What is your thesis of reconcilation?

Tuesday, April 7
Glenn M. Miller, “Reconciliation,” The Great Irruption: Christ’s Work on the Cross


Here are some things you can ponder before Tuesday and an assignment! Read the assigned reading but also try to look this over!

1. What does it mean to live faithfulness in a broken and divided world? or how do we as Christians bear witness of God’s story of “new creation”?

2. Think of a story you have heard or have experienced that involved Reconciliation. Be ready to share it.

3. I have been reading this book called, Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace and Healing, by Emmanuel Katongole & Chris Rice. It is by far the best book I have ever read on Reconciliation. Here are some of my thoughts from it that I though you could ponder until Tuesday. Basically they are thoughts from the book that I journaled on.

It is theology in practice. Reconciliation is the very life of the church. If reconciliation is both a journey and (divine) gift, it is also an invitation into a journey with God. Reconciliation is not a “solution” or an end product, but a process and an ongoing search, to fulfilling the divine grand narrative (ibid). Thus reconciliation is God’s final project for the world. The people of God are called specifically to be partners with God in this journey so to embody divine justice and promote relations between God and man, men and men in various spheres of life. If that is the case, “the way things are is not the way things have to be.” Reconciliation presupposes fragmentation, disorientation, disenfranchisement, chaos, division, brokenness, misfortune, which are all inherent in this world. Human beings are the embodiment of these social and spiritual realities. However, God’s new creation vision for the world is not without hope. Because reconciliation is the mission of God, God will be successfully and attain his goals.

4. Below are basically the "10 Theses" from this book. Pick a few that you feel are your best definition of Reconciliation.

1. Reconciliation is God’s gift to the new world. Healing of the world’s deep brokenness does not begin with us and our action, but with God and God’s gift of new creation.
2. Reconciliation is not a theory, achievement, technique. It is a journey
3. The end toward which the journey of reconciliation leads is the shalom of God’s new creation—a future not yet fully realized, but holistic in its transformation of the personal, social and structural dimensions of life.
4. The journey of reconciliation requires the discipline of lament.
5. In a broken world God is always planting seeds of hope, though often in the places we expect or even desire.
6. There is no reconciliation without memory, because there is no hope for a peaceful tomorrow that does not seriously engage both the pain of the past and the call to forgive.
7. Reconciliation needs the church, but not as just another social agency.
8. The ministry of reconciliation requires and calls forth a specific type of leadership that is able to unite a deep vision with the concrete skills, virtues and habits necessary for the long and often lonesome journey of reconciliation.
9. There is no reconciliation without conversion, the constant journey with God into a future of new people and new loyalties.
10. Imagination and conversion are the very heart and soul of reconciliation