”Excuse me, can you help me?” yelled a hot air balloonist hovering above a pedestrian on the ground. “I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”
“You are in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 32 feet above the ground” replied the observer. “You are between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59-60 degrees west longitude.”
“You must be an engineer,”
said the balloonist.
“I am,” replied the woman,
“How did you know?”
“Well, everything you told
me is technically correct” answered the balloonist, “but I have no idea what
to make of your information and the fact is I am still lost. Frankly, you’ve
not been much help so far.”
“You must be in
management” observed the pedestrian.
“I am, but how did you
know?”
“Well, you don’t know
where you are or where you are going,” she replied. “You have risen to where
you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You have made a promise, which you
have no idea how to keep, and you expect those beneath you to solve your
problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before
we met, but now somehow, it’s my fault.”
Relational perplexities complicate
our conciliatory attempts and disrupt our efforts to co-exist as human beings.
When Saul of Tarsus met Jesus on the Damascus Road it became his metamorphosis.
It exploded Saul’s cocoon of Jewish traditionalism and emerged a magnificent
butterfly we remember as Christianity’s Apostle to the Gentiles.
That encounter launched Saul
into a history-changing, life-transforming, miracle-producing ministry as the
Apostle Paul. Paul’s view of people
changed from his pre-Christian days as Saul of Tarsus. He quit viewing people as
human demographics, bad attitudes, wrong caste and culture. He began seeing Jews
and Gentiles transformable by God’s metamorphosing. Paul discovered birthright
and tradition save no one. He found God had already reconciled Jew and Gentile and
“re-created” them into “one new man” (cf. Ephesians).
By making peace; i.e. by
reconciling the two, he had already brought Jew and Gentile into “one body to
God through the cross.” He put to death (killed) their hostility and introduced
reconciliation for all humanity (2 Corinthians 5:16-20; Ephesians 2:15-16,
NASV).
Reconciliation means
making friendly again. It suggests winning another to our view. It describes harmonizing
our different ideas, opinions, lifestyles, and cultures and this often includes
our accepting the reality of our own lot in life, and being satisfied with our
level of achievement. Reconciliation allows for
differences, without demanding division or separation. Our differences remind
us God is the author of our diversity. It was God that made us unique and
different in our creeds, colors, and cultures.
God gave us our minds and
hearts to reconcile—to transform--our differences. By birth, I am Caucasian--mostly German-Dutch. My early friends incuded Afro-Americans and Hebrew
Americans in all degrees of orthodoxy. I knew no Hispanics and when I found
myself a twenty-year-old U. S. Airman in San Antonio, Texas hearing
Spanish-speaking conversation was foreign to me. In spite of such differences, we played together, attended school together; lived in
community together, and each held our own views, while recognizing our
mutual equality and civil worth.
In later years, I found I had some flawed views,
especially of Jews. My hometown was a tourist
attraction, a resort community that catered to a large influx of urban Jews
from Chicago-Detroit who vacationed each summer on our Lakeside beaches. These
were older Orthodox Jews as well as more-progressive Jews. This mix shaped my early
life and colored my opinions. Their views often clashed with our white-European,
Anglo-Saxon Protestant Wasp culture.
When I first encountered
hardcore Confederate segregation as a young pastor in a southeastern state, it offended
my social morality. When riding the San Antonio Transit Lines, I wondered why these “dumb foreigners” don’t learn to speak English, but those
were my pre-Hispanic-friends days”. I had not yet learned that Hispanics
were NOT all foreigners--or stupid for that matter Yet, I comfortably allowed
for my German friends back home to still speak German when going to church. As I matured, I came to
envy the bilingualism and celebrate our mutual differences. With new understanding, I celebrated the positive benefits of what became decades of
Hispanic friendships. Acquaintance with people like Luz Gonzales enriched my
life . The time came when I expected a bear hug from Luz, although his Mexican
diet led him to enjoy eating his hot peppers as much as I liked
slurping ice cream.
