Exploring the concept of reconciliation

What does it mean to be "reconciling" in the context of the Christian faith?

This morning, a fellow church member prompted me to explore more deeply what the concept of reconciliation truly means. As our faith community continues its journey toward becoming more welcoming and inclusive through the Reconciling in Christ program, we find ourselves navigating paths of resistance that call for patience, empathy, and deep introspection. What follows are some of my own reflections, along with thoughts and research shared by my fellow church member, on the meaning of reconciliation within the context of Christian faith and the Church’s history. I pray that God helps us all to continue this mission with grace—the mission Christ calls us to: "Love each other as I have loved you." -John 15:12

The Christian Church has long proclaimed a message of love, hope, and grace. Yet, history reveals a deep and painful contradiction: the marginalization and persecution of people based on race, gender, sexuality, disability, and other identities have often been justified, or ignored, by the Church. Today, the call to reconciliation is not just a theological idea but a moral imperative. But what does reconciliation really mean in this context? And how do we pursue it when some within the Church (and outside of it) feel that doing so threatens the very foundation of their beliefs?

So, what is reconciliation anyway? Reconciliation, in its biblical sense, is the process of restoring right relationships between individuals, between communities, and between humanity and God. It is not simply about forgiveness or forgetting the past. It requires: acknowledging harm, confessing sin, making restitution, seeking justice, walking together in newness of life (Romans 6:4).

Reconciliation is a Process. It is not a one-time event but a continuous journey of growth and transformation. It requires ongoing effort, perseverance, and a willingness to learn and grow in your relationship with God.

To "reconcile" something means to bring it into agreement, harmony, or compatibility, or to resolve a difference or conflict. It can involve making conflicting ideas, accounts, or facts consistent, or it can mean making someone accept an unpleasant situation.

When applied to the Church’s historical exclusion of marginalized people, reconciliation becomes a sacred process of truth-telling, lament, healing, and transformation.

It is a sad truth that institutions bearing Christ’s name have been complicit in colonization, slavery, racism, sexism, homophobia, and ableism. Churches have enforced theological interpretations that exclude rather than embrace. People have been told, implicitly or explicitly, that they are unworthy of God's love unless they change, conform, or disappear.

Not everyone welcomes the call to reconcile our errors of the past. Some feel that efforts to include LGBTQIA+ people, address racial justice, or welcome those who belong to historically marginalized groups compromises the Church’s integrity or reinterprets Scripture. For them, reconciliation feels like surrendering to cultural trends rather than remaining faithful to God.

But the heart of the Gospel is not fear of change. It's just the opposite. Radical love and inclusion was shown by Jesus Himself over and over throughout Scripture. He touched the untouchables, broke bread with sinners, elevated the marginalized, and challenged the powerful. True reconciliation does not erase Scripture. True reconciliation fulfills Scripture's deepest truths.

So how do we reconcile within the church while gracefully engaging with opposition to this process? We are called not to win arguments, but to love. That love includes listening deeply to those who resist change, not to concede, but to understand. It includes staying rooted in the example of Jesus, whose welcome was often scandalous. It includes educating patiently, using Scripture, theology, and lived experiences. It includes creating brave spaces, not just safe ones, where truth can be spoken in love.

Reconciliation is not a threat to Christian identity—it is the fulfillment of it. It calls us not to abandon truth, but to embrace the fuller, deeper truth that God’s love makes no exceptions. The Church must become a place where every person, especially those once pushed out, can hear the voice of Jesus say: “You are welcome here. You are beloved. You belong.”

-AI was used to assist in the creation and editing of this content

Courage Wears Many Colors

 

From the blog of the late Rachel Held Evans: Thoughts about how to "love like Jesus"

“There’s a blog post circulating around Facebook written by a conservative Christian woman who encountered an old friend at a retail store who had transitioned - the writer remembered her friend as a man, but the friend had since embraced her identity as a woman. The writer says she was initially surprised, but sensing her friend’s fear of judgment, decided to simply “love like Jesus.” In a follow up post, the writer compared her own Christlike love for her trans friend to the love Jesus showed the woman caught in adultery.

