The Ministry of Reconciliation (Genesis 33)

Amen. Please remain standing for our scripture reading from Genesis, not Isaiah, Genesis 33.

And Jacob lifted up his eyes and looked and behold, Esau was coming and 400 men with him.

So he divided the children among Leah and Rachel and two female servants.

And he put the servants with their children in front and Leah with her children

and Rachel and Joseph last of all.

He himself went on before them, bowing himself to the ground seven times until

he came near to his brother.

But Esau ran to meet him and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him and they wept.

And when Esau lifted up his eyes and saw the women and children,

he said, Who are these with you?

And Jacob said, The children whom God has graciously given your servant.

Then the servants drew near, they and their children and bowed down.

Leah likewise and her children drew near and bowed down. And last Joseph and

Rachel drew near and they bowed down.

Esau said, what do you mean by all this company that I met?

Jacob answered, to find favor in the sight of my Lord. But Esau said,

I have enough, my brother.

Keep what you have for yourself.

Jacob said, no, please. If I have found favor in your sight,

then accept my present from my hand.

For I have seen your face, which is like seeing the face of God, as you have accepted me.

Please accept my blessing that is brought to you, because God has dealt graciously

with me, and because I have enough, thus he urged him, and he took it.

Then Esau said, Let us journey on our way, and I will go ahead of you.

But Jacob said, My Lord knows that the children are frail, that the nursing

flocks and herds are a care to me.

If they are driven hard for one day, all the flocks will die.

Let my Lord pass on ahead of his servant, and I will lead on slowly,

at the pace of the livestock that are ahead of me, and at the pace of the children

until I come to my Lord and seer.

So Esau said, Let me leave with you some of the people who are with me.

But he said, What need is there? Let me find favor in the sight of my Lord.

So Esau returned that day on his way to seer.

But Jacob journeyed to Succoth, and built himself a house, and made booze for

his livestock. Therefore, he named the play. The name of the place is called Succoth.

And Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan on his way from Padarim.

And he camped before the city and from the sons of Hamer, Shechem's father.

He bought for a hundred pieces of money, the piece of land on which he had pitched his tent and.

There he erected an altar and called it El Elohi Israel.

The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God will stand forever.

Amen. You may be seated. Pray with me.

Merciful God in heaven, we give thanks for this word that you put before us,

your people, for your care for us, to speak to us, to show us these truths.

Is I pray that as we meditate on your words this morning, that you would encourage

our hearts, that you would speak to us, your children, that you'd help us to

live all the more faithfully as your children in this world.

In your name that we pray, amen.

You know, one of the probably most overused illustrations I'm gonna use again,

good thing about overused illustrations is you can't use them enough.

Although I will caveat this, it's not a Lord of the Rings. I don't go there.

It's also not Chronicles of Narnia. I try to steer away from those.

This is an event that I probably have used before myself. It's the Christmas

Eve of 1914 during World War I.

There's this beautiful scene where the soldiers crawl out of their trenches

and they meet in the middle of those trenches, a place called No Man's Land,

and they have peace for a day.

They sing songs. They sing carols together. They play soccer together.

They exchange presents.

I'm curious what their presents were that they exchanged. I don't know what

you find on the middle of a battlefield, in the middle of a war.

But for that one night and that one day, it's this beautiful picture.

These enemies that the day before they were shooting at each other.

In this moment, they become friends. They become brothers.

They share their lives with each other. They get to learn each other's names.

And these are the kind of stories I think we love.

We love these kind of stories. is when these two people that are complete odds,

they come together and they find peace.

I think one of the reasons why we love these stories is that we're a people that are made for peace.

And in our lives, in our world, we find very little of that sometimes.

And so when you read stories like this that give us hope, it makes us think,

man, if these guys can find peace in the middle of a war zone where one moment

they were shooting at each other, trying to kill each other,

now they're sharing presents and playing games together.

If they can find peace, maybe I can find peace too.

And not just me and a person, but maybe our world can find peace.

You know, we come into this and this last few weeks in our own country have

been tragic from multiple different school shootings to the killing of Charlie

Kirk, like all these deaths, and it's just a senseless murder and violence in our country.

We can wonder, like, is peace even possible from the world to our own lives

and our families and our churches?

Is peace even possible? And this peace, the biblical word that we have for this,

of this two sides at odds making peace, is called reconciliation.

This beautiful thing where people that are odds together, they find peace,

but it's such a fleeting thing, isn't it?

