In the charismatic renewal, we often wonder where the Holy Spirit is
leading us. When I was asked to lead the annual 
charismatic
retreat for priests and deacons in Leeds in Easter week 2000, I tried
to address this important question. This resulted in my book Blazing
the Trail. In this article I want to provide another angle on this
question of where the Holy Spirit is leading us. The key word here
is reconciliation.
During the short history of the charismatic renewal, there
has been a growing attention paid to reconciliation. Or, to put
it more accurately, the Holy Spirit has been raising up ministries
of reconciliation. One early example was the call heard by two
Anglicans in Northern Ireland, the Revd Cecil Kerr and his wife
Myrtle, to found a centre for reconciliation between the divided
peoples of their land. This led to the founding of the Christian
Renewal Centre in Rostrevor, which has always been staffed by
Protestants and Catholics living and working together. Cecil
has written about this ministry in his books Power to Love (1976)
and The Way of Peace (1990).
Also in Ireland, a group of charismatic Catholics, mostly
lay people, formed the Evangelical Catholic Initiative. The second
of its three objectives is "to foster reconciliation among
Christians", the third being "to build up Jewish-Christian
relationships". ECI helped to produce a document entitled
Evangelicals and Catholics Together in Ireland.
In Italy, Matteo Calisi, the leader of the charismatic Comunità
di Gesù in Bari and currently Vice-President of ICCRS,
struck up a friendship with Pentecostal pastor, Giovanni Traettino
of Caserta. Out of the reconciliation experienced in their growing
friendship has come a joint ministry of reconciliation, expressed
in the annual conferences of the Consultazione Carismatica Italiana,
which gather Catholics and Evangelicals for shared worship and
teaching.
In Austria, particularly in Vienna, the charismatic leaders
were led to come together and commit themselves to a Weg zur
Versöhnung, a road to reconciliation. This round table of
leaders includes Catholics, Lutherans, Pentecostals, Vineyard
and other new church pastors.
In Germany, Friedrich Aschoff, a major leader in Lutheran
renewal, helped to initiate a series of reconciliation journeys
in 1995, on the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II.
Teams of German Christians visited all the nations whose territories
were occupied by German troops during the war, to express their
repentance for the evils inflicted.
Meanwhile, in the United States, John Dawson, a New Zealander
who had settled in California and one of the international leaders
of Youth With A Mission, had an increasing burden for racial
reconciliation. He chose to live with his family for twenty years
in a black area of Los Angeles. Out of his heart for reconciliation
came two books Taking Your Cities for God (1991) and Healing
America's Wounds (1994) and a new network, the International
Reconciliation Coalition, seeking to foster collaboration between
all Christians working for reconciliation between divided people
groups.
It would seem that charismatic Catholics have been led more
towards reconciliation between divided churches and faith communities,
while charismatic Protestants have become involved in reconciliation
between divided nations and races. However, some Catholic groups
not within the charismatic renewal, notably the Community of
Sant' Egidio in Italy, have played a notable role in international
reconciliation, helping to broker the end of the conflict in
Mozambique.
The Catholic orientation to Christian reconciliation no doubt
owes much to our strong ecclesial sense, and the recognition
of the importance of our faith identities and their anchoring
in historic church communities. Some other Christians, who are
more prone to think church affiliations do not matter as long
as you love Jesus, do not see the evil of Christian division
as clearly as they know the evil of national and ethnic conflicts.
Through the charismatic renewal, the Catholic openness to inter-Christian
reconciliation has issued in remarkable new relationships with
Evangelical and Pentecostal Christians. It is not that Catholic
- Evangelical relationships throughout the world have been transformed,
but rather that the Holy Spirit has opened up new possibilities
in many places through a new fellowship in the Spirit. Significant
bridges are being built. A new trust and respect is growing among
those who pray together, study the Word together, and - importantly
for reconciliation - who repent together.
On the Evangelical charismatic side, leaders have arisen -
the kind of people John Dawson has been bringing together - who
have grasped the centrality of reconciliation in Christian mission.