Now, I don’t want to heap any more criticism upon this writer than she’s already received. (A quick glance at the comments serves as a sad reminder that in some religious circles, simply being decent to a trans person is considered highly controversial.) Grace recognizes that this woman’s choice of kindness over judgment and compassion over condemnation – particularly when those choices are unpopular in her community – is noble and good. I want to honor that.

And yet…

I can’t help but imagine things from the old friend’s perspective. The encounter appears to have made this trans woman nervous, and I suspect it’s because her past includes a lot of fear, heartache, and judgment. That she too responded to the encounter with decorum and grace represents an act of Christlike love.

In my conversations with LGBT people, particularly LGBT Christians, I’ve learned that many have grown understandably tired of being compared to the infamous woman caught in adultery depicted in John’s gospel – not because they believe themselves to be without sin, but because it’s not their sexuality or gender identity that makes them sinners. (Rather, it’s the stuff we all deal with, like pride, apathy, materialism, selfishness, binge-watching Netflix to the point that we neglect basic grooming and relationships outside the living room, etc.) Furthermore, having their identities, or their most cherished relationships, compared to the devastation of adultery is understandably offensive and hurtful.

A lot of straight, cisgender Christians have this habit of making these comparisons, of putting ourselves in the position of the loving, forgiving Jesus and LGBT people in the position of the beloved sinners. Even more liberal folks like myself like to argue that “being like Jesus” means embracing LGBT people as they are.

And yet…

Focusing so much on “being Jesus” to others means missing the moments when someone is “being Jesus” to you. I remember this about fundamentalism—the pressure and the pride of bringing light to an otherwise dark world. It never occurred to me that other people outside my conservative evangelical tribe had blessings to give me, that I might learn something from them too.

My point is this: LGBT people are not the woman caught in adultery. They are not the leprosy patients Jesus healed or the demon-possessed he rescued. Each is a unique individual whom Jesus loves and ministers to uniquely.

But if I had to make a comparison, I think a more accurate one may be the Good Samaritan. We’ve become so familiar with the story it’s easy to forget that to the religious community from which Jesus emerged, Samaritans were the ones whose supposedly errant theology and questionable ethnic history meant they “needed God.” And yet Jesus makes a Samaritan the hero of his story, the one who embodied what it meant to keep the greatest commandment of loving God and loving others well. Rather than telling a story about a Jewish man who saved a helpless, sinful Samaritan, Jesus told a story about a Samaritan showing grace and love to a stranger. Jesus didn’t condemn the “other” or pity the “other.” He centered the “other.”

I have no idea how this trans woman from the department store, who has unwittingly gone viral, feels about the interaction she had with her old friend. I don’t want to try to speak for her. And I have no judgment for the writer of the piece. But I would suggest that, perhaps, it was the trans woman who showed the forgiveness of Jesus that day, who chose not to cast a stone, who extended unconditional and sacrificial love to her neighbor…even when it was hard, even when it was undeserved.

Time and time again I’ve witnessed this from siblings in Christ who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer, or questioning. Despite sometimes vicious and abusive treatment by religious people and institutions, they go on loving—often for the sake of their own survival. With all the fear, misinformation, and hate being spread about trans people in the wake of this North Carolina “bathroom bill,” I can’t help but feel that any trans person who responds graciously to someone who considers their very identity a sin is a) going above and beyond what should be required of them, and b) practicing the very “radical” grace and forgiveness Christians talk about but so seldom practice.

Yesterday on the blog I shared the work of just a few transgender Christians who have been Jesus to me. I hope you will allow yourself to be ministered by them too.

…Cause we’re not always the heroes of the story.”

Reconciling Scripture: Examining Inclusion, Welcome, and Radical Grace

Pastor Tina created a resource to help work through some of the common scripture passages used to exclude or marginalize people. We had excellent discussion using this packet at our latest Faith Friends & Fellowship group on Sunday. You can join us at "FFF" on the 2nd Sunday of each month, where we discuss various topics related to social justice, equity, and inclusion.

