Reconciliation

“A ll things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself...

Now then we are ambassadors for Christ. 2 Cor. 5:18-20 .”

An ordination is an awesome event. I remember vividly my own priestly ordination, in a borrowed Lutheran church, with about 100 people in attendance, and myself: standing in the midst of everyone, tears flowing from my eyes almost the entire 2 hours. It is a moment of truth, a test that begins this day and lasts a lifetime. In a few minutes the Bishop will speak solemn words that, I fear may not penetrate the poor deacon's head—so full with the many portent of this occasion. I can barely read them now, after 17-1/2 years, without wondering, “Did they really say this to me?”

“Have always therefore printed in your remembrance, how great a treasure is committed to your charge. For they are the sheep of Christ, which he bought with his death, and for whom he shed his blood. The Church and Congregation whom you must serve, is his Spouse, and his Body. And if it shall happen that the same Church, or any Member thereof, do take any hurt or hindrance by reason of your negligence, ye know the greatness of the fault, and also the horrible punishment that will ensue.”

This and other happy thoughts are enjoined upon the life of a man called out of his normal life, even out of the blessed life of a simple Christian. But the words of the Holy Scriptures call us all, not only priests, for truly we are all ministers of God's grace and mercy, His truth and love, or else we are not members of His Body at all, not one of us. When the bishop laid hands on our heads the first time, as we knelt before him at our confirmation, Christ commissioned us, each of us, with the ministry of reconciliation . That task is, in fact, the only job there is for any of us. It would be well for us to know it.

St. Paul had to write frequently to the troubled church at Corinth, his congregation in that wicked city. They were always in some stew about various issues, following the wrong leaders and boasting their spiritual gifts over the less gifted. Finally, in 2 nd Corinthians , he finds the phrase that I believe fits this occasion to a tee.

“…if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God .” 2 Cor. 5:17-20

Reconciliation means a reunion , bringing peace where there was war, friendship where there was enmity, love where there was alienation. It is the restoration of a lost relationship. That is what our ministry is, if it is to be anything at all.

I know that the Province of Christ the King was founded on several assertions of truth—non-negotiable, undeniable and definitive for any Anglo-Catholic believer. Truth is important. Being right is important too, sometimes. We saw lies being promulgated and ancient verities assaulted, and we understood what peril lay beyond the melee of modernization. But even in our defense of truth , our leaders spoke of future generations and children who might be denied salvation due to the experimentation of academicians and scholars who simply doubted the Bible. Doing the right thing for the wrong reason would have killed us from the start, and did kill many who set out to be right, only right.

Anyone who knows our Archbishop well enough understands that he bothers himself little with mere facts and figures, matters for accountants and lawyers and politicians. He's no office manager. His genius has always been in relationship and in a devotion to the personal realities of a Personal God.

I remember another ordination several years ago. David Webb had been ordained a priest at St. Augustine's in our previous smaller Chico location. Afterward I'd arranged to meet a realtor in order to show Bishop Morse the church downtown that we were bidding on. I had a car full of important people, it was raining, and we sped over there to inspect the deserted building that would hopefully become our church. But in the course of this busy day, a young college student called Bishop Morse and the Bishop asked me to arrange for him meet us somehow. The young man, named Micah , had gone to summer camp and met the Bishop there but had never managed, while he was at college in Chico, to make it to our church. I spoke with him and weighed the possibility of going some distance to fetch him, and to find room in an overcrowded car. I concluded it to be beyond my ability. I had to get the Bishop to the reception and it was getting late. I apologized to Micah and said, “Some other time,” and I hung up.

Bishop Morse looked at me with more stern shock and disapproval than I have ever received from him in over 20 years and he said to me: “That was bad, Father.”

And it was bad, Father. I was all about things that day, things and schedules and issues and arrangements . I was in charge and this kid couldn't get himself to church and it was more than I needed to worry about and I let him down. I let the Bishop down. I let Jesus down. It was a chance for reconciliation , but I met my schedule instead.

