‘Christian community’ is often a dark place of needs and wounds, of violence and destruction, vengeance and condemnation, of evil and death, and if the people of God cannot live out the message of reconciliation, peacemaking, healing, and transformation within this community, what hope is there of us living it out in the world? Indeed, what hope is there for the world?

‘In Christian terms, reconciliation, healing, and transformation are less a series of programmes or initiatives, than they are a spirituality: A way of being transformed in Christ by the Holy Spirit, in community, for the sake of others. It is not just an inner journey, for to be considered a Christian spirituality, it must take on an incarnational form’ (Barry, 2008).

For the church to be truly effective in bringing Christ’s healing and transformation to addressing the wounds inflicted by crime on society, more is needed than programmes and practices. More is needed than supporting restorative justice principles and practices. What is needed is a true paradigm shift – a new way of thinking and doing, but along with the new passion and activity, also a new heart – a new Spirituality!

Rather than criticising government for its failed moral regeneration initiative and the lack of follow up to the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, the Church ought to be taking responsibility for reconciliation. ‘As the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) drew to its close, the chairperson, Archbishop Desmond Tutu felt it necessary “to remind us all that the TRC is expected to promote, not to achieve, reconciliation. Reconciliation has to be the responsibility of all South Africans, a national project - and we hope that the churches and other faith communities will be in the forefront of this healing process which is possibly going to go on for decades”’ (Barry, 2008).

To do so, we need to examine some practical Christian ethical responses and initiatives that could place the Christian community in the forefront of this healing process. Here the concern is with cultivating a spirituality of reconciliation, healing, and transformation. This raises the question (amongst others): What spiritual disciplines are called for in cultivating such a spirituality?

Finding Christians with a passion to actively reach out to people in prison is uncommon. For the most part, we would rather focus on the ‘more deserving’ ministries like AIDS orphans, the elderly, the sick, etc. Even among those taking God’s word into prison, demonstrating His love and forgiveness, we still find some calling for the death penalty to be reinstated. Experience has shown that those churches most outspoken and opposed to caring for offenders, are also conspicuous by their absence in caring for victims.

This is not surprising, as the contemporary Christian response to crime is as emotional as its response to mission. We mainly do it because of our feelings and not our faith, and putting your signature to a circulating petition for the restoration of capital punishment when faced with grisly reminders of just how inhumane we can be towards each other, is natural – but not based in faith.

Consider the following case as if you are the judge and must pass sentence.

STOP AFTER EACH STATEMENT AND GIVE YOUR SENTENCE (years in prison) – only then continue with the next statement:

Statement:      A speeding car runs down a boy of 6 riding on his bicycle … (pass sentence)

Statement:      The boy is your grandson ……………………………………... (pass sentence)

Statement:      The boy dies as a result of his injuries ………………………. (pass sentence)

Statement:      The car was not roadworthy   …………………………….……. (pass sentence)

Statement:      The driver was drunk and had no licence   …..………………. (pass sentence)

Statement:      The driver was your son ……..……...……………………….. (pass sentence)        

Did you find that the increasingly personal nature of the incident affected your view and judgement?

It is clear that the relationship of the boy and the driver to you does not change the crime, but only your response. This is normal, because it increasingly ‘personalises’ the victim and the offender – you know them and even though he caused you hurt and pain, you understand his loss as well and wish to help and protect him. Our interpretation of events are never truly emotion free.

Our Attitudes: The foundations of our words and deeds
Only some 10% of those in prison have not ‘been churched’. This is a damning statistic on the efforts of church leaders to solicit positive lifestyles based upon non-violence and respect. In most cases in South Africa, rehabilitation is impossible. Rehabilitating means restoring someone or something to a previous state of correctness. You cannot restore a train to a track that it has never been on – that’s education. We have to instil or teach positive norms and values that for the most part, are ‘foreign’. It has become about what is best for me rather than what is best for all. The concept of UBUNTU has been lost.

‘Our overcrowded juvenile centres and the increase in juvenile convictions speak of a people who lack the basic sense of right and wrong. ‘In one survey of seven “at risk” schools around Johannesburg, conducted by UNISA criminologist Professor Marelize Schoeman, more than 25% of pupils said it was either sometimes or always “okay for a man to hit his girlfriend or wife if she doesn’t listen to him”. Another 28% said it was sometimes or always acceptable to use violence to “get what you want”, while 30% said it was okay “for the poor to steal from the rich”.

