Nancy E. Petty

Pullen Memorial Baptist Church

April 13, 2008 — Fourth Sunday of Easter

Text: 2 Corinthians 5:16-19

The Ministry of Reconciliation

            Two unimaginable events turned real in our country on October 2, 2006. Between 10:15 and 10:30 a.m. on the morning of October 2, 2006, “Charles Carl Roberts IV carried his guns and his rage into an Amish schoolhouse near Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania,” taking hostage 10 girls ranging in age from 6 to 13. Approximately 50 minutes later, five children were dead and five critically wounded. In those 50 minutes, Roberts, a local milk truck driver, turned “a tranquil schoolhouse into a house of horror,” and “shattered a reassuring American myth—that the Old Order Amish remain isolated from the problems of the larger world.”

As unthinkable as Roberts’ actions were, it seems that our country was less prepared for the unimaginable response of the Amish people whose children had died from Robert’s rage and violence. Within 24 hours of the shooting, the Amish community of Nickel Mines spoke of forgiveness, grace and reconciliation for the man who had gunned down their children and for his family. Interestingly, the response of the American people to how the Amish were responding to Roberts’ senseless acts of violence and harm was one of shock, disbelief and harsh words of criticism. Cynics questioned just how authentic their response was. Psychologists had a field day analyzing the emotional and psychological toll that such a response would have on the children who had escaped Roberts’ rage. Newspaper columnists across our nation weighed in on the “rightness” and “wrongness” of the Amish community’s faith and practice of forgiveness. It seemed that for the collective mind of Americans, “the biggest surprise at Nickel Mines was not the intrusion of evil but the Amish response.”

In their book, Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy, Donald Kraybill, Steven Nolt, and David Weaver-Zercher carefully explore the themes of forgiveness, grace, justice and reconciliation within the context of Amish faith and spirituality. While it is clear that the Amish community’s response to Charles Roberts was one of forgiveness and grace and not of justice and reconciliation, their story offers us several insights as we think this morning about reconciliation and the ministry of reconciliation to which God calls us.

The story of the Amish of Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, is not the only story in our recent history that raises the question of the role of forgiveness and reconciliation in the lives of people of faith. Our worship today highlights these themes as represented in our relationship with the Community of the Cross of Nails in Coventry, England—a story that rose up out of the ashes from the Coventry Cathedral after it was bombed during World War II and that people’s unimaginable response of forgiveness for the hatred and violence that led to the bombing. We have also heard the painful and horrific stories of Holocaust survivors, such as Elie Wiesel, whose living responses to hate and violence have opened our minds and hearts to the real possibilities of forgiveness and reconciliation. Since 1976 many Pullen youth and adults have journeyed to Coventry to learn about and experience what it means to respond to violence and hate with something other than vengeance and more hate. This weekend many of you have gathered from near and distant places to share your stories of how your time in Coventry has shaped your lives and living.

But the truth is that we need not go to Coventry, England, or Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, or the concentration camps in Germany or even to Ground Zero in New York to see the need for the ministry of forgiveness and reconciliation in our world and in our lives. Most of us can simply look inward, to our own stories. I would imagine that there are few of us sitting here today who don’t have those places of deep hurt and brokenness that long to be reconciled. Maybe your story is one of being estranged from a parent or sibling. Or maybe your story is that of a parent being estranged from a child. Maybe your story is the ongoing hurt of a painful marriage or relationship. I imagine that if we started telling our stories here this morning, some of them would be about the need for forgiveness and reconciliation with the church. Undoubtedly, some of our stories would be about our own internal struggles to overcome guilt for things done or left undone; for places where we have let ourselves down by not living up to our convictions. Over a lifetime, if we truly live and love, we experience brokenness and separation. Estrangement, brokenness, separation and the longing for wholeness, forgiveness, peace, and reconciliation have been parts of the human experience from the beginning of time. It is this reminder that Paul offers us in 2 Corinthians when he writes: “All this is from God, who reconciled us to God through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.…” From the very beginning of creation, it has been God’s deepest desire to be reconciled to us; and for us to be reconciled to one another.

But how do we engage in this ministry of reconciliation of which Paul speaks? How do we nurture a place within our souls and create a culture within our world where forgiveness not vengeance; reconciliation not separation is a natural and honest response? These are large questions, but I think that the Amish of Nickel Mines, the survivors of the Holocaust, and those faith-filled people worshiping at Coventry Cathedral in England in 1940 do offer us some insight that can be helpful as we try to respond to them.

As I reflect on these stories, it seems to me that forgiveness and reconciliation is not an action that we decide to take or not take at any given moment, but rather it is a way of living that requires our daily attention and nurturing. The Amish didn’t wake up on the morning of October 3 and decide, “Let’s forgive the man who killed our children.” Their response of forgiveness and grace came out of their experience of how they, as a people of deep faith, have chosen to live for decades. To them, it would have been just as unnatural and unimaginable to respond to their tragedy in any way other than they did. Not because they are better than or choose to ignore reality but because they have for generations been practicing forgiveness and reconciliation as a way to live in this world. Many non-Amish debated, after the shooting, the appropriateness of such grace in the face of such horrific violence. But I imagine that for the Amish of Nickel Mines that debate had little effect on their continued commitment to practice forgiveness as a way of life. If we are to take up the ministry of reconciliation—to heal the broken and to reunite the separated and estranged—it must become a way of living, not an action we decide to take or not take in any given situation.

It also seems to me that if we want to take up the ministry of reconciliation—this ministry to which we have been called as people of faith—we will need to balance our remembering with our letting go. We need places like the Chapel of Reconciliation that is the bombed-out shell of Coventry Cathedral to help us remember our brokenness. But we must find ways to heal our brokenness so that we are not always living and acting out of it. If reconciliation means what the Oxford English Dictionary says that it means: “to bring a person again into friendly relations to or with oneself or another after an estrangement,” then we will need to work at not carrying the past with us.

The inability or rather unwillingness of the human mind to let go of the past is beautifully illustrated in the story of two Zen monks, Tanzan and Ekido, who were walking along a country road that had become extremely muddy after heavy rains. Near a village, they came upon a young woman who was trying to cross the road, but the mud was so deep it would have ruined the silk kimono she was wearing. Tanzan at once picked her up and carried her to the other side. The monks walked on in silence. Five hours later, as they were approaching the lodging temple, Ekido couldn’t restrain himself any longer. “Why did you carry that girl across the road?” he asked. “We monks are not supposed to do things like that.” “I put the girl down hours ago,” said Tanzan. “Are you still carrying her?”

Not letting go burdens the one carrying the hurt.

Last, it seems to me that reconciliation begins in the hearts of individuals. One person chooses to extend forgiveness and reconciliation to another; then another person decides to do the same and then another until maybe a small group of people decide to practice reconciliation as a way of life. And eventually the actions of those individuals start to make a difference in the larger world. If I’m right about that—that reconciliation begins in the hearts of individuals—then the question I leave you with is this, “Are you willing to be one of those individuals?” Our hope for a more compassionate world may not be the absence of hatred and violence; of brokenness and separation and estrangement. Our hope for our world may very well be our response to hatred and violence in our world and to the brokenness and separation and estrangement in our lives. From the very beginning of creation, it has been God’s deepest desire to be reconciled to us, and for us to be reconciled to one another. It may feel unimaginable, but if we start today with one small act of grace where we feel hurt and experience hatred, we might begin to imagine God’s peace in our world and in our lives.