Freedom, and Truth and Reconciliation

1918 - 2013

Last week, amid the memorials to Nelson Mandela, I was curious about how religious leaders addressed his death from the pulpit. I read several, and even listened to a few, sermons from Advent II. During this process, I began to feel hot and irritated. Usually, I feel this way in a meeting or at some public event when something that I think should be said isn’t being said. What the media, and the preachers, are saying about Mandela is true – he was a peacemaker, hero, reconciler, prophet. Mandela committed his life to human rights. In 1993 three years after his release from prison, Mandela shared the Nobel Peace Prize with South African president Frederik Willem de Klerk.

But what they are not saying is also true - the leaders of this country and many countries around the world, considered Mandela a communist terrorist; he was reviled by some until the day he walked out of jail, others reviled him until the day he died. Before he was imprisoned, the once non-violent Mandela shifted his political strategy after realizing the tragic truth that peaceful resistance was not enough to overturn an entrenched and brutal government. Mandela was offered freedom in exchange for publically denouncing the use of armed resistance. He refused.

Isaiah and John the Baptist present conflicting descriptions of the coming of Christ; the prophets contradict themselves and one another. Isaiah presents a world transformed; a paradise where waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert. And the rough and rowdy John calls his hearers to repentance holding a winnowing fork in one hand and the water of baptism in the other.

As surely as John the Baptist proclaimed the coming of the Messiah last week, this week he sits alone in his jail cell, death drawing near, overcome with doubt. John wants to know the truth and sends his disciples to ask Jesus: 

Are you the one? Or shall we wait for another?

Like Isaiah and John the Baptist, Nelson Mandela proclaimed his vision of a new world. Unlike John, who was killed in prison, Mandela lived to walk free. Mandela said,

To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that enhances the freedom of others. 

And that’s just what he did. The mainstream media is stuck on the image of Mandela as the peaceful master of reconciliation. However, I’m not entirely sure Mandela himself would agree with this representation.

Still annoyed by the narrow scope of commentary on Mandela’s life, I happened upon Obama’s memorial eulogy. With relief and gratitude, I heard the president speak these words:

There are too many people who happily embrace Mandela’s legacy of racial reconciliation, but passionately resist even modest reforms that would challenge chronic poverty and growing inequality. 

There are too many leaders who claim solidarity with Mandela’s struggle for freedom, but do not tolerate dissent from their own people.  

And there are too many of us on the sidelines, comfortable in complacency or cynicism when our voices must be heard. 

Obama continued, 

It took a man like Mandela to free not just the prisoner, but the jailer as well, to show that you must trust others so that they may trust you; to teach that reconciliation is not a matter of ignoring a cruel past, but a means of confronting it with inclusion and generosity and truth.

Reconciliation is not a matter of ignoring a cruel past, 

but a means of confronting it with inclusion and generosity and truth.

We Christians talk a lot about reconciliation, both in the worldwide church and here, in our parish church. We say Jesus came to reconcile God and humanity. We have the sacrament of Reconciliation of a Penitent. Bishops often heavy-handedly advocate for reconciliation – a thinly veiled attempt to stifle conflict by avoiding unpleasant truths.

German theologian and Nazi resistance organizer Dietrich Bonhoeffer defined what he called “cheap grace”. Cheap grace, Bonhoeffer wrote, is the grace we bestow on ourselves. It is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance; it is grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

I’ve noticed that progressive Episcopalians tend to be uncomfortable with the concept of sin. It’s a challenge for us to lovingly hold others and ourselves accountable for past and present wrongful actions. We need desperately to find the middle way between ignoring sin altogether and hitting people over the head with it. True reconciliation demands that we not shy away from conflict.

After Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa, he appointed Archbishop Desmond Tutu to lead the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In his 1998 book Struggling to Forgive, Brian Frost wrote about Mandela and Tutu’s shared, yet differing, approach to reconciliation and forgiveness. Mandela often believed that reconciliation concerned letting "bygones be bygones," but Archbishop Tutu emphasized that reconciliation and forgiveness require repentance and confession.

Tutu’s insistence on repentance sounds strikingly similar to John the Baptist’s message from last Sunday: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near". In today’s gospel, Jesus offers reassurance to John, and to us, that he is indeed the One about whom it is written,

‘I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.'

I’d like to suggest that the familiar Advent theme of “prepare the way, make straight the path” actually describes the process of reconciliation – a complex, three-part formula:

• Truth telling, or confession;
• A change of heart, or repentance;
• And an authentic effort to repair any damage done; restitution.

Confession, repentance and restitution make straight the path to justice. 

And reconciliation flows from justice.

Today we are called to reflect, we are called to repent, we are called to open ourselves to God; not just in this short season of Advent – God is forever ready to be born – but always.

When our cantor sings Come to us and set us free, we are not asking God to free us from bondage, we are praying for the freedom that binds us in sure and certain hope that Jesus is the one.

May that bond free us to speak the truth; for my friends, bearers of truth, are bearers of God.

Amen, come Lord Jesus.

Advent III, Year A