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Participants in the story recognize that the world is fundamentally relational. God Himself has always existed as a community – Father, Son and Spirit. In the process of creating the world in general and humanity in particular, God not only entered into relationship with the things He had made, He also established and defined the manner in which people properly relate to one another and to the world for which we were created. Living in proper relationship to God, one another and the world was always essential to maintaining the state of intimacy, justice, fulfillment and delight which the Hebrew Bible calls shalom, or harmony. It is through the violation of these relationships that shalom was lost, and it is through the reconciliation of these relationships that shalom is being restored.
Because the world is fundamentally relational, it shouldn’t surprise us that it is in the brokenness and pain of our relationships that we experience most acutely that things are not the way they are supposed to be. Every one of us knows the devastation of a close relationship gone terribly wrong, as well as the attendant despair of believing that things have become so twisted and tangled that they can never be straightened out again. We also know (or else are coming to realize) that even in our best relationships, the depth of connection and intimacy for which we long remains elusive. And when you think about it, the problem goes well beyond the pain and disappointment that we experience in our personal relationships. We believe that broken relationships lie at the heart of all that ails our world – from dysfunctional business teams to political strife, from environmental destruction to the financial crisis, from racism to war.
If the climax of God’s plan to rescue His world by healing the severed relationship between Himself and humanity came in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, then the climactic question posed by Jesus is this: “Who do you say that I am?” Just like today, there were a number of people in Jesus’ day who thought he was a great teacher. Others, recognizing that he was something more, speculated that he was a great prophet.
The books of the Bible that recount the life and teaching of Jesus make it clear that both of these answers are inadequate. Jesus gives his approval to the answer given by Peter, “You are the Christ, the son of the living God.” That short answer is rich, and requires a good deal of unpacking to fully understand. But the basic idea of “the Christ” (the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word Messiah) is that God had promised to send a Savior-King who would deliver His people from oppression and usher in an era where the world is set right again.
Agents of reconciliation serve as a third party in the process of God reconciling people to Himself. Our role is to help people to answer for themselves the question posed by Jesus: “Who do you say that I am?” If Jesus was merely a great human teacher, how we answer (or whether we even give the question serious consideration) is of relatively little importance. However, if it is true that Jesus is the Christ, the one through whom God is reconciling people to Himself, then how we answer is of supreme importance. Therefore, we are committed to providing thoughtful responses to the questions, objections and doubts raised by those who are skeptical or curious about Jesus. Shallow, dismissive or dogmatic responses reveal a deficient faith in God and a defective love for neighbor, and fail to reflect the way that Jesus engaged his contemporaries.
Agents of reconciliation also understand that a restored relationship with God provides the basis for restored relationships with other human beings. God’s agenda is not merely to redeem us as individuals, but to create one people out of all the peoples of the world. This very large and diverse community – the church – is united not by race, gender, social class, education level, stage of life, political party, nationality or any other criteria by which people naturally associate with one another. The common bond that transcends all of our differences is Jesus, and the common future that God has invited us to share is the restoration of shalom in the entirety of our disordered and fractured world.
We are children of grace
We are participants in a story
We are agents of reconciliation