Reconciling Scripture:

Examining Inclusion, Welcome, and Radical Grace 

Faith, Fellowship, and Friends

May 2025

Lutherans and the Bible

1. The Bible is the Word of God

   1. The Bible is our best source for what God wants to say to us. Even ancient messages
      can continue to speak to us.

   2. Word of God is:

      1. Jesus

      2. Law & Gospel

      3. Written word

2. Where did the Bible come from?

   1. God: divinely inspired word

   2. The church

      1. The church as an institution is who decided what books were included in the
         canon and what was excluded. 

      2. The books of the Bible ARE NOT the only written examples that we have of
         divine stories, but they were the only ones chosen by human institutions to be
         included

   3. Humans

      1. Divinely inspired BUT written by humans, dominantly written by and from an
         educated, male perspective 

      2. “Plain sense:” we aim to not wrangle scripture into something that it is not. We
         aim to not make it something the original authors didn’t intend

3. Interpretation

   1. Luther encouraged the church to read the Bible with interpretation, to look at the context
      and what was going on while it was being written in order to fully understand the layers
      that are at play in scripture.  It cannot be taken at black and white face value, but
      examined with a critical eye to understand nuance and what cultural, political, and
      economic factors were at play.

4. Lutherans do not believe in the “inerrancy” of scripture 

   1. God’s word is perfect, humans are not

   2. There is no way to separate scripture from the human influence upon the text 

Creation

“So God created humans in God’s image, in the image of God, God created them, male and female God
created them.” ~Genesis 1.27

What else does God create during the Genesis 1 creation story?

1. Day & Night

2. Evening & Morning

3. Sky & Land

4. Earth & Seas

5. Plants with seeds, trees with seeds

6. Stars, Moon, & Sun

7. Birds & Living Creatures

What about………

1. Dawn & Dusk 

2. Afternoon

3. Clouds & Atmospheres

4. Lakes, Marshes, Estuaries

5. Root plants, non-fruit bearing trees

6. Comets, Meteors, Planets

Dualities are the literary device used in creation, so it isn’t surprising that the same idea is applied to
humans.  

“But this verse does not discredit other sexes or genders, any more than the verse about the separation
of day from night rejects the existence of dawn and dusk. As M Barclay puts it, ‘This chapter talks about
night and day and land and water, but we have dusk and we have marshes. These verses don’t mean
‘there’s only land and water, and there’s nowhere where these two meet.’ These binaries aren’t meant to
speak to all reality—they invite us into thinking about everything between and beyond.” ~Transforming,
Austen Hartke, pg. 51

In the same way that we say God is the Alpha and the Omega, that doesn’t mean God isn’t also
everything in between, God is more than the beginning and the end.

The creation story is no exhaustive, but an opening scene on God’s overwhelmingly creative powers.

“I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” ~Isaiah 43.19

God is always creating something new…

Let’s Talk About the Law

“A woman shall not wear a man’s apparel, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment, for whoever
does such things is abhorrent to the Lord your God.” ~Deuteronomy 22.5

This text is often quoted in direct contrast to the transgender community and people who engage in
drag culture.  

But what about other laws that are also laid out in Deuteronomy?

“You shall not wear clothes made of wool and linen woven together.” ~Deut. 22.11

“If someone has a stubborn or rebellious son who will not obey his father and mother, who does not
heed them when they discipline him, then his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him out
to the elders of his town at the gate of that place. They shall say to the elders of this town, ‘This son of
ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men
of the town shall stone him to death.” ~Deut. 21.18-21a

What would the Jesus and the Parable of the Prodigal Son say to this?

“You shall not deprive a resident alien or an orphan of justice.” ~Deut. 24.17

“You shall have only a full and honest weight; you shall have only a full and honest measure.”
~Deut. 25.15a

“You shall not defraud your neighbor; you shall not steal; and you shall not keep for yourself the wages
of the laborer until morning. You shall not revile the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind.”
~Leviticus 19.13-14

“You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin.” ~Lev.19.17a

“When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with
you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in
the land of Egypt.” ~Lev.19.33-34

“You shall not make any gashes in your flesh for the dead or tattoo any marks upon you.” ~Lev.19.28

Each and every one of us can find something in scripture that speaks against our lives, experience, and
existence. 