Because even if you find reconciliation in a moment with somebody,

there's still another moment where you might have a different conflict with

that person, where you might need to make reconciliation again.

Even this Christmas truth didn't last for long.

December 26th, the day after Christmas, they go back into their holes and they

start shooting at each other again, which kind of begs the question,

if reconciliation is this thing, this peace is this thing we deeply want in

life, that we yearn for in life.

Why is it so hard to achieve? Why is it so hard to find?

I think there's probably a lot of reasons. I think there's two reasons I want

to focus on in the midst of our text this morning are, first of all, fear.

Fear keeps us from making peace. We're afraid that we might get hurt again.

I mean, imagine the first person to crawl out of that hole on December 24th

to make that truce, that Christmas truce. It's a fearful endeavor.

They could shoot you. They could harm you. We're afraid to go first.

The other side of this, I think, is our own pride keeps us from making peace with people.

In our own pride, we think, you know, if that person wants to come to me and

ask for forgiveness, that's fine. I'll probably forgive them,

but I'm not going to be the one that goes first.

But the reality is for those in this room that call themselves Christians or

those in this room that aren't sure what you are, but you come into this place,

our faith, the Christian faith is one where reconciliation is not an optional add-on.

It's not like you're going down the supermarket, like I'll get a side of reconciliation.

No, I don't really want that. I'll take this over here. I like the retribution stuff.

Peace is not an optional add-on to our faith.

Reconciliation is at the core of what we believe because it's the core of the

good news that we call the gospel is that we've been reconciled to God through Christ.

And because of this, Paul calls us ambassadors of reconciliation.

One of the core of our ministry is to be a reconciling people, to be peacemakers.

Jesus himself said, blessed are the peacemakers, for they're the children of God.

It is, as we are children of God by faith, we are called to be reconcilers in this world.

But how do we do this? How do we become these kind of people?

I think Genesis 33 gives us a profound and vivid image of what reconciliation can look like.

Has much to teach us. As you get Jacob and Esau, these brothers who have been

estranged, they haven't seen each other for 20 years. The last time Jacob heard

from his brother, Esau was like, I want to kill you.

And so he runs away, which is a sensible thing for him to do, I think, in that moment.

And now he's coming back into the land, the land of his fathers, and they finally meet.

And what's going to happen? Is it going to be peace? Is it going to be war?

Is there going to be reconciliation?

Borrowing much from others, I think God is going to show us in this story,

three truths about reconciliation that will help transform us as a people to

grow in our ability to be people of reconciliation.

These three things that we're going to discover about reconciliation are these.

At first, that reconciliation is risky. It's a dangerous endeavor.

Second, that reconciliation requires humility, that our posture matters as we

try to reconcile in this world.

And secondly, that reconciliation is fueled, third, that reconciliation is fueled by grace.

So first, reconciliation is risky.

It's a risky thing to make peace with someone who's an enemy.

If you've ever been estranged, you know that feeling of sitting down with your

opponent. It's a dangerous, it's an unsettling, vulnerable position to put yourself in.

Making peace puts you in a vulnerable spot that they could hurt you again.

I think this is one of the reasons why reconciliation in our world is so rare.

We love the idea of it, but we do not love the risk that's involved in it.

This is what you see here at the very beginning. I think Jacob knew this risk.

It's why he's been going slow back into this land. he gets to the precipice,

he sends his family first into the land.

We saw that last chapter and he hangs back and he has this crazy wrestle match

with God. And finally he's ready to go in.

And as soon as he comes in, we see this verse one, and Jacob lifted up his eyes

and looked and behold, Esau was coming.

He's not coming by himself and 400 men with him.

So standing in his way of him coming back into this promised land,

this land that was promised to him and his family to be in, to dwell in.

Standing in his way is his brother, his brother whom he has estranged with him.

And not only is it just Esau coming, if it was just Esau, that'd be one thing,

but he's got 400 men with him.

And remember, Esau is a hunter, which means he knows how to kill.

He knows how to spill blood. He's got these 400 men.

These 400 men are hunters. They're warriors. They're killers.

And so what does Jacob do? I think a very sensible thing. He splits his family

up into different groups.

Again, in the back of his mind, he's thinking, this meeting doesn't go well.

At least my family can escape.

And I think whenever we head in to these meetings with people that we are estranged

from, that we don't have peace with, reconciliation will feel like this. It'll feel risky.

