Hello fellow bloggers!! The Continuum International Publishing Group has kindly given permission to use material from the book “Images of Jesus” written by Anselm Gruen.

Anselm is a Benedictine Monk in Germany and is also the Cellarer of his community.

It is my intention to offer to you different images of Jesus based on Anselm’s thinking and observations. I hope you get something positive from considering Anselm’s words and the questions he poses.

Shalom friends

Stephen

THE JESUS WHO RECONCILES (by ANSLEM GRUEN)

Jesus’ sayings about reconciliation have provoked resistance above all among politicians. The (former) German federal chancellor Helmet Schmidt once famously remarked that the Sermon on the Mount is useless in politics.

I want to look at three provocative sayings from the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus calls for reconciliation.

“So then if you are bringing your offering to the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar, go and be reconciled with your brother first, and then come back and present your offering” (Matthew 5:23).

When I celebrate the liturgy I first have to be clear about my relations with my fellow men and women. If someone has something against me, I must first be prepared for reconciliation. Perhaps I’ve unconsciously hurt the other person. Perhaps that person’s annoyance is based simply on misunderstanding. I must clarify my relations with my fellow human beings before I can come before God. But what am I to do if the other person doesn’t want reconciliation, and is projecting personal problems onto me? I can only do what I can. If others don’t want to be reconciled, that’s their business.

“Come to terms with your opponent in good time while you are still on the way to the court with him, or he may hand you over to the judge and the judge to the officer, and you will be thrown into prison” (Matthew 5:25).

The original Greek text simply reads “as long as you are still on the way”.

As long as I live and move I must be reconciled with my opponent. This means above all my inner opponent, everything that I fight against in myself, everything I cannot accept. As long as I am in the way, I am to be reconciled with my inner opponent. I must attempt to accept my shadow sides, which I would much prefer to detach. If I am not reconciled with my shadow sides, they will bring me before the inner judge, the authority of my own superego. My inner judge will hand me over to the officer, who will torture me with self-accusation and imprison me in my habits. He will throw me into prison, and I will be so shut up in myself that one day it will be too late to break out of this inner prison. As long as I am on the way it’s my task to be reconciled with myself.

“You have heard it said, you will love your neighbour but hate your enemy. But I say this too you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you; so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he causes his sun to shine on the bad as well as the good, and sends down rain to fall on the upright and the wicked alike” (Matthew 5:43-5).

In loving their enemies, the disciples are to imitate God, who makes his sun to rise on the good and the bad. Jesus didn’t divide people into the good and the bad. He saw the danger that the good could go bad and he saw the longing for good in the bad. He accepted both kinds of people and showed both of them a way to life. We are capable of loving our enemies only if we first love the enemy in ourselves; if we let the sun of our benevolence shine on the good and bad in us; if we also look gently at those characteristics in us which conflict with our ideal image of ourselves.

Loving our enemies doesn’t mean ignoring everything that others do to us. It primarily means not allowing ourselves to be drawn into enmity. If someone fights against me as an enemy, I mustn’t react in an equally hostile way. Otherwise the enmity of the other person will become my prison.

My first task is to recognise why the other person regards me as an enemy. Perhaps that person is projecting personal problems onto me. Because others can’t accept themselves, they fight against the aspects of my personality they repudiate in themselves. If I can see that, the other person doesn’t become my enemy. I see people longing to be healed and accepted. So I can encounter them in peace. Some people think that loving one’s enemies is a great effort. But for me it is far more of an effort to hate one’s enemy. For then the enemy determines my mood and my attitude. For me, loving my enemy means freedom. I don’t regard the other person as an enemy but as a human being longing for friendship.

Jesus’ saying also has a political dimension. With the command to love one’s enemy he sets out to heal the rift that runs throughout our society and through the nations. Jesus doesn’t leave us in peace with hostile stereotypes. He challenges us to use our imagination and creativity seeking how the different groups in society and peoples at enmity with one another can find a way to get on together. If peoples on both sides keep on adding up the hurts done to them, the result will be a pernicious and endless conflict, as the situation in the Balkans showed. All the accumulated hatred is handed on from generation to generation. No military means can guarantee peace unless the potential of hatred is worked through and replaced by reconciliation. Jesus’ challenge to love one’s enemy seeks to replace the old black- and- white with a summons to new ways of peace and reconciliation.

QUESTIONS

Are you reconciled with yourself? With what inner enemies must you reconcile yourself? What can’t you accept in yourself? Where do you rage against yourself?
Try to see everything that bubbles up inside you and tell yourself, that’s what I am; that’s part of me; things can be as they are; I say yes to them.

What would you like to do in your particular environment to create an atmosphere of reconciliation? Note how you talk, does this divide or reconcile?
Note your thoughts. Are they stamped with reconciliation?