Reconciling agents

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. (II Corinthians 5: 19 & 20, NIV)

The passage above appears in a section of II Corinthians 5 under the heading, “The Ministry of Reconciliation.” At this time at Eigenheim Mennonite, we’re tackling the concept of reconciliation in light of the Truth and Reconciliation movement. It seems necessary to me that we do some thinking and talking about what it is we actually mean when we use the words. Concretely put, what do we do and what do we say when engaged in a “Ministry of Reconciliation?” It’s not as clear cut as, say, a “Ministry of Feeding the Homeless.”

Paul’s plea to the Corinthian church is that they see themselves as agents of Christ who reconciled them to God, i.e. that they act to reconcile others to God as they have been reconciled. Imagined visually, the Corinthian church is a circle of light ignited by Christ; inviting those in the dark outside to enter the light is its role as agent of Christ. Reconciliation in this sense seems less like harmonization of relationships (at least not human to human) than it seems like conversion or assimilation. The focus is harmony with God under the banner of the church, not necessarily person to person, group to group.

This is obviously not what Truth and Reconciliation is about, at least not as explained by Murray Sinclair (see Wrongs to Rights, p. 25+). Indeed, what’s advocated here is that the two worlds—the indigenous world and the settler world—acknowledge and deal with past injustices between them with the goal of procuring a just, a peaceful, a prosperous future for both. The primary injustice of the past clearly stems from the delusion that assimilation of the weaker partner into the stronger is the route to peace: cultural genocide wrapped in the cloak of self-righteousness and the arrogance of the Doctrine of Discovery (See Wrongs to Rights, p.142+).

But what of today? Are we still—in actuality if not in intent—being governed by a Doctrine of Discovery? Our politicians have issued apologies for the residential schools debacle, but for repentance that shows itself in the politics and economies of our country, little evidence can be found. What can easily be found is the diverting of blame toward the victims, the accusing of the culture we decimated with being weak, with suffering at its own hand. Colonial attitudes are alive and well among us.

How do we reconcile Paul’s reconciliation with Murray Sinclair’s reconciliation. I think we begin by acknowledging that the gospels and Paul’s letters were written by and into the communities of victims of Roman colonization. Transported to our time, it’s like Paul and Peter and James and John are indigenous folk, writing and speaking to the indigenous population of their time. That our reading of Paul should leave us puzzled at times isn’t surprising; we’re reading him through “Roman eyes.”

So is Murray’s reconciliation even of interest to Christ’s church in 2019? Some of us maintain that since we weren’t personally involved when injustices like the residential school system were implemented, we can’t be held responsible and have no need to reconcile. Others argue that even if we didn’t “steal the land,” we’re definitely benefiting from our possession of stolen goods. Still others see the church’s sole responsibility as evangelical, persuading as many as possible of the colonized to become “reconciled to God” on Christian Church terms.

One thing is clear no matter with which eyes one reads the gospels. They lean heavily toward justice, mercy, kindness and toward the strong lifting up the weak. To be agents for these principles in our time may not be all of reconciliation, but it can’t be denied that its at least some of it.