Two national surveys by the Centre for Justice and Crime Prevention — to be published in June this year — posed similar questions to thousands of children at random. Head researcher Patrick Burton confirmed that:

• More than a quarter of young people said it was acceptable to steal from wealthy people;
• More than 10% said it was acceptable for a man to force himself on a woman in certain circumstances, such as if she wore a short skirt or if the man had paid for the date;
• Over 450000 had been robbed of their possessions under threat of violence in a single year; and
• Extrapolating from an earlier survey, Burton said about 106000 primary school children and 116000 high school children in South Africa had been victims of rape, sexual assault or unwanted sexual contact at school.

Dr Cathy Ward, a child psychologist at the University of Cape Town, said that, in addition to the apartheid legacy of poverty and violence, “rampant materialism”, a lack of moral leadership and widespread alcohol and drug abuse were eroding values’ (Sunday Times, 4th April 2009)
In response to the above, we can see the importance of restoring relationships, and equally important, to be conscious of the fact that most offenders are not in prison, or even caught. In fact, statistics would prove that there are more criminals (law breakers) in church on any given Sunday morning than the total prison population in South Africa!

Some 82% of all South Africans claim to be Christians, yet murders, rapes, abortions, child molestation, theft, and every conceivable form of crime is commonplace. We have become crime-tolerant. Being bombarded by media reports on the most horrific and unthinkable things we as humans do to one another, it is no wonder that ‘simple’ crimes such as stealing stationary from your employer, dodging the Tax-man, and ignoring traffic laws, hardly raise an eyebrow.

The most common call from churches responding to the high crime rate, is to call for tougher laws, and even for the death penalty to be reinstated. The ‘Zero Tolerance’ campaign of 2007 saw huge support from churches. But is this the correct Christian attitude that churches should be portraying? ‘Some would cite the Old Testament’s use of, and indeed command to, employ the death penalty, yet only about 20 offences carried the death penalty, while in 18th Century European law there were several hundred capital crimes, with no proof of it having any deterrent effect!’ (Barry, 2008)

How can we justify our resistance to killing the unborn (abortion) while calling for the killing of the not yet reborn (and even sometimes the reborn)? Empathy with the victim is correct and proper, but when this drifts into condemnation of the offender (and not his actions), do we still demonstrate Christ’s teachings?

Christ’s teachings and life demonstrates a different attitude – admittedly, one of zero tolerance to sin (crime), but this is starkly contrasted to, and inseparably bound to, an all consuming, self sacrificing, passionate love for the sinner (offender). Are we not all sinners? Are we not all offenders? Do we honestly think that our innocence lies in the degree of sin (size of law broken)? No, of course this is nonsense. We are all guilty – there is no such thing as slightly guilty, just as there is no such thing as halfway pregnant. Our guilt is evident.

Developing a new Spirituality
In his doctoral thesis, Rev Stephen Barry states that: ‘Henri Nouwen explores the mystery of God’s power revealed in weakness – the weakness resulting (at least in part) from resistance to relevance, popularity, power, and control – that mystery of an empowered vulnerability. Theology, for Nouwen, is as simple and as profound as looking at reality with the eyes of God and so to discern the ways to live. His typical three-fold schema is one of exploration, showing, and then proclamation.

Nouwen states that the path of power is really about a theology of weakness, and suggests that we should look with God’s eyes at our experience of brokenness, limitedness, woundedness, and frailty, in the way that Jesus taught us and hope that such a vision will offer us a safe way. He focuses on three words: ‘power’, ‘powerlessness’, and ‘power’, and goes on to explore the power that oppresses and destroys. Then he shows how power is disarmed through powerlessness, and finally he proclaims the true power that liberates, reconciles, and heals.’

The lust for power entraps and corrupts the human spirit; it results in resentment, revenge, wounding, competition, violence, and fear. Nouwen contrasts these with gratitude, forgiveness, healing, compassion, cooperation, and love. Identifying God’s response to the diabolic power that destroys people and their lands and rules the world, Nouwen finds it a ‘deep and complete mystery because God chose powerlessness

‘God chose to become so powerless that the realization of His own mission among us became completely dependent on us and our choices to respond to his calling. That’s the mystery of the incarnation; God became human, in no way different from other human beings, to break through the walls of power in total weakness. That’s the story of Jesus.
 