It'll feel dangerous. It'll feel like a war band is coming.

Whenever you move towards someone you're not at peace with, it's risky because

they have the power to wound you again.

Again, this is something Jacob had been avoiding. This is something I think

we avoid these encounters sometimes at all costs.

But in this text, I think we get explicitly in some of this language that it's

God that's putting Esau before him.

God will not let him avoid this moment.

We see this again in verse 1 when it says, And he looked and behold Esau.

Whenever you get these phrases throughout this story, He looked and beheld, looked and behold.

This is the Bible's way of saying that God is acting.

That God is putting Esau in front of him. that this isn't an optional encounter for him.

Another example of this is Abraham. When he's about to sacrifice his son,

he looks and beholds an animal caught in the thicket that he kills instead.

Listen, God knows that, listen, Jacob would delay this as long as possible.

In fact, he'd be okay if his brother, you know, people die in hunting accidents all the time.

Maybe his brother's not even alive and he probably would have been okay with that, right?

He would delay this and avoid this as much as possible, but God is forcing the encounter.

And I think he does something similar with us. I don't know if you've ever noticed

whenever you've been estranged from somebody, whenever there's someone in relationship

you don't have peace with, they tend to pop up everywhere, don't they?

Or you see them in the grocery store, like, oh, not going down that aisle,

right? You see them driving around town. You see them walking their dog along the street.

And even if maybe you're estranged from somebody that doesn't live in your town,

They pop into your mind all the time, don't they?

Little memories, different things. And I think this is God putting these things in front of us.

Why does he do this to us? Is he trying to torment us? No, because our God's

a God of reconciliation. He's a God who makes peace in this world.

And as his children, we cannot run from peace.

The question in these moments is, will we ignore him and go on our merry way?

Or will we be a people that learn to embrace the risk that's involved in reconciliation?

Because there is no reconciliation without the risk of that encounter.

One theologian is an older guy. He's a Croatian guy named Mirosel Volf,

who lived through the crazy genocide that happened in Croatia.

He wrote a book about reconciliation called Exclusion and Embrace.

And in this, he says this.

So there's always risk and embrace.

I open my arms to the other, not knowing if I'll be embraced or if I'll be harmed.

He goes on to say this. that embrace is always grace and grace is always a gamble.

This is the reality of life. When we step into these situations, there's a gamble there.

It's risky. And if we want to have reconciliation, if we want to see peace in

this world, we're going to have to learn how to embrace the risk.

That the person that you're engaged with might wound you again,

but they also might melt into an embrace.

You also might be able to find peace in these moments.

And reconciliation cannot happen unless we are willing to embrace the risk,

Which leads to the second aspect of reconciliation.

You know, as they say, whoever they are, the showing up is half the battle, right?

Which is true. But how we show up, I think, is just as important as showing up.

Because if you show up, you know, puffed out, ready to just fight,

it's probably not going to go well.

I think what we see here is how we ought to show up. And it's this,

a reconciliation requires humility.

Reconciliation requires humility. The reality is though, it's really hard for

us to be humble, to put ourselves below somebody, which is humbling ourselves

before somebody when we feel threatened.

I think our natural instinct in those moments is always, I'm going to match force with force.

You come with your 400 men, I'm going to get my own 400 men and we're going to see who wins the day.

But I think Jacob shows us a different way in the way of reconciliation, in the way of Christ.

So what does it mean for us to be humble in these moments. I think you see two

aspects of humility here that are really important.

The first is this, that humility means giving up control.

Humility means giving up control. You see this in verse three as they approach.

Speaking of Jacob, he himself went on before them, bowing himself to the ground

seven times until he came to his brother.

So already he's bowing to the ground. He's showing himself, listen,

I'm not a threat. I'm not coming to fight you.

He's bowing. You know, this is how, especially in the ancient day,

this is how someone would come before a king, someone that's above you.

You would come in bowing, saying, I'm not a threat to you. I'm not a threat

to your throne. I'm not a threat to who you are.

I'm a friend, not an enemy.

This is what he does. He comes in bowing to him. What he's saying,

he's saying, I am at your mercy.

Further, we get this when he calls him in verse eight, he says, my Lord.

He's saying, I'm below you. You're above me. I'm giving up my sense of control of this situation.

You know, even the act of bowing and one of the reasons why we bow in confession

is we're exposing ourselves or exposing that you expose the back of your neck,

which is the most vulnerable part of your body to say, listen,

I'm giving up my control of this situation. Wound me if you want.

