Reconciliation doesn’t happen from a distance we must engage each other in the struggle. God knew that in order for Jacob to be a blessing to his people, his attitude, perspectives, and his very heart had to be transformed. How could that happen? God could have strike Jacob from a distance, God had the power to do so. God could have sent a messenger to Jacob calling him to repentance. God's options are always unlimited. But God choose to enter into the sacred space of Jacob's life and confront him face to face. In Jacob’s story God overcame without being personally hurt.
Hundreds of years after Jacob, God purposefully came back to encounter Jacob's family again, this time around God was wounded. God did not have a choice. God resist dealing with those God loves from a distance. God never fear to take risks, knowing that those risks will provide the ground that will nourish the tree that eventually will produce the much-desired fruit. God chooses the mess, prefers the struggle. Nothing will force God to stay away or retrieve, to deal with our messiness from a distance. "Come. Sit down. Let's argue this out." (Isa. 1.18) We are not called to be passive or self-effacing in our struggles, but we must face the struggle in the presence of the other.
Many seek unity only on their own terms. The search for unity requires that we lay down our own agendas and only seek Christ's. Trust is essential, but it us not a given. We must learn to trust those who we have been suspicious of, even those who have meant harm to us. This will never happen if we are living in the flesh, only by the power of the Spirit. Are we willing?
In order to be willing we need to humble ourselves even as Christ. We will be mutually transformed only if we are willing to encounter the other with a stubborn and fearless desire for reconciliation. From afar we will never be able to experience the Christ in each other. From afar our self-righteousness will only intensify and positions will harden, at one point we will have to lay down our weapons and sit down at the table together. We can continue to exercise our power and our rights and perpetuate this state of alienation.
All self-righteousness must be crushed, unless we become complaisant with alienation. Unless we are willing to take such chances, to accept the fact that in interweaving our lives we leave ourselves wide open to disappointment or disaster, we cannot escape from the web of our own selfish egos. Our willingness to tolerate alienation worsens our present condition. I do not believe we can heal our divisions and tolerate alienation at the same time.
Our divisions will be overcome, by God's grace, if we refuse alienation to be an option. When we choose to stay away from the other, our humanity is denigrated, it is violated. We are faced with the seemingly insurmountable challenge of overcoming our selfish impulses to treat others as if they are just as important as we are. This can only be achieved with the power of God. We must humble ourselves before God, seek forgiveness from those we have alienated, and then commit ourselves to the messy task of reconciliation.
Carlos M