Reconciliation As Practice
"So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift." - Matthew 5:23-24
Imagine the scene Jesus is describing. You have made the trip to the temple. You have brought the offering. You are standing at the altar with the thing in your hands.
And you remember.
Jesus says put it down. Walk away from the altar mid-worship, go find the person, make it right, and then come back and finish what you started.
That is a stunning priority, and it should stop us. God is saying that the condition of your relationships matters to him as much as the condition of your devotional life. You cannot be right with God while comfortably wrong with your neighbor. The two were never separate accounts.
Notice also who has to move. It is not the person who was hurt. It is the one who remembers causing the hurt. Jesus puts the responsibility on the one who is already in the room with God, which means reconciliation usually begins with the person who has the least immediate reason to start it.
Reconciliation is hard work, and we should not pretend otherwise. It takes humility, honesty, and a genuine willingness to discover you were wrong. It means going to the person instead of talking about them. It means listening to understand rather than listening for your opening.
And in communities shaped by historical injustice, it asks for something more demanding still. It asks for a willingness to acknowledge harm you may not have personally caused but still benefit from, to sit in discomfort without rushing to relieve it, and to commit to change that costs something. Real reconciliation is never just an apology. It includes repair.
Zacchaeus understood that. He did not simply say he was sorry. He named a number, out loud, in front of everyone, and paid it back four times over.
The church has a particular calling here. We are supposed to be the community where the dividing walls of hostility come down, where people who would never have chosen each other are bound together by the love of Christ and stay bound when it gets hard.
That does not happen because we say nice things about unity. It happens through intentional, ongoing, expensive work that most people quit halfway through.
Is there a relationship in your life that needs repair? You already thought of one while reading this. Take the first step this week. Go to them. Be honest. Choose reconciliation over the comfort of avoidance.
God did not wait for us to come to him. He came to us. You can go first!
Prayer:
God of reconciliation, you tore down the wall between us and you through Jesus. Give us courage to tear down the walls between us and each other. Make us people who repair what we break. Amen.
Imagine the scene Jesus is describing. You have made the trip to the temple. You have brought the offering. You are standing at the altar with the thing in your hands.
And you remember.
Jesus says put it down. Walk away from the altar mid-worship, go find the person, make it right, and then come back and finish what you started.
That is a stunning priority, and it should stop us. God is saying that the condition of your relationships matters to him as much as the condition of your devotional life. You cannot be right with God while comfortably wrong with your neighbor. The two were never separate accounts.
Notice also who has to move. It is not the person who was hurt. It is the one who remembers causing the hurt. Jesus puts the responsibility on the one who is already in the room with God, which means reconciliation usually begins with the person who has the least immediate reason to start it.
Reconciliation is hard work, and we should not pretend otherwise. It takes humility, honesty, and a genuine willingness to discover you were wrong. It means going to the person instead of talking about them. It means listening to understand rather than listening for your opening.
And in communities shaped by historical injustice, it asks for something more demanding still. It asks for a willingness to acknowledge harm you may not have personally caused but still benefit from, to sit in discomfort without rushing to relieve it, and to commit to change that costs something. Real reconciliation is never just an apology. It includes repair.
Zacchaeus understood that. He did not simply say he was sorry. He named a number, out loud, in front of everyone, and paid it back four times over.
The church has a particular calling here. We are supposed to be the community where the dividing walls of hostility come down, where people who would never have chosen each other are bound together by the love of Christ and stay bound when it gets hard.
That does not happen because we say nice things about unity. It happens through intentional, ongoing, expensive work that most people quit halfway through.
Is there a relationship in your life that needs repair? You already thought of one while reading this. Take the first step this week. Go to them. Be honest. Choose reconciliation over the comfort of avoidance.
God did not wait for us to come to him. He came to us. You can go first!
Prayer:
God of reconciliation, you tore down the wall between us and you through Jesus. Give us courage to tear down the walls between us and each other. Make us people who repair what we break. Amen.
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