism will say either implicitly or explicitly 'come and be like us', 'come and join our club', 'come and be birds of our feather'. This sadly is often, wittingly or unwittingly, the image that we as churches can give. But we have among us examples of other approaches which are bearing fruit, not least among the Goths and more recently the Chavs. When Greg or Keith have spoken to me of these ministries it is in the language of getting alongside, walking with, listening and gradually enabling and encouraging the young people to articulate their own questions. It is above all not about giving prepackaged answers to questions which they may or may not even be asking. Yvonne's Spirit of Life initiative likewise is to do with connecting with, listening to and honouring where people actually are in their searching before 'giving account for the hope that is in us '. 1 Peter 3.15 It is about recognising that 'the earth is the Lord's and all they that dwell therein'. Ps It is about recognising God's will and pleasure which he 'purposed in Christ... to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ'. Eph 'For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him (Jesus) and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross.' Col There is no place for the kind of Christian tribalism which says 'come and be like us', whatever the hue of the 'us' might be, within God's saving purposes. As Fr Paul Couturier wrote: We must pray not that others be converted to us, but that we all may be drawn closer to Christ. The spiritual horizon for prayer for unity is not merely Christianity, it is the redemption of humankind. 3

4 HOSPITALITY 4 When Jesus says 'the one who would make his life secure, will lose it'. (Luke 17.33), the word used for make secure is peripoien - literally 'to make around', the image is of putting boundary markers around us. Keeping our identity secure within these boundary markers and keeping out those or the One who might change us. Auden wrote: We would rather be ruined than changed We would rather die in our dread Than climb the cross of the moment And see our illusions die. Security is dangerous in the spiritual life if it is the security of knowing we are right, or if it is the security of birds of a feather flocking together, or one based on keeping the stranger out. After all there is, as Paul writes, more 'growing up into Him who is the Head, that is Christ ' (Eph. 4:15) for each of us to do. There is more 'growing in the knowledge of God ' (Col.1.10) for each of us to do. Our scriptures remind us again and again of the call to welcome the stranger, the one who is different, the alien, the outcast. (Gen.18. 8ff, Deut.10.19, Luke 14.12; Heb. 13.2,) Jesus calls us to love our enemies (Matt. 5.44). This is not simply for their sake but for our sake also. When Abraham and Sarah welcome the three strangers (Gen.18) by the oaks of Mamre, I was told by Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, the nuance of the Hebrew reads not simply that they were standing near Abraham but they were standing above him, indicating their divine status. Likewise when Abraham and Sarah have offered them the best of their hospitality, Abraham is standing not with them but above them, indicating that hospitality is of God. Hospitality to the stranger, ministry to the poor, the hungry, the outcast will not only be for their blessing but for ours too. It is through welcoming and providing for the stranger, that Abraham and Sarah discover God's extraordinary welcome and provision and promises for them. Hospitality of Abraham and Sarah Rubliev's 'Icon of Hospitality' -the Trinity icon - reminds us that hospitality is of God. Made in the image of God as Abraham and Sarah are - and each of us is - our life in God and God's life in us - calls us into that same hospitality to the stranger. In Leviticus chapter 19 God commands the Hebrew people to 'love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Lord' (v.18) he goes on in the same chapter (v.33) to command them to 'love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.' So too each of us as Christians, like those Christ-followers in Ephesus were once far off, strangers and aliens and as Paul writes 'But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ' Eph Jesus alone is the means and the bridge for us into new life. It is by grace alone that we have been saved not by anything we have done. To borrow from Volf again, on the cross God has made space for each of us in his very self. So such crossing of the boundaries is not simply a desirable calling for ecumenists, or ICR, or CCN or even inter-faith specialists, it is essential - that is to say of the esse of being a Christian, of living

5 in Christ who 'has broken down the dividing walls' Eph For Paul, Christians are those who have been baptised into Christ (eis Christon) and who now live in Christ (en Christo) and we are those in whom the Christ who has broken down the dividing wall, lives. Paul writes God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. 5 So when Paul writes Be reconciled to God' (2 Cor. 5.20) he is inviting his readers and listeners not to create or to achieve reconciliation but rather to enter into or appropriate what God has already done for us.' God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.' We cannot achieve this but we can receive it. Q. Who is/are the difficult one, the stranger to us the one we are keeping outside, or keeping as strangers? EXCHANGE Brian Keenan... There are those who cross the Jordan' and seek out truth through a different experience from the one they are born to, and theirs is the greatest struggle. To move from one cultural ethos to another, as I did, and emerge embracing them both demands more than any armed struggle. For here is the real conflict by which we move into maturity. Those who struggle through turbulent Jordan waters have gone beyond the glib definitions of politics and religion. The rest remain on either bank firing guns at one another. (An Evil Cradling, p.16) The ministry of reconciliation is about the crossing of boundaries. The word Paul uses for reconciliation is katallagein (noun) or katalasso...(verb). At the heart of this word is allos meaning other. Alasso means to make otherwise', 'to alter'. It indicates change. It can also mean to give in exchange' or 'to take in exchange'. Kat can mean a number of things apart from 'down', the opposite of ana up. It can mean 'alongside'. So the word Paul uses for reconciliation means something like getting alongside the other or the one who is different, standing in the shoes of the other or even changing places with the other. It is to do with 'making otherwise'. Either way it involves the crossing of boundaries. It enables change. But Paul is clear. It comes from God. 'God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. 2 Cor The ministry of reconciliation entrusted to us is from God who has taken the initiative. As Christians, we are those who are living 'in Christ who 'has broken down the dividing walls' Eph We are those called to communicate the reconciliation that we have experienced ourselves. As those who have been/are reconciled to God in Christ we are called I to a ministry of reconciliation (ten diakonian ) and Paul actually writes (unlike most of the English translations) he has 'placed within us' (themenos hemin) the word (ton logon) of reconciliation. We may learn techniques of reconciliation which help build bridges and indeed reconcile, but unless we have experienced the love of God in Christ, there will be something missing both for us and those we are working with. We love because he first loved us. Our ministry flows from God's initiative, God who crossed boundaries for us.

6 As Irenaeus of Lyons ( ) writes: 6 The Son of God became human that we might become children of God. In His unbounded love, God became what we are that He might make us what He is. Or Athanasius ( ) The Word became bearer of the flesh that we might become bearers of the Word. The new creation, of which Paul writes, has been God's initiative. God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. We see something of this movement of exchange and making otherwise' and changing places when Paul writes: 'For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.' 2 Cor As ministers of reconciliation and those in whom God has placed the word of reconciliation, we are called to be boundary-crossers. As those who, once far off ourselves have been brought home through the death and resurrection of Jesus and given space in God's very self, we are called to open up the space in which others may find that same space in God's very self, in Christ. Let us pray that as Paul prayed our hearts may be enlarged by the different ways in which God is working among us. +John Stroyan 14 th November 2007