God is certainly truth , and He also is Love . These are not mutually exclusive, even when blended with His mercy , His everlasting judgment , and don't forget His wrath . But if you were to find in all these qualities the driving force that unifies everything that our God is, you must arrive at how Jesus summarized the Law: “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, and mind; and thy neighbor as thyself.” When all truths and commandments are boiled down, if we only have a rulebook and no love we are St. Paul's clanging gong , and nothing more. To Love God is to do everything I can to please Him, at my own inconvenience, at my own expense, despite my own discomfort, if need be. Truth will be served if I love as He loves . And then I will know the love of Christ. For Christ came to reconcile a world to God, a world that had strayed far from Him and was completely lost, without a clue nor any means to get us back to the Father. The mission of God from the beginning has been reconciliation, restoring the relationship, through forgiveness in unconditional love. Not being right . He is right, of course. What of it? He defines being right. He is more than right: He is Love , and that is what has saved us and will save us in the end. If we claim to be right, God is righter still, and that will only make us wrong. But love trumps being right. Love finds a way where right never even considered it possible to go. Love led to the Cross. Right stood back and mocked Him.

Is there anything more important than restoring lost love? No. Things are not important at all in comparison to people. Things are not persons . We have a Personal God. He sent His Son to become a human being like us to show us that He is a Person too.

You can always assent to a truth , such as ‘2+2=4'. But you can't love an equation. You can't speak to it. It doesn't know you. It's just math and it works in practical situations. How you feel about it is irrelevant. It is true whether you want it to be or you don't, and it can't save you except from making an error in math. You can assent to a truth, but you have to love a Person . His existence is self-evident . He demands more than your acquiescence to His existence. He is Personal , not just a force, not a robot. And neither are we.

I sometimes speak on law enforcement chaplaincy by asking who has seen the Robocop movies. Then I ask them if they would prefer their police force to be completely manned by robots , with a perfect knowledge of all existing laws, able to detect every crime and to arrest each person at the moment of their infraction. Nobody wants that . Police are people , and that makes them good at enforcement of the law because we are people, too. And what makes them good at policing is also what makes them vulnerable.

Law, truth, and doctrines guide us away from error and into safe territory. But it is in that territory that we encounter a Personal God, who has established a personal faith, led by personal bishops and priests who embody what the Archbishop calls “ personalizing life ” for real people.

The task of every priest is an awesome responsibility, but so is that of every Christian . We are all made ministers of reconciliation , of restoring the broken relationships between God and man, and between one another.

Jesus was moved with compassion when He looked at the multitudes and saw them as sheep without a shepherd. He knew that his harvesters were so few for such a rich field ready to harvest. We need to pray often for God to send more laborers into the harvest of souls to be won to Christ. We need to become those harvesters ourselves, every one of us, and to reconcile with every living person, as much as we are able . God will hold us more accountable for our failure to love and forgive than our failure to articulate any truth or espouse any doctrine . The failure to love and forgive another Christian is a sure sign of a failed relationship between ourselves and God, a breech in the love we owe to Christ, and total ingratitude for His forgiveness of our own sins.

Robert: Your ministry as a priest begins today, in fact it has begun already. It is not coincidental that your first Mass will be on Passion Sunday, ushering in the Passiontide for this year. You are offering yourself to be a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God because you love much. You will be stretched out on the Cross of Christ and at times it may seem to you unbearable . But it's then that He loves you best. He made peace and reconciled mankind to the Father through that Cross, and now He uses us, His priests, crucified with Him in order to reconcile our generation. Through your hands Christ's own Body and Blood will be tenderly given to spiritually hungry souls. How great a treasure is committed to you. These “are the sheep of Christ, which he bought with his death, and for whom he shed his blood.”

You will be given opportunities to do many things, as I have been blessed to engage in, like resurrecting an old church or building a new one. You may be tempted to see the tangible evidence of your ministry as proof of your value as a priest in Christ's Kingdom. But you must remember that these are only things . And all mere things will burn along with this world. All that will remain are be the souls of those you have given yourself to, lived for and died for. There will be happy faces —I hope many—a waiting you in Christ's eternal Kingdom , those whose lives you touched, those who would not be there at all but for your loving concern and your patient care. Those are your treasures , my brother, the ones reconciled to God because you were more concerned about love than you were about always being right. PFH+