Apologies and Reconciliation

She lamented:  “He has never once said he’s sorry in all these years.  If he would simply say that, it could be over for me.”

Fifteen years earlier her husband had an affair.  They worked through it and were raising two children together.  As far as she knew, he had not done anything like that again; their marriage was secure.  Yet she was still waiting for an apology—nothing elaborate, simply an apology.

When we hurt one another, it is often not possible to undo all the damage done.  Yet an apology can sow reconciliation where all cannot be repaired.  Perhaps apologies are part of the ministry of reconciliation in which we have been enrolled (2 Cor. 5:18).

Apologizing for something we did that injured someone else makes sense.

What about apologizing for something in which we played no part?  

Perhaps we have some connection to the people who did this hurtful thing or maybe we have somehow benefited from what was done.  What about that?

I spent some time in Rwanda earlier this year going through a training called “Healing the Wounds of Ethnic Conflict” with a group made up mostly of Africans, with a few North Americans and Europeans thrown in.  The purpose of the program is to bring reconciliation among people who have a troubled history with one another. 

Part of our training involved a practice called “standing in the gap.”    This is where you apologize for something “your people” did in which you played no personal part.

Our group traveled one day to a community populated by both perpetrators and victims of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.  At one point a French man, who was a part of our group, walked over and kneeled before the villagers and apologized for the role France had played in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, how they helped create the divisions and then did nothing to stop the killing.  As he kneeled, an audible gasp passed among the villagers.  They were stunned that a Westerner would kneel before them and ask for forgiveness; Westerners rarely humble themselves before Africans. 

 I cannot remember the last time I have had such a compelling sense of the presence of the Holy Spirit; I felt myself standing on holy ground, like Moses by that bush that burned.

Apologizing for something “your people” did to “another people” for a thing in which you played no part—perhaps you were not even born—may make no sense in the social and political economy of our day.  We are more interested in calibrating personal responsibility than seeking out avenues of reconciliation.

If we read more of Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 5, we see Paul found this true in his day as well:

From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!  All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.  So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:16-21).

Paul writes that we no longer regard others (and ourselves, I assume) from “a human point of view.”  We are “a new creation." What used to characterize us and still characterizes the world around us no longer describes us.  In other words, what makes sense to and is accepted by those around us is no longer true of us.  We are ambassadors from another land, so to speak, where the norms and values and people’s intentions are different.

That day in the Rwandan village as that French man apologized, something broke loose in me, some good and holy, I believe.  I was transported, for a moment to another land where this made sense in the interest of reconciliation.  I am now willing, for the sake of reconciliation, to apologize for things in which I played no part but from which I have benefitted if that apology can bring reconciliation where there is now hurt and division.

Some people might find this unintelligible or even infuriating. I don’t judge people who don’t see God in this or, on the other hand, have little interest in experiencing the presence of God at all. I am simply saying that I experienced the power of the living Christ in this practice.  It has made a fertile place in my heart for the growth of this “new creation” the Spirit is nurturing in each of us.

I cannot undo the past, but I can acknowledge it and own my inheritance of it.  And I can take up the ministry of reconciliation and do all I can to be a good ambassador of the one who seeks all people to be reconciled to one another and to God.

Jim Kelsey

Executive Minister—American Baptist Churches of New York State