Skin colors and ethnic differences do distinguish us but they need never divide us. In my young adult years, I served for a time in the Eastern United States where I had Slavic neighbors. I noted that some of them avoided their white Bohemian
neighbors. I saw that in some cities crossing a single street signaled a crossed
border. Everyone had the same white skin but a different ethnicity. It was no different when
I moved west, as a young married Bible-College student. I discovered to
my dismay that I fell short of compliance with an old Oregon law on the books at
that time that made “unlawful” my marriage of four years. It declared it illegal
for a Caucasian (me) to be married to an Indian (my Oklahoma-born English-Irish
Cherokee) who had enough Cherokee blood to proudly qualify as a First American--Her father drove a wagon on the “Trail of Tears.”
In later church ministry,
I sometimes found it unacceptable to fellowship outside of my established Church
of God Reformation boundaries. Some of my peers devalued the
Christian Unity they loudly proclaimed by vigorously competing with Christian denominationalism and rejecting any mutual cooperation or fellowship. I learned that
reconciliation challenges more than race relations. Social boundaries like
divorce, single parenthood, or accepting welfare can still be painful and costly religious
border- crossings. It became obvious to me such
borders often allowed us to
divide from one another because “different”, unacceptable, and even unworthy.
Our colorful shades and
multiple hues of color test our being One People. Recon-ciliation calls us to mutual
respect, interpersonal sensitivity, and submission
both ways. Experience reinforces for me the truth that reconciliation and
Christian unity is easier to proclaim than to practice.
Years of Christian
ministry and changing social mores, finally led me to a place where I found it
necessary to re-evaluate my practice of marrying people. My traditional views
clashed with a changing culture. Whereas I once accepted couples as they were,
I found myself feeling overwhelmed by growing numbers of previously married
couples, some cohabiting without marriage, some being youngsters caught with a baby
en route. Few seemed what I felt “proper” candidates for marriage. I watched divorce decimate
my congregation and I felt anger and frustration, and need for a moratorium. Perhaps
I should no longer officiate weddings. Or, I might refer prospects to a peer. Depressed
and dissatisfied, I was preaching through the Book of Romans when J. B.
Phillips’ grabbed my attention: “Do not
allow yourself to be overpowered with evil” Rather, “Take the offensive--overpower evil by good” (Romans 12:21, JBP).
As if God invaded my
thoughts, I heard Paul counseling “live
fully alive.” Overpower evil by allowing God to re-model from the inside
out. A moment of discovery transitioned into a reconciliation that anchored me
more firmly in Christ Jesus rather than in my biases. Ministry became a personal
reconciliation with God, without reference to achievement, ethnic origin, or
other considerations. Reconciliation unfolded as God’s grace; Charis revealed God’s
way of transforming me into an open channel of grace that he wanted to dispense
through me--at his pleasure, not mine.
This new concept of
intimacy with Christ led to a new sensitivity to God’s call for reconciliation.
Our COG Faith Community continues to grapple with varying degrees of challenge and every member is called to personally
pursue non-violent means of overcoming the variety of evils confronting us. We
are each called to use whatever
powers of goodness we have at our disposal (cf. Ephesians 3:20).
As members of the Body of
Christ, “WE” share mutual responsibility for influencing the moral consciences
of individuals. Is there one word that helps us meet this challenge? Paul called
it “reconciliation.” Years ago Pastor Tyrone Cushman preached to a large Youth Convention
and I use here his terse conclusion: “Reconciliation
-- racial, economic, family, and moral, the works.” What does the Bible say? “God was reconciling the world to Himself in
Christ … and he committed us to this “message of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians
5:19 NIV).
I am walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com … and is this not the word we have
mouthed as a movement since 1880, beginning with D. S. Warner and his company
of Saints?
Our practice needs to come up to our proclamation, I believe; what
do you think?
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