It is Easter Week, what is commonly called Passion Week, and we think of Christ’s drawing nearer and nearer to the cross, dreading the pain and horror of it, setting His face towards it with no turning back.  His passion all for us to come to the Father: us separated from our own Creator by our own filthy hands and hard hearts, Him still pursuing in love the creatures who had all, like sheep, gone astray, each of us turned to his own way.  “Irreconcilable differences,”  we said, and that was that.

But God, in His unquenchable love, would not leave it at that, or leave us to our misery.  It is His nature to fix what is broken, to bring peace to those at war, to heal the wounded, to bring justice to the oppressed, to build a bridge so the lost ones can find their way back Home.  Isaiah foretold it and Jesus declared it true on a certain Sabbath day in Nazareth, in front of the wondering people who had known Him all His days on earth thus far….”The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He anointed me…to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.” (Luke 4:16-22)  God declaring that a Way was being made, forgiveness was coming, and there was a Good Shepherd who could find the sheep gone astray….everything made new.  No such thing as irreconcilable differences when one of the parties is the Ruler of heaven and earth.

And now He calls us to be bridge-builders, to reach out across the differences and make friends and brothers.  It’s not just a choice to forgive, but a choice to invest– to step into someone else’s shoes and understand where they live and why they do these things, hear their hurts and see the things that shape them, and find mutual ground.  Be reconciled.  The word in the Greek means to change mutually.  God toward us, in the shape of a man, in the shape of a cross; us made new by Christ, then stretching out of our comfortable places toward others… changing the shape of our hearts to include others…letting His love shape us into something that resembles His bridge-building Passion.  Everything becoming new in His resurrection power.

“…God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.  We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.  God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”  (2 Corinthians 5:19-21)