Reconciliation is a four-letter word.
It isn’t what we expect.
We think its about coming to agreement or getting along.
When the experience is usually the opposite.
The hard truth is that reconciliation usually doesn’t work.
The unspoken truth is that reconciliation frequently makes things worse.
Reconciliation focuses, clarifies and intensifies the conflict.
It isn’t what we think.
Reconciliation is a four-letter word.
What the experts don’t tell us in their pithy success stories is that it comes at a cost.
Reconciliation takes us to that place where we have to die in some way.
It takes us to the edge of the inferno where we either have to turn away or we have to change.
The tragedy breaks our hearts when we realize that we will probably never agree, we will never change each other, we will never be like each other. The divide between us will never ever go away. It will always be there. We either turn away or change ourselves.
Reconciliation isn’t about getting along, or agreeing to disagree, it is about choosing to love first, choosing to love anyway, choosing to love always. Reconciliation forces us into that hard place.
Reconciliation is about being in love with the enemy.
It is a four-letter word.
Love.
And love comes at a cost, it means changing, it means choosing the other, not because we agree, but because we don’t. We will never be the same as each other.
We can walk into the inferno that burns everything away until there is only love, or we can walk away from each other. Reconciliation drives us to the edge of the flame. The question has been called.
Father, Son, Holy Spirt. Trinity Sunday.
Today we celebrate the ancient mystery of God as Triune.
We gaze deeply into the mystery that we are being led into all truth, that the flaming glory of God is a reconciling fire where each chooses the other, a communion of difference and distinctiveness. They will never be the same yet they are one.
Love.
The triune mystery is a four-letter word.
Catching fire with the glory of the Trinity, the consuming reconciling love of God, that is the mystery.
We can walk away or we can catch fire.
Reconciliation is a four-letter word.
Choosing to love first, choosing to love anyway, choosing to love always.
May we worship the majesty, may we bow before the mystery, may we catch fire from the glory.