These leaders have begun to develop a range of practical teaching
on how to bring reconciliation about, and have initiated a number
of prayer journeys to sites associated with the root of many
historic conflicts. Much of the teaching has focused on the issue
of repentance for the sins of the past: what John Dawson calls
identificational repentance and what the Anglican Russ Parker
has called representational confession. Russ Parker, who comes
from a background in the ministry of healing, sees reconciliation
between divided peoples as part of their healing; he has developed
an important teaching on the relation between peoples and their
land, and between healing of the land and healing of the people.
It is interesting - the synchronising work of the Spirit? - that
in the last decade we have seen Pope John Paul II issue a call
to the Catholic Church for a repentance for the Catholic sins
of the past. The document Memory and Reconciliation from the
International Theological Commission represents the beginning
of a Catholic teaching on identificational repentance.
In Britain, Brian Mills and Roger Mitchell have written a
book The Sins of the Fathers concerned the sins of the British
people against other peoples in the course of history. They see
a repentance for these sins as a necessary element if Britain
is truly to experience spiritual revival. This repentance is
not a legalistic exercise, but an addressing of sinful mentalities
deeply rooted in our people. Chris Seaton of Chichester, a younger
renewal leader deeply committed to national and ethnic repentance
and reconciliation, has been involved in prayer initiatives in
Africa concerning the slave trade.
Virtually all the renewal leaders mentioned above have also
been led to grasp that the root issue in terms of reconciliation
concerns the Jews and the Gentiles. Many had been committed to
a ministry of reconciliation for years before they saw the biblical
foundation in the making one body of Jew and Gentile through
the cross. Reconciliation between Jew and Gentile is the root
issue that unlocks the key for all other conflicts precisely
because it is intimately tied up with the mystery of our redemption
in Jesus Christ.
However, this discovery has mostly come about through encounter
with the Messianic Jews. What distinguishes the Messianic Jews
of our day from previous Jews who became Christians is their
insistence that in believing in Jesus (or as they say Yeshua)
as the Messiah of Israel they do not in any way cease to be Jews,
and thus they seek to form congregations or synagogues (not all
use the latter term) in which they can live a Jewish lifestyle
and celebrate their faith in the Messiah in accordance with they
would call biblical Judaism. The encounter of Gentile Christians
with Messianic Jews immediately poses the question of the place
of the Jews within the Church as the Body of Christ (Messiah).
It reminds us that the Church of the first generation was totally
Jewish, and that the entrance of the first believing Gentiles
into this Jewish body was understood in terms of the ingrafting
of wild olive branches into the natural olive (Romans 11: 17
- 24).
The New Testament passage that shows most clearly the essential
link between Jewish - Gentile relations and the theology of reconciliation
is Ephesians 2: 13 - 3: 6. Here we find: (i) Jesus the Christ
(Messiah) has made Jew and Gentile one ("For he is our peace,
who has made us both one" (2: 14); (ii) this reconciliation
has been brought about in Jesus's flesh on the cross (2: 16);
(iii) Jesus has thereby destroyed the hostility between them
(2: 14, 16); (iv) Gentile believers are thus made fellow citizens,
co-heirs, with the saints and members of the same body (2: 19;
3: 6). The "saints" here are the Jewish believers in
Jerusalem and Judea (see Rom. 15: 25; 1 Cor. 16: 1).
In other words, the reconciliation of Jew and Gentile within
the Body of Messiah belongs to the very character of the redemption
effected by Jesus in his blood, and the resulting unity belongs
to the character of the Church. Why? Because God chose Israel
to be his own people, and the Messiah, his only-begotten Son,
to be the suffering servant, who offered his life for his own
people and for the sins of the world. The Jewish-Gentile reconciliation
is then foundational, both for the unity of the Church and for
justice and peace between the nations.
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PROPHETIC WORD ON UNITY
THE DIVISION BETWEEN THE CHURCHES
The divisions between churches are wounds on my body.
Just as the wounds of crucifixion remained in resurrection
But were transformed into precious jewels,
So, if you bear the faithfully, the wounds of division will be
Transformed.
Do not allow a spirit of rebellion to stir among you.
Do not seek to paper over the differences between churches.
Each, like different members of the same body, has a separate
function.
In seeking uniformity you thwart my spirit.
Love is my first command.
Love your brothers and sisters not "in spite of" their
differences but
"for" their differences.
In doing this you will bear witness that the Kingdom is among
you.
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