Start at Exclusion, End with Inclusion

“No Ammonite or Moabite shall come into the assembly of the Lord even to the tenth generation. None
of their descendants shall come into the assembly of the Lord forever, because they did not meet you with
food and water on your journey out of Egypt and because they hired against you Balaam son of Beor, from
Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you. (Yet the Lord your God refused to heed Balaam; the Lord your God
turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loved you.) You shall never promote
their welfare or their prosperity as long as you live.” ~Deuteronomy 23.3-6

“Then Naomi started to return with her daughters-in-law from the country of Moab, for she had heard in
the country of Moab that the Lord had considered the Lord’s people and given them food.” ~Ruth 1.6

Ruth is one of five women named in the genealogy of Jesus (Matthew1.5)

“No one who testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.”
~Deuteronomy 23.1

“As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?’ Philip commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water and Philip baptized him.” ~Acts 8.36-38

“But every nation still made gods of its own and put them in the shrines of the high places that the people of Samaria had made, every nation in the cities in which they lived.” ~2 Kings 17.29

“But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity.” ~Luke 10.33

Diving Deeper: David & Jonathan

Who? King David (post-anointing, but pre-ascension to the throne 

          Jonathan, son of King Saul, David’s rival

Where? 1 Samuel 18.1-5, 19.1-7, 20.1-42

What does this story tell us?

What stood out to you?

Is this story new to you?

What was meaningful to you in the story?

Diving Deeper: Philip & the Ethiopian Eunuch

Who? Philip, one of the 12

          Court official of the Queen of Ethiopia, in charge of her treasury, a eunuch

Where? Acts 8.26-40

What does this story tell us?

What stood out to you?

Is this story new to you?

What was meaningful to you in the story?

Freedom from Binaries that Bind

“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” ~Galatians 3.28

From the time of our baptism, God’s children share the identity and destiny of Christ. We are no longer defined by race, social class, or even gender.

When are some times in your life you have been excluded because of some part of your identity?

How would you feel if you were excluded from baptism? From communion?

Context Matters! Freedom from Violence

“Do you now know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.”

~1 Corinthians 6.9-10

1. Issues of translation

   1. “Male prostitutes” in Greek “malakos” meaning “soft” or “lacking self-control”

   2. “Sodomites” in Greek “arsenokoites” literally “one who beds a male”

   3. BOTH terms are specific examples of injustice. The “soft” person takes more than his or her due. The “arsenokoites” is a term used for someone who rapes and shames other males to increase his reputation for power.

   4. The issue here is not sex, homosexuality, or who is engaging in intercourse with whom, the issue is violence and unbalanced relationships. 

2. There was a significant issue within Corinth of older men seeking out younger male children for prostitution and taking advantage of them.  This does not refer to consensual, loving relationships, but power dynamics.

Jesus as the Last Word

“‘I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” ~John 13.34-35

This happens after Jesus has just washed the disciples’ feet, including Judas’ feet.  If Jesus calls for love in the hours before his death, even love of the one betraying him, that is the commandment that overrides all.

Clunky Questions

In our monthly Faith, Friends, & Fellowship discussion group we have begun working through the "Clunky Questions" online resource from Reconciling Works. Come join us on the 2nd Sunday of each month, immediately after services, to join in on the learning and discussion. You can also take a look at their website for yourself if you'd like to learn more.

"We often hear people with good intentions feel they aren’t able to ask questions about what it means to be LGBTQIA+ because they are afraid of offending someone or they don’t have the right words with which to ask. If this sounds familiar, or if your faith community is interested in how to better support LGBTQIA+ Lutherans, then the “Clunky Questions” series is for you. Visit the ReconcilingWorks website to watch some short videos where Lutherans answer some of the most common questions asked about their LGBTQIA+ identities."

Watch Clunky Questions - Season One: LGBTQIA+ Lutherans and Season Two: LGBTQIA+ Lutheran Pastors HERE.