But I'm giving up control. And humility requires us to give up control.

And this is huge when you consider Jacob's story.

His story is he tries to wiggle his way out of every situation.

Someone's cheating him, he cheats them back and he's manipulating the situations.

He's always got something to say, but here he finally is giving up his sense of control.

He is saying, listen, I can't control this relationship. I can't control his response to me.

I can't sweet talk him out of this, he doesn't have words anymore to speak.

All he has is this action of kneeling, of humility.

He's saying, I'm at your mercy. And that's what is required of us in humility

is to let go of our control, to recognize that you can't control the situation.

This leads to the second aspect of humility that we need to reconcile with people

is humility means owning our own faults first.

First, humility means owning our faults first. You see this in verse 10 to 11.

There's an interesting change of language of Jacob.

First, when he comes before him, he says, no, please, if I found favor in your

sight, then accept my presence from my hand, for I've seen your face,

which is like seeing the face of God and you've accepted me.

So he's saying, hey, I got this gift for you. Take this gift.

He's trying to appease him. But then he changes his language here in verse 11.

Please accept my blessing. Amen.

You see, you know, whenever we have a conflict with somebody,

there's always a word that we can say that will get to the heart of the matter,

the heart of the conflict.

And Jacob stealing his brother's blessing is really at the heart of this conflict.

What Jacob is saying here is he's saying, I'm sorry. I took this from you here. Let me bless you.

Let me return this blessing to you. I'm sorry.

You know, it's other interesting thing about this. He doesn't point out Esau's faults in this, does he?

I mean, that's our temptation. We all do it. myself included.

When you get in an argument with somebody, you just want to point out the other

person's faults and everything that they've done wrong to you. That's not what he does.

He says, listen, I'm wrong. Humility goes first.

It recognizes the wrong that we've done. And this is Proverbs 15.1 says,

a soft answer turns away wrath.

I think this is what we experience in our own relationships.

Whenever you have an argument with somebody, it usually turns when someone says, listen, I was wrong.

It's not if someone says, listen, I was wrong, but I did what I did because

you did what you did, right?

That's usually not what works. What works is when we say, listen,

I'm sorry for the wrong I've done, full stop.

And it's in those moments that actually opens up the environment for that other

person to apologize, for you to reconcile.

Humility creates space for reconciliation. It owns its own faults first.

And this is further interesting when you consider who is it that Jacob's humbling

himself to? It's not a righteous man.

Jacob is the covenant heir. He's the one that's to inherit the promised land.

And in our terminology, he is the Christian in this scene.

Esau is portrayed as a godless man, as a man that's outside the promise.

We'll get to this a little bit, not a lot, but even the place that he lives,

he's living outside Canaan, outside the land that is promised to his family.

Further, you see this when we're going to go through the genealogies in a couple

of chapters, which is going to be an exciting sermon.

I mean, for one, you get to make fun of how I pronounce all these crazy names.

But for two, one of the things you see is that Esau's lineage,

in Esau's lineage is some of the great enemies of the people of God.

He is a godless man, is living outside the promise. He is the unchristian in this scene.

Yet Jacob is bowing himself to him.

And this is part of our calling in this world. humility isn't just how we relate

to each other in this room, to other Christians who follow this same God,

but it's our posture towards the other, towards those outside of this room.

We never go into a situation thinking, no, I'm more righteous than you,

so you got to come to me. No, we say, listen, I am more sinful than I realize.

It's recognizing I only stand here before you by grace.

And because of that, I can assume in any conflict I have that I've probably

done something wrong too. We can assume that.

But this is hard for us to put into practice. In any of these situations,

especially if you've been deeply wounded, you can think, why should I go first?

Why should I bow first? Why should I say I'm sorry first?

They hurt me worse than I hurt them.

They don't deserve control over this situation. Well, the only way that we can

enter into these situations by looking to Christ.

In Christ, God made peace when we were at war with him. Not because we first go to him.

It's why we were enemies. He comes and makes peace with us.

Philippians 2 is this great passage in Philippians 2 about the humility of Christ.

Speaking about him humbling himself, taking on humanity, becoming a human,

humbling himself to the point of death on the cross.

Because this is how Christ approaches you and I in humility,

first coming to us, even when we're enemies, calling us to himself,

because this is true because of the gospel, his humility fuels our own humility.

See, any humility we have is not of our own. It's a borrowed humility from Christ himself.

This is what makes the gospel good news for us.

And this good news, when we've experienced the humility of Christ,

it will make you a humble person.

The great mark of the Christian is our humility.

Not that we have it perfectly, but it's something that we are all growing in

as you grow in Christ. It enables you to be a peacemaker.

Which leads to the final aspect of

reconciliation that we see here is that reconciliation is fueled by grace.

Reconciliation is fueled by grace. And the word grace is used a couple of times,

but it's really laced throughout this passage. You see this in verse 5.

He says, the children whom God has graciously given to your servant.

Verse 10, no, please, if I found favor, if I found grace in your sight.

Verse 11, because God has dealt graciously with me.

Grace is kind of laced through this reconciliation endeavor.

And what is grace? Grace is this is unmerited favor, favorites,

forgiveness that's undeserved.

What's interesting is once grace shows up in this passage and they embrace and

they weep and they kiss, what happens?

After that is when his family comes near and bows. It opens up the space for

peace to happen. We know, hey, we're not going to be harmed.

Now the whole family can come before and bow as well and humble themselves.

And when you look at verse four, it should sound familiar.

Verse four says this, but Esau ran to meet him and embraced him and fell on

his neck and kissed him and they wept.

Does that sound familiar to the story that Jesus tells?

In Luke chapter 15, he tells the story of the prodigal son.

Luke 15 · chapter mention

Jesus is borrowing a lot of the language from this passage. I think this passage

was in his mind when he was relaying the prodigal son.

You get the son, he says, father, I wish that you were dead so I could grab your inheritance.

And so he takes the inheritance and he goes and he squanders it and he finds

himself eating with animals, eating the slop.

He's like, surely if I was a servant to my father's house, I'd be doing better than I'm doing.

So maybe I can go back and be a servant. So he goes back. He prepares his speech

to tell his father, Hey, I'm sorry. Can I be a servant in your home?

And what does the father do? He runs to them. Like Esau runs to Jacob.

The father interrupts his speech and hugs him and kisses him and says,

my son has returned. Let's party.

This is what's happening here.

That story is an echo of this as Esau himself interrupts Jacob trying to buy

favor in verse nine, he says this, but Esau said, listen, I have enough, my brother.

Listen, Jacob has put himself beneath him, calling him Lord.

And what does Esau call him?

He calls him brother. It was a pivotal moment. It says, you're not my servant. You are my brother.

You're my flesh and bone. Just like in the story of the prodigal son,

he's like, no, you're not my servant. You're my son.

This is what God's grace does for us. It fuels reconciliation.

This is who God is. God is like Esau.

This is why when he says, you know, it's like seeing you, it's like seeing the

face of God. Seeing you is like experiencing the grace of God.

This is what God is like. He's a God who runs to people, embraces his children,

not because you deserved it, not because you've done nothing wrong,

not because you've paid him back, not because you can buy your way into this,

but because of unmerited favor, because of grace.

This is a great fuel that enables reconciliation without grace,

without us being able to forgive others and others forgiving us,

reconciliation is impossible.

Even if the other person may have wounded you more deeply, even if the other

person who's offended you may not deserve forgiveness, God's grace reminds us that neither do we.

No one in this room deserves to be forgiven. Grace is never deserved.

It's always a gift, a gift with no strings attached.

It's always a miracle in our lives.

And that's what's being offered in this passage. That's what we see in this

reconciliation, this grace moment.

And the way this last scene kind of ends here, this reconciliation can feel a little bit fragile.

And I think that's how a lot of our reconciliation moments can feel too.

They can feel a little bit fragile because you know, more conflicts will always come.

There's going to be more need for reconciliation. It's not just a one-time event

in our lives with people. It's ongoing. It's a reconciliation.

Peacemaking is actually a way of life that we're called into, a way of living.

And it's a difficult one, right? It's fearful. It's risky.

Requires humility, which is hard for us. Requires grace, which is hard for us

to extend to people who don't deserve it.

It's a way of life, but that's what's happening here.

So what is happening here at the end of this story? Well, why doesn't Jacob

go with Esau? It can seem a little strange.

Well, Esau is going to a place that's outside the promised land.

And Jacob is subtly in his language saying, listen, I can't go with you.

I'm glad we're at peace, brother, but I can't go with you. I need to go to the promised land.

