Do You Know How to Reconcile People?

Do You Know How to Reconcile People?

Good Morning Friends,

In my mission work of connecting leaders, changing lives and transforming community, I spend time praying with Catholics and Protestants in Ave Maria and Immokalee alike. I am learning about connecting faith communities as well as government, and business communities as a ministry. I imagine them all working together. Do You Know How to Reconcile People?

Scripture: If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away . . .! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.

2 Corinthians 5:17-18 (NRSV)

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 
 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.
 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?
 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

John 4:7-14 (NIV)

4In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised up above the hills. Peoples shall stream to it,² and many nations shall come and say: ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’ For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.³ He shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore; ⁶‘With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves a year old? ⁷ Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with tens of thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’⁸ He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Micah 4:1-3, 6:6-8 (NRSV)

Message: There are great stories of reconciliation in the Bible. David and Saul…Jacob and Esau… Joseph and his brothers… The reconciliation of Peter and Jesus is one of the best, but none of these are the focus of today’s devotional. Instead we focus on the reconciliation of an entire people group….the Samaritans and through the prophecy of Micah…the world. But let’s start with the Samaritans and the first thing we see is that the whole idea of them being reconciled is a problem for the disciples. The whole situation is messed up and maybe, just maybe, we need a do over more than a makeover. We need new beginnings and it is our job to believe that Christ brings us just that through the transformation of culture. Friends, I believe God brings purpose in our lives so this might happen. Around the world and in the communities in which we live and work there are deep divisions that need reconciliation…people that need Christ. Despite how we work to develop an integrated service delivery systems, there are big gaps that by God’s creative force can only be filled by the relational routers of people of faith filled with a ministry of reconciliation. Friends through the cross, Christ reconciled us all to one another and to God. But the process of reconciliation may not be completed until Jesus returns. Still we are not to be deterred. We are to build up the connective tissue of the Body one by one. We just have to believe in the prophecy of Micah that summons another way of life. We have to understand our need for people like that Samaritan woman. Yes, all have a purpose, more important than we might at first imagine.

Pray we have the patience and skill to be agents of reconciliation. Pray we discover a new way to a new world of peace. Pray that like the woman at the well we discover what we really need. Pray we realize that being reconciled to each other begins with us being reconciled to God. Pray we learn to love and be loved. Pray we be one. Pray we reconcile mercy and justice. Pray we reconcile the reality of a God that does not change and a reality of a world and universe that is ever changing. Pray we suture our belief and behavior…our enlightenment and our actions together. Pray we teach the way of peace. Pray we realize that when we experience reconciliation we are experiencing a miracle. Pray we realize that reconciliation requires a mediator. Pray we are reconciled by Christ’s peace. Pray we are forgiven.

Blessings,

John Lawson