Reconciliation is a process. It begins with the Confession of Sin and moves toward reparation and forgiveness. Reparation is an attempt to repair the gap caused by the sinner’s offense. Forgiveness is the letting go, the giving up of the right to revenge, to avenge the wrong done. Only after these first three things have been achieved can the actual rebuilding of trust and a reconciled relationship begin to rebuild. Reconciliation is a process. A renewed relationship is the goal.

As baptized ministers of Christ’s ministry of reconciliation, we are pledged to be agents of reconciliation in the world, both inside and outside the Church. We are committed to developing and maintaining healthy relationships within our family, our church, our neighbors, our communities, even our nations and the world. Wherever strife, division, oppression and degradation enter our world, we are called, as John Lewis, once said to get into “good trouble”. When we see these occur, we are called to point it out. “If you see something, say something” was another of his favorites. Then we can try and bring about the process of reconciliation.

These days we live with the omnipresent eye of the video camera. Almost everyone on the planet has a cell phone and therefore a video camera. And each day through social media we are treated to recordings of the most vile and basest examples of human behavior: people harassing one another because of the color of their skin; incidents of “road rage”; armed groups attempting to intimidate others exercising their right to assemble, and; unfortunately the continuing abuse of our public trust by policeman who use deadly force against unarmed people of color.

The saddest thing about this appalling circumstance in which we find ourselves is the idea that the all-seeing eye of the camera has only revealed our present reality. The saddest thing is that there has been no sudden degradation in our civil society but that this is how it has always been. We just happen to be seeing it for what it is for the first time. And it isn’t the picture that we believed it was. That is sad.

But as Christians, we must confess our blindness to what reality was and we can no longer close our eyes to what reality is. That is our sin: willful blindness to the truth. And having confessed that sin, we are now called on to say something, and stand in the gap, the gaping hole that is tearing at our society and try to begin the process of reconciliation, reparation, forgiveness, trust building to renew the bonds of affection that once we claimed for each person and make them real.

Know justice, know peace.

+Jeff