In recent times, this is seen in the contrast between Christianity and other religions’ reactions to negative portrayal, criticism, and defamation. Rather than declaring holy war, jihads, calling for uprisings, etc., we as Christians are not called to protect our faith – our faith protects us.

For Nouwen, God’s powerlessness as it is revealed in Jesus of Nazareth – an empowered vulnerability – is revealed not only in a powerless birth and in a powerless death, but – strange as it may seem – in a powerless life. Nouwen sees in the Beatitudes, a self-portrait of Jesus: One who knows his need of God, who identifies with the marginalized, who does not need to dominate or be in control; who shares the grief of humanity, who does not hide his fears; who is gentle, who does not break the bruised reed (Isaiah 42:3); who hungers and thirsts for justice; who shows mercy, who calls out not for retribution, but for forgiveness; who stays focused on the values and priorities of the Kingdom (namely the unity and healing of God’s creation); who seeks to reconcile men and women to God, to one another, and to themselves; who lives with grace, mercy, and love among the unreconciled, and who accepts that the call of God includes the call to suffer with and for the sake of others’ (Barry, 2008).

To live in Christ, is to live to live in community – a community called to witnesses to God’s love in shared vulnerability and human weakness, demonstrated in tolerance, acceptance, and forgiveness, and calls us to celebrate our shared weaknesses as gifts. These very weaknesses can connect us with the power of the vulnerable God. It calls us to live as a worshipping community, and to be shaped in worship by gratitude, generosity, and hospitality. It calls us to be a healing, reconciling, and restoring community, and this not by denying our past, but by acknowledging it, taking responsibility for it, and learning from it, ever confident in God’s redeeming grace.

‘Nouwen’s spirituality challenges the illusions of power, dominance, and control, by exposing the temptations of power, success, and relevance. It questions the pragmatism of success by reminding us that the right thing to do is always the right thing to do, even if it doesn’t seem to work or have the immediate desired outcome. Further, it challenges the ethic of blaming and retribution and calls for the spiritual disciplines of prayer, resistance, and community, by engendering humility, compassion, and joy.

It is non-violent, yet accepts resistance to evil as a key spiritual discipline. Above all, it calls us, the Christian community in South Africa, to a radical commitment to following Jesus and the kenotic lifestyle that he modelled in servanthood and sacrifice.

This realisation forces us to reconsider the ‘us and them’ mentality. Those convicted of crimes are not aliens, they are our fathers, brothers, sons, mothers, daughters, and sisters – how can we turn our backs on them with a condemning demand to ‘lock them up and throw away the key’? How can we think ourselves better than them and yet boast about having driven at 200km/h while having tea after church? Dare we take the moral high ground while at the same time, ‘taking’ pens from our employers for our children to use at school?’ (Barry, 2008)

We need a new heart. Crime, being sin, is fought firstly within ourselves. Only then can we address the crime in our congregation, community, and society. How can Christian leaders take control develop a spirituality of reconciliation, healing, and transformation in the church?’

Reconciliation, Healing, and Transformation at the Lord’s Table
Jesus commanded us to partake in Holy Communion to reorientate our understanding of who we are and who we are called to be. The rituals he engaged are aimed at reshaping our conceptions of relationships. ‘In choosing the role of servant – indeed of modelling the role of servant – Jesus redefined social values, ideologies, and social stratification, and embodied a radical hospitality through which his followers could see what sorts of persons and relationships God was calling them to be and have.

The Lord’s Table is a God-given venue of reconciliation and the Church as custodian recognise and use this as the opportunity, call, and place of reconciliation with God. Few however understand that as our faith not only has a vertical component (relationship with God), but also a horizontal (relationship with fellow man), so the Lord’s Table is also the God-given opportunity, call, and place for reconciling man to man.

‘Our communion rituals, are in part, extensions of Jesus’ table ministry, and are therefore rituals of redefining relationship and hospitality. They are the symbolic roots of peace building communities – creating right relationships around the table – those who are friends, those who are strangers, even those who are enemies. If we answer this call to the table of Jesus, we can be formed through our rituals as persons working to shift the shape of our own society’s dominant images of separation and retribution.
In light of this we need to ask: Are our communion (and other) liturgies embodying this vision of God’s Kingdom? Do they form us as ‘those who hunger and thirst for righteousness’ and justice and those who seek to be ‘peacemakers’ (Matthew 5:6a, 9a)? If not, how can we reshape them so that they can help reshape or transform us? The key question being asked here is how the Lord’s Table or Eucharist can more effectively become a place of reconciliation, healing, and transformation’ (Barry, 2008).