And so we see him finding his way down to Canaan, where he finally purchases

a part of the family, of the land that's been his inheritance.

This is him making his claim on the promises of God.

And it's his reconciliation scene with his brother that brings him to this place

of peace, that brings him into this place where he can claim his inheritance.

And I think that's what reconciliation does for us. It brings us to the place where we belong.

It brings us to a place of peace.

So the questions for us is, listen, have you actually tasted the grace of God?

Have you in your life experienced the God who runs to you, who calls you son,

who calls you daughter, who changes your title in life from sinner to saint,

saint being holy one, who changes your title from enemy to beloved child?

This is what's being offered to you. And maybe if you're in this room and you've

never tasted this, this is offered to you right now. Go to the Father.

He will forgive you. His grace is abundant. It is for you.

He longs for you to be called his child, his beloved saint.

This is what this story is pointing us to, reminding us of the great truth that

we have in the gospel, that Christ is the one who has embraced us.

And as he's embraced us, He strengthens us to embrace the other And he sends

us out As ambassadors of peace in this world As we are his body Living in this

world To live in this world Extending his peace His grace,

And listen, in a world at war With itself This is grossly needed Especially in this time,

When people are getting assassinated For not agreeing with them Or you get school

shootings In Colorado and New York And innocent people being murdered all over

And you get wars starting with no end in sight.

The world needs a church that is fearless and making peace.

I think oftentimes when we think of making peace, we think of wimps,

the person that's never willing to pick up a gun. And that's not what this is about.

Peacemaking is the least wimpy thing you could do. Because peacemaking says,

I'm going to step in the middle of the gunfight and I'm going to stand.

Because who did that first? Christ.

Was he a wimp? No. He's the one who suffered and died on the cross that you might have life.

And because of that, he calls us to do the same in this world,

to stand with those who can't stand for themselves, to take up this ministry

of reconciliation, of extending peace wherever we find ourselves.

Both in our relationships and with our world at large.

I think in some ways it can be easier for us to think, oh yeah,

we need to figure out how to do this within our city, within our society.

The mechanics of it are challenging, but it's easier for us to think about in our own lives.

The harder place for us to actually stop and think about this is an interpersonal conflict.

That's when the rubber really meets the road. How do you change the city?

How do you change the state? How do you change a country?

You change, change begins with you and extends out to the people that you know.

It starts local and grows from there. And so the question then for you is,

who are those people in your life that you're at war with?

Who do you need to pursue peace with, reconciliation?

You know how it is, maybe you're in this room and you're like,

listen, I've tried that and it didn't work.

And that is one of the just bummer things about this side of eternity is sometimes

you pursue reconciliation with people when it's not to be had on this side of eternity.

Because even if you step into this place and you embrace the risk and you go

in with humility and you go in with grace, you can't control other people,

which is one of my great challenges in life, trying to control other people

doesn't work very well. You can't do it.

But I think for many of us, we haven't even tried yet. We haven't even tried.

And this passage is urging you to trust Christ, the great reconciler and to

follow him, calling us to the path of reconciliation in this world. It is risky.

We're called to embrace it with courage as Christ embraced it with courage, It requires humility.

You have to let go of your own control and you have to apologize first,

but we can do this because Christ took our sin, which he didn't have on himself.

And he let go of his control, putting himself at the mercy of the world that killed him.

He is a humble one who humbled himself to the point of death on a cross and is fueled by grace.

Understanding that any merit that we have in the Lord's eyes is not of our own making.

It's not because we were good enough It's not because we had enough to earn

it, but it's a free gift of Christ.

And as we embrace those things and embrace Christ, the great reconciler,

we are called to extend that into the world with the ministry,

with the work of reconciliation.

And listen, this work is not easy work. It's hard. Puts you in the crosshairs.

Many times this will literally cost you your life, but this is what we're called

to because this is where Christ calls us.

And even if it costs us our life, we're promised life everlasting with him.

So may we learn and grow to be a people that embrace this ministry of reconciliation in the world.

And through us, may the Lord bring peace to all who are at war with us. Pray with me.

Holy Father, we give you thanks for these words. I pray that you would give

us courage to be reconcilers in this world.

I pray that we would know the great grace that you've given us and that we would

not hoard that grace or store it up in our own storehouses, but we would freely

extend and give that to people, even the people in our lives that don't deserve it.

May you give us strength to follow you. May you make us a place of peace with

each other and with our neighbors.

Lead us into this, we pray. Amen.