The real hope of reconciliation between races and cultures in our world is wrapped up in how we, the people of God, see ourselves. Do we see ourselves only as readers of scripture, or as fulfillers of the prophecies and promises God has made concerning this world? Do we see ourselves simply as people who have the right values and principles, or as preachers of a powerful gospel that can itself accomplish its objectives including reconciliation?
I believe the only hope for reconciliation between races and cultures is that the people of God recognize themselves as the body of Christ in the local neighborhood, the replacement of Jesus' body on earth. The purpose of this body, the church, is to reconcile people to God and to each other. Christians must see themselves as God's tools and the church as God's workshop for reconciliation.
Paul understood the gospel's implications of reconciliation better, perhaps, than anyone else. He was one of the founders of the completely cross-cultural, multiracial church at Antioch. So manifest was God's glory there that people had to begin calling them by a different name—Christians.
In Colossians, Paul outlines the hope of reconciliation through the church. He congratulates the believers on the love they have for all the saints (Colossians 1:4) and reminds them that membership in the body cannot be determined on the basis of color, nationality, position, or sex (Colossians 3:11, Galatians 3:28).
Paul knew that Christ was the "image of the invisible God"(Colossians 1:15) and as we become his body, we together become "renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator" (Colossians 3:10). We are all one for we are in him, "and in him all things hold together" (Colossians 1:17).
This type of body relationship was completely at odds with our old selves, which are "estranged, hostile in mind, doing evil deeds." Instead of unity, the old self is prejudiced, divided, racist. Paul challenges his brothers and sisters to be more like the God who saved them: "...you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self.... In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free, but Christ is all and in all!" (Colossians 3:9-11).
This is more than religious rhetoric. During Paul's life and through his relationships in the churches, it became living reality, a greater reality than the forced union of nation states under the Roman government. In the same way, real reconciliation today can go beyond simple integration. Paul is talking about a new and refreshing relationship, not a structure—a voluntary new corporate identity with each other, not a fleeting alliance.
Here we come up against the difference between theology and practicality. Our theology tells us we can and must be one across racial and cultural barriers. But our practice in the church falls short. Why?
One major reason is the cost involved. Peace, with God or other people, has its price. Jesus made peace only by the blood of his cross (Colossians 1:20). Paul instructs us to let this same "peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body." To live with black, white, American Indian, and Chicano people intimately, in the same body, with all of the cultural differences and painful damage, will take more forbearance, patience, forgiveness, brokenness, introspection, and love than I have in me. I will need to pay the price for Jesus' costly peace to rule my heart. I need to give up to him.
We in this country have not been willing to pay the price for this type of reconciliation. It means too much accountability. Paul says that God "has now reconciled us in [God's] fleshly body through death, in order to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before [God], provided that you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel..." (Colossians 1:21-23). But we shift when it comes to reconciliation across racial lines. We cop out to cultural and traditional forms, to "the black church"and "the white church." We seek our holiness within a cultural framework rather than being accountable to the gospel of reconciliation in all our relationships.
Reconciliation means suffering and work. Paul had to pay a price for his cross-cultural calling...prison, mocking, physical threats, stoning (Acts 14:19). Paul says he suffered "for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.... I toil striving with all the energy which he mightily inspires within me" (Colossians 1:24,29). This was the price of reconciliation in Paul's day. For some, it was the price of reconciliation in the 1960s. The price has not changed. A few inner-city workers, a few community organizers and missionaries are our examples today.
When I look at the damage in just black and white people—the inferiority, the superiority, the blame, the guilt, the hatred, the mistrust—I see an impossible brokenness. To heal these wounds, somebody will have to bear some stripes. Christ has done this ultimately, once for all. But in our day, as Christ's body, we too must lay our bodies down, a living sacrifice, taking our share of the suffering and claiming the redemptive presence of Christ in our midst. I see no other hope for reconciliation.
It is possible. Throughout history reconciliation between different people has been the glory of the church. It was in Jerusalem at Pentecost. The gospel was proclaimed, a reconciling act took place, and the body of believers grew. It was the glory in Samaria when Peter and John visited there (Acts 8). It was in the uttermost parts when God formed the church in Antioch.
I have been a part of this reconciliation in Mississippi. I have seen other glimpses of it in Detroit; Evanston, Illinois; Americus, Georgia; Washington, D.C.; and a few other places. But I have also seen committed black and white teams of Christians break up in despair. Reconciliation in our midst today is limited, inhibited, and weak.
We must allow the glory of God's reconciling power call us to the accountability and suffering in the body of Christ necessary to break down racial and cultural barriers and more truly be God's people today.
John Perkins, author of Let Justice Roll Down and A Quiet Revolution, was a Sojourners contributing editor, and president of the Voice of Calvary Ministries in Jackson and Mendenhall, Mississippi, when this article appeared.
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