Looking through New Lenses
‘The church at Corinth, to whom the Apostle Paul was writing, was certainly not modelling, yet alone embodying, the radical hospitality of the Kingdom of God. Indeed, they merely repeated the social values, ideologies, and social stratification of the Greco-Roman and Jewish world around them; they did nothing to shift the shape of their society’s dominant images of separation and retribution. Not only was there blatant snobbery in the Corinthian church, but relational issues of a moral nature were simply not being addressed. Paul challenged the Corinthian Christians to look at their liturgical practices from a number of perspectives – or, lenses – the first two being retrospective and prospective.

The first perspective or lens is a retrospective one; we are invited to look back and remember four images from scripture.

• The Lord at table,
• The Lord raising from table to model servant hood,
• The Lord rising from table and going to the Cross, and 
• The Lord modelling sacrifice.

This, Paul may have hoped, would have challenged their social values, power ideologies, and social stratification – and ours!

The second perspective or lens is a prospective one; we are invited to look forward in anticipation and hope of God’s Kingdom being fully manifested for all to see. This too, Paul may have hoped would have challenged their ways of being together, and of being in the world – and ours!

Next the Apostle challenged them to look through another lens, the introspective lens of self examination. The individual is to examine himself or herself in terms of their relationship with God and with one another for ‘whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A [person] ought to examine himself [or herself] before he [or she] eats of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats or drinks without recognising the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgements on himself [or herself]’ (1 Corinthians 11:27-29). Thus it could be said that this lens is a bifocal one, for it is both a looking within and a looking around, a remembering of who we are called to be, and an acknowledgement of how for we are from that ideal. Needless to add, it is also a looking up.

The Lord’s Table is not only a place for conflict transformation at a local level, it is also a place for modelling an alternative to our current retributive justice system that focuses on punishing the offender while the state so effectively assumes the role of complainant that the actual victim is ignored beyond being called to testify in order to appoint guilt. The Table can demonstrate the values and practices of Restorative Justice as a Christian ethic. ‘We need to explore the Holy Communion as a place of conflict transformation, and this by naming, not by denying, or avoiding the conflicts in our churches and communities. More than that, the Table is an opportunity to explore the Holy Communion in a number of contexts related to reconciliation, healing, and transformation, namely as:

• A facilitator of conflict resolution and reconciliation;
• An alternative to the adversarial, retributive justice model and this by demonstrating the values and practices of restorative justice as a Christian ethic,
• A facilitator of Holy Conferencing – a place were decision-making is done differently, namely by discernment and consensus, rather than by domination or majority vote, and
• An opportunity to:
  • Present the theology of Christian reconciliation,
  • Model a vision of the local church as an alternative community: as The Beloved Community,
  • Teach the practice of conflict resolution,
  • Facilitate the experience of reconciliation, and
  • Empower Christians at the local level to act as peace makers.

Thus liturgy can serve as an educational tool, and that in the sense of e-ducare: to lead out, but also to lead or point towards.

The common denominator in this is the conviction that our relationship with Christ shapes every other relationship, both those at the Table and those not. As we engage in the practice of Holy Communion week after week, we internalize this paradigm of relating and carry it into the world where it can mould our relationship outside of the ritual. The more you are in Communion, physically participating in communion, the more you get to be in communion when you’re not in Communion. As Holy Communion takes a more central place in our worship practices, it becomes a ritual that shifts the shape of our relating, calling us to a social order based in the example of Jesus.

Jesus not only names the conflict present around the table, but by washing the disciples’ feet, he names the structural and systemic problems of his society. He turned the society upside down by demonstrating the kenotic ethic of servanthood, of downward mobility. He named the conflicts because Justice requires the naming. Truth requires the naming. As important, Transformation requires the naming. What is unnamed festers beneath the surface only to explode in destructive ways. You must name it to heal it. Diagnosis is necessary for treatment’ (Barry, 2008).

It is only when we face our wounds, when we confront our sins and shortcomings, that we can hope to recognise and accept the healing that we need.

This is also true for local congregations, in a shared locality, who could facilitate their own version of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. A comparison here could be made with the victim/offender conferencing programmes facilitated by Prison Fellowship South Africa, which brings together offenders and victims of crimes in an attempt to facilitate truth telling, understanding, forgiveness, responsibility taken, bridge building, reconciliation, healing, and transformation.

Reconciliation and the Healing of Relationships - Expressing new attitudes
‘Central to the practice of restorative justice are the following three pillars:

• A focus on harms (thereby giving priority to the needs of victims, with the intention of making amends),
• Accountability, and
• Engagement.

These three imperatives are easily recognised in the counsel of Jesus, concerning a brother or sister who offends (Matthew 18:15-20). A fairly common approach to facilitating these three practices – a focus on harms (thereby giving priority to the needs of victims, with the intentions of making amends), accountability, and engagement (or encounter), is that of Circle Processes of which there are a number of types’ (Barry, 2008).

 ‘Restorative Justice is demonstrated in the story of the parable of the lost sheep in Matthew 18: seeking out, restoring, and rejoicing – no one is to be lost. In this chapter, Jesus also gives very practical advice on how this restoration will take place - the victims having the moral authority to confront the offender, to ask for accountability, and to seek healing. The offender has the moral responsibility of conversion, and accountability leading to healing. The journey of the offender is to listen, to understand, to acknowledge the offence (confess), and to make things right (repent [and restore]). If this is done, Jesus says that the offender will be restored to community. The restoration is always met with great rejoicing, as in the parable of the lost sheep. God is present on this journey with everyone

The frame within which Jesus’ society operated is reflected in our own, and remains one of naming for the purpose of punishment or retribution (blaming). At the Last Supper, Jesus reframes and breaks the cycles of violence and retribution by saying that the naming should lead to bread, to forgiveness, and to reconciliation … The frame within which Jesus calls us to live out our own lives is not the frame of naming to punish, but the frame of naming to give bread. Here we move from blaming to naming, from punishment to accountability, from retribution to forgiveness

The Holy Communion is, therefore, a place to teach the theology, ethics, and the practice of Christian reconciliation. It is a place of witness in all of life – even where there is tension, exclusion, anger, and hurt. We bear witness that all of our conflict, both in the church and in the larger arenas of human struggle, is canopied by the passionate and forgiving Lord. As witnesses we embody the message that pardons guilt and overcomes the power of sin. We who eat and drink with him on this side of the Easter experience are witnesses of reconciliation. We know the way of reconciliation, even when we are participants in conflict’ (Barry, 2008).

Who is absent from the Table?
‘The re-membering of those absent is a call to pastoral care, evangelism, and social witness. Who is gathered around the table – or more importantly – who is absent. Where are those who feel shunned or unworthy; are all socio-economic and educational classes included; are children, the elderly, the infirm present; people with physical, emotional, and mental incapacities; diverse sexual orientations and identities? Where are the poor, the homeless, the destitute? What about those confined to correctional and custodial institutions? Who else among God’s beloved people are absent? If the community gathered around the Table of the Lord does not reflect the variety and inclusiveness of all God’s people, the church is defying the Christ who ordered: “Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame ... Go out into the roads and lanes and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled” (Luke 14:21,23).

There need not be, indeed dare not be, any division/conflict/separation between the spiritual, sacramental, and social. Indeed, these three aspects must be held together today if the church is to be effective in its ministry of reconciliation. Spiritual revival can be kindled and sustained though the Lord’s Supper; a revived church can be the instrument of healing in the society.

This calls for the compassion and commitment that challenges and seeks to transform the conditions that breed and feed conflict. If the sources of suffering are to be addressed, if reconciliation and healing are to take place in society, then systemic changes are required.’ The power of God working through ordinary Christian people expresses itself in personal and social transformation’ (Barry, 2008).

In this manner, the Church is empowered and mandated to take the lead, the initiative, to call for and instil proper moral values, head up the call for doing justice in a way that restores and heals, and demonstrate our faith and beliefs in a dramatic, effective, way that brings glory to God.

Whether this would constitute, manifest, or even be seen as a new Spirituality, would depend upon personal conviction and world view, yet the question remains: If we as the Church do not demonstrate our beliefs outside of programmes and talk sessions, but by adopting a lifestyle of caring, involvement, acceptance, and love, what does the future hold for us – and who are we going to blame?

Reference List
BARRY, STEPHEN. 2008. Who Will Blow The Trumpet: A Christian Ethical Evaluation of the Jubilee as a Hermeneutical Tool for Reconