The Work of Reconciliation
A sermon preached by the Rev. Wallace Adams Riley
Rector, St. Paul's Episcopal Church
on Sunday, September 4, 2011 - The 12th Sunday after Pentecost
Dear God, take my lips, and speak through them;
take our minds, and think through them;
take our hearts, take our hearts,
and do with them, do with them
what only you can do…
Amen.
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What are we about?
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A question worth returning to daily, if not more often.
What are we, the Church, what are we, St. Paul’s Church, about?
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Or, to put it another way, as our Prayer Book does,
“What is the mission of the Church?”
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And, remember, the root of the word “mission” is to “send out.”
So then: what are we sent out (into the world) for?
What is the mission of the Church?
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Our Book of Common Prayer answers the question as follows, “The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.”
Let me read that for you again, “The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.”
To restore to unity. Humanity and God.
To, in a word, reconcile.
That is what we are about.
We are about bringing together; about reuniting; peace-making, healing; making “us” and “them” into “we,” making “you and “I” into “us.” That is what we are about.
Indeed, as Christians, we believe that, in all the wide world, there is simply no more serious business, no more holy business, no more important business, than reconciliation. Period.
Whether it’s in Shockoe Bottom, or on Capitol Hill, or in Jerusalem, or right here on Grace Street, at St. Paul’s Church.
Where there are human beings, there will be conflict.
And where there is conflict, we have our work laid before us; the work of reconciliation, which we have inherited from the saints, from the disciples, and from Jesus himself.
The work of reconciliation.
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Of course, like any worthwhile work, it’s hard work.
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The alternative, on the other hand, is nothing less than hell on earth.
Which is precisely what we see, and experience when conflict goes on, unaddressed, unhealed; festering and metastasizing.
Hell.
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In The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis gives us an unforgettable, and unforgettably apt, image of hell:
Hell is vast; an unimaginably vast, gray city.
And everyone lives way, way out on the periphery on the edge of the city with row upon row upon row of empty houses stretching out for miles in the hollow, center of the city.
How did this happen?
It happened because, when conflict inevitably rose, which it inevitably did, among the inhabitants of the city named Hell, instead of sitting down with one another to work things out, the combatants would simply move a few blocks.
Well, as you might guess in time, new conflicts would arise with the new neighbors and, sure enough, the new foes would pick up and move still a few more blocks.
And thus the city of Hell expanded and expanded and expanded as all its inhabitants became more and more removed from one another more and more alienated from one another as they retreated further and further into their own private spheres of righteous anger, and victimhood.
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Between my first and second years in seminary, I did what most seminarians do: I spent a summer working in a hospital, learning about pastoral care.
I lived, that summer, at General Theological Seminary, on 9th Avenue, in the Chelsea section of New York City, and would walk every morning across Manhattan to NYU Hospital, on 1st Avenue.
The walk back and forth each day was an adventure in and of itself; but that didn’t compare with the adventure I would have at the hospital itself, in company with the other 9 student chaplains.
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In addition to daily rounds, and various appointments, a weekly experience we had was an IPR session; IPR standing for Inter-Personal Relations.
In those sessions, one of us would bring a “verbatim,” which amounted to a written description of some experience, some pastoral encounter, that we had had in the last week. The presenter would read the experience to the group, and we would then discuss what had happened.
There were always many questions for the day’s presenter.
And, with our supervisor’s help, we were encouraged to ask “tough” questions. That is, the idea was that we should ask questions that helped one another consider how we had handled a given situation, so that we could, in turn, grow as pastors (and as people).
Well, it could get pretty intense at times. Just the stories themselves, as well as the conversation that followed.
I remember Jackie, a female rabbinical student sharing her experience of walking into the hospital room of an ailing Orthodox Jewish woman, only to have the woman shout at Jackie, that she would rather have a Nazi visit her.
The idea of a female rabbinical student was anathema to the woman.
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And I remember sharing with the group my experience of trying to comfort a woman who had prayed for her brother to survive a brain hemorrhage. Well, her brother did survive, but he was brain-dead.
And the woman then blamed herself.
She said that she should have prayed more specifically to God, that her brother both live —and have brain function.
I did my best to comfort her, while, at the same time, trying to keep in mind that we were strongly urged, as student chaplains, not to impose our own theology on anyone.
I did what I could to help her to understand that God does not operate that way.
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As a group, the ten of us faithfully tried to be both open with one another, and compassionate.
This applied both inside and outside of IPR sessions.
One member of our group had what one might characterize as a hygiene problem. That is, when all of us would gather for a session in a closed conference room, his body odor was almost literally overpowering. Members of the group would get headaches, and it became hard to concentrate.
Some of us talked about it, and we decided that, as awkward and painful as it was sure to be, one of us simply had to speak with him, discreetly, about the matter, so that he might understand what it was like for everyone else in the group.
And it was, indeed, an awkward and painful conversation.
I still believe, nonetheless, that we did the right thing for our friend, and for the whole group by having one of us speak with him.
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So, as the summer’s weeks passed by, we grew in our trust of and respect for one another, as we talked through all manner of things, experiences both uplifting and experiences disheartening, conversations that were at times light and easy, at other times highly demanding.
Well, at least most of us did, anyway.
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There was a student chaplain, an Armenian Orthodox priest, named Ari. And Ari was as cheerful, and hail-fellow-well-met as the next guy, until, that is, we started having the difficult conversations in the IPR sessions. And, well, he simply couldn’t or wouldn’t bear it.
Not only did he not want to be questioned himself, he would sometimes object when others were asked tough questions.
And, sadly, he became less emotionally-present as the days went by.
He just wasn’t willing to have the difficult conversations; he wasn’t willing, it seemed, to make himself vulnerable.
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You may know the poem by the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai:
From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the spring…
The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard…
But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plow…
And a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood….
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You might say that Ari wanted to pack up and move to a new house, a few blocks away.
And, in effect, he did.
And, needless to say, if we will be honest with ourselves, we too are, with regularity, tempted to do the same.
To turn away from the one who has wronged us.
And to move on.
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But, of course, Christ asks more of us than that; the one who said from the Cross, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do,”
he asks more of us.
And, in our heart of hearts, we ourselves want something better than alienation, and unforgiveness
Even when at our most self-righteous, even when we hum to ourselves the seductive song of grievance, of victimhood, even then, deeper down, —we hear the whisper of a better way.
The way of openness, and vulnerability. The way of reconciliation.
Jesus’ way.
The way of yes, love.
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“Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law…,” our patron saint teaches us.
“All God’s commandments,” all of them, Paul says, “are summed up” in the command to love.
And we hear from Jesus himself, this morning, some quite clear guidance as to just what that means, as to, just what it looks like, to love one another with openness, in vulnerability, just what it looks like to love one another with that reconciling love that characterizes the life of Jesus.
If you believe you have been wronged by someone, says Jesus, then go talk to that person about it. Yes, it’s going to be a hard conversation to have, awkward, difficult, painful, perhaps even scary, but go, Jesus says, go, it’s more than worth it! Go and talk with them about what has happened, about how you have felt wronged.
And, if that person won’t hear what you have to say, then get some help, Jesus says, so that the two of you don’t have to work it out on your own; get some help, and then, go back and see them again, so that the two of you can work it out, so that the two of you can be reconciled.
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And remember, remember, in the meantime, Jesus says, remember, I am with you, I dwell in the midst of you. I myself am there, with you, in the middle of it all, helping you, working in you, to find the way forward.
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Because, because (Jesus is always reminding us, in one way or another), because, reconciling, forgiving, healing, reuniting. Loving, that is what we have been sent out to do. That is what we’re about. That is what we’re here for.
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Reconciliation.
It’s hard work, yes, of course it is.
And, it’s the best work of all.
