Third Sunday after Pentecost: Meeting on a Common Ground

1 Kings 17:17-24

Psalm 30

Galatians 1:11-24

Luke 7:11-17

In the second letter to the Corinthians, Paul writes: “…if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!  All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself…and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.” (2 Corinthians 5:17-19)  The word “reconcile” means literally to bring together again.  The English is rendered from the Greek word, katallasso, which at its most basic means “to change, [or] exchange, [for example], as coins for others of equivalent value”.  The Greek also has the sense of bringing together “those who are at variance.”  Reconciliation, is not only about crossing a divide, but also about bringing those things divided into a relationship of mutuality, creating a sort of common meeting ground, in which we recognize in the other one of “equivalent value”, someone like us; in which we come to stand with the other on a common footing. 

Jesus’ world was a world full of divisions, full of boundaries, full of ‘no-go” areas.  Society was deeply stratified;  your class and/or gender signified all manner of things – jobs you could do, people you could talk to in public, people you could talk down to with impunity, people that could talk down to you.  The boundaried, complicated dynamics of table fellowship was a good example – with whom you did or did not eat was an indicator of your standing in society, as well as where you were sat once the meal began.  To cross these boundaries was more than simply poor taste; it could cause you your reputation; and without social standing or connections, normal life was quite literally impossible.  Equally, there were in contemporary religion all manner of boundaries and markers which one could not transgress, and still remain within the prescribed understanding of what it meant to be odedient or faithful.  So, for example, Gentiles were admitted only to one part of the Temple – the aptly named, Court of the Gentiles. Beyond it they could not go.  Only Jews could pass into the next court, and beyond that was another space which only Jewish men could enter, and so on, until only the high priest could enter into the holy of holies, and that but once a year.  The boundary between clean and unclean had varied and complex markers too – touching a leper, let’s say, would make one ritually unclean, and hence unable to participate in Temple worship at all.  So did coming in contact with a menstruating woman or with the dead.  It’s no accident that women were usually left to tend the dead, as they spent so much time in an unclean state already. 

Coming to awareness of all this, one can begin to understand why Jesus was so unpopular.  Notice the gospel reading today.  This alone would have put Jesus beyond the bounds of society and religion.  He crosses the boundary between joy and mourning and speaks to a stranger in her grief; in so doing, he crosses the social and religious divide of gender, directing his gaze and words of compassionate hope to a woman.  But more than that, he places his hand on the bier; he breaches the division between the living and dead by coming into contact with a corpse.  In short, he reconciles.  Here, for a moment, think not so much in terms of bringing together those at variance with each other, but think in terms of that older sense of the Greek word in which the reconciler brings about a kind of equality, in which he or she creates a bridge on which people can stand on equal footing.  The joy and comfort he has in his Father, he brings to the woman and both are joyful, comforted.  The life he has in his Father, he brings to the dead young man, and both stand alive.  Throughout the Gospels Jesus does this over and over again, by reaching across and bridging the social and religious divisions of his world, he brings people into the Father’s will for health and wholeness, into the Father’s joy, into the Father’s freedom, into the Father’s love.  People saw – we see – how in Jesus, God the Father is reconciling the world to himself, to his ways.  Jesus is the bridge – in one sense – on which people can meet with each other and with God on something like a common ground.

Yet, as someone once observed, when you make yourself a bridge people walk all over you.  How very true.  For the most part we do not like those who seek to bridge the safe and tidy divisions that keep things humming along; and of course Jesus’ contemporaries were no exception.  At best, they ignored him; and just a few verses after he raises the young man to life, we hear Jesus bemoaning this very thing: “To what then will I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like?  They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another,  ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;  we wailed, and you did not weep.’ ”(Luke 7:30-31)  Yet, when they could no longer ignore him, the authorities turned on him, because the cost of reconciliation was too great for those in power, for those with the upper hand, for those – as we learned last week – at the center.  Nevertheless, even at his death Jesus is still revealing the Father’s reconciliation.  Last week, we reflected on the thief whom Jesus welcomed into paradise; but Jesus also brings into a new mutual depedence his mother and the beloved disciple: “Here is your son….Here is your mother.” (John 19:26, 27)  And more astonishingly still we learn how his death effected a completely unexpected reconciliation.  In Luke we find Pilate and Herod sending Jesus back and forth between themselves at his trial, but in the end the writer reveals how this frighteningly bonded the men together: “That same day Herod and Pilate became friends with each other; before this they had been enemies.” (Luke 23:12)  Here too Jesus breaks down the divisions of his world – the divisions between law-breaker and law-abider, between stranger and familiy, between occupied and occupier.  His form of reconciliation allows people to cast each other in a different light.  His reconciliation allows strangers to stand together face to face, and see each other as equal, mutually connected.  As Jesus reconciles us with God, we are not just brought into a new relationship with God, but we glimpse something of ourselves in the divine countenance; and as we are reconciled to another in Christ, we see something of the divine countenance in their own. 

“All this is from God,” Paul tells us, “who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.”  This is, of course, the difficult part –  that in taking up the name of Christ, we are made like him in this regard (as in so many others) and his mission becomes are own.  “So we are,” Paul continues, “ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us.” (2 Corinthians 5:20a)  Like Jesus, one of the things we quickly learn if we seriously take up the ministry of reconciliation entrusted to us, is how tightly people want to hold on to the divisions which define their lives.  We quickly learn the no-go areas in our world – physical, social, emotional and, most certainly religious; and we are challenged, challenged as we seek to bring to light these divisions, and as we seek to bridge the disparities in our world.  We are challenged also by the nature of what we are doing.   Reconciliation is not about making everyone friends, jollying people into making nice.  It is much harder than that.  People don’t tend to attack or villify you if you are simply trying to bring them together in friendship.  Reconciliation is about bridging the divide between people in order that God’s love, forgiveness, grace and glory may be revealed and glimpsed, while at that same time breaking down anything which stands in the way of that revelation.  Again think of reconciliation as God’s reaching across the divine/human rift and in Jesus coming to meet us on a common footing, and revealing all the good he desires for us, and for the world.  How do we go about making known that reality, unless we take the sort of risk God did in Jesus, unless we become bridges conveying God’s presence in some of the darkest and toughest places in our world, unless we ourselves – as individuals and as communities – become the common ground on which people can meet and see the divine revealed?  Certainly, this comes with the possibility that people will walk all over us, but after all, isn’t that what bridges are for?