The Rev. Phyllis A. Spiegel

“Called to Reconciliation”

Lent 4, Year C

March 6, 2016

“Restless Weaver from compassion’s sturdy fabric fashion hope and trust reborn.”

Since we are at week four of our weaving project, maybe this is a good time to stop and have a recap of where we have been. We are the stewards of God’s creation and as such we are master weavers for its brokenness. And while not everything can be mended into a “good as new” condition, Jesus can bring a new wholeness to the broken strands of people’s lives. And as we weave God’s wholeness into this world by our prayers, words, and actions, we have to look at what needs to be transformed, and ask ourselves, what are we going to do about it?

This can all seem rather daunting, can’t it? I mean, if you think about it, this quaint little hymn text is demanding an awful lot of us; not only that we figure out how to weave our own lives into a place of wholeness, hard enough on any given day, but that we also “Make our lives incarnate prayer”. That is, that our lives become for the world what we actually pray for ourselves.

Well, my friends, Lent just doesn’t get any easier as the weeks roll on. It is in fact why the Easter proclamation brings such joy to our souls. When we gather at the Easter Vigil and proclaim that Christ is risen, we ring bells with joy because we have been set free. It always feels to me like the joyful acknowledgement that we did our spiritual work of Lent. We have thought about our sinfulness, our brokenness, our need for amendment of life for six weeks and the time has finally come to rejoice.

We have now looked back from where we have been and forward to where we are going. And the reason is because what we are going to talk about today is really hard; God’s high expectation of us. We learn of this expectation in both our Epistle and Gospel reading. Paul’s words to the church in Corinth find illustration in the Prodigal Son story. Paul spells out what Jesus tells in a story.

Just like our Restless Weaver hymn text is completely deceiving in its simplicity, so is this lesson from 2 Corinthians. The text from Corinthians says that God reconciled himself to us in Christ. That is, God used Jesus’ life to make humans and God synchronized, in balance, once again in harmony with one another. God DID NOT use Jesus to count up our sins, he was not sent as the great Accountant of Sins. God sent Jesus to bring heaven and earth into restored relationship. And you know what? People are still wanting Jesus to tally their sins, to say if they are good enough. But that is the old story. I have no idea when we are going to get with the new story, but it is right here for us to open our ears to.

But I think we don’t want to. I think the real story might be too hard for us to fathom. It is far easier to worry about whether our sins will keep us from heaven, than it is to act on our marching orders. This is the real story: God used Jesus to reconcile us to God and once that was done, God delegated that responsibility once and for all. God said, “Alright, I have shown you how to do it, and I’m done. You are now in charge of the ministry of reconciliation. Go and bring forth harmony and balance between people.” And that’s it. God sent Jesus, Jesus who stopped all of the “Us-Them” ways of being, Jesus who touched and healed, and told stories of wholeness and abundant love, stories like of a father whose son is a complete jerk and gets welcomed home with open arms.

And yet here we are 2000 years later still struggling with being reconcilers. For example, if you asked me to tell you the most unfair thing that has ever happened to me, I can promise you by the end of the story we would both be full of blame for the OTHER, the one at fault in my tale of woe. Oh what a sad lot we are as ministers of harmony and balance.

Yesterday at Spring Clergy Day, the bishop told a powerful story about reconciliation. He didn’t call it that; he was telling the story as a call to mission. He told about an encounter this week that he had when on his way to Gabriel’s place in Avondale. He had to stop for gas and as he was finishing up the task a man approached and asked, “Hey, are you a minister?” The bishop replied that he was, but confessed that this was uncomfortable since it has been quite a while since he got that question. The man proceeded to ask for the bishop to pray for him. The bishop asked what he would like him to pray for. The man replied that it didn’t matter; his whole life was a mess. And then added if he could also pray for his dad since he was the only one caring for him and his dad is ill. Upon request that the bishop lay hands on the man’s head, the bishop did so and prayed for the man, his father, and for Avondale. When the bishop had finished, he asked if the bishop would give him a hug. And so right there at the gas pump, our introverted bishop hugged a man who moments before had been a stranger. Before he left the man said, “You all need to be here. You need to be here with us a lot more often. We are hurting here, and the church needs to be here with us.” The bishop said to his clergy yesterday, “A prophet has spoken. We as the church may not be wanted but we are desperately needed.”

This is as much of an illustration of the text from 2 Corinthians as is the story of the Prodigal Son. Balance and harmony were briefly restored – but not by the church acting as the minister, but rather by the one in need bridging the gap.

What does it mean to be a Christian? We often say it means to be a follower of Christ, but that is only true if we understand it to mean that we are the ones who have been tapped to take over the ministry of reconciliation that Jesus left behind. We start in our own lives, not because we need to be model Christians to serve in the world. No we attend to our needs for reconciliation because it is the way of Jesus to do so. God will use us at any time, so we do our best to be ready.

What needs reconciliation in you? What has happened in your past that if you think about it today you will be as mad, sad, scared, betrayed, you name it, as the day it happened? What God has given us to do, God has equipped us to do, even if we don’t believe that to be true. As our hymn text of the day says, “From compassion’s sturdy fabric God fashions hope and trust reborn.” Hope and trust are two primary words of reconciliation.

Think about what needs to find balance in you, what from your past or in your present needs to be brought into harmony? And then weave your prayer for hope. For the better part of wisdom or not, we are the reconcilers of the world. So holding on to our hurts, our self-righteous anger, our hatreds, holding onto anything that throws us out of balance with another, is not ok. We have to do the hard work of finding balance. For we are Christians. Not just followers of Christ but reconcilers in His way.

What payers of reconciliation need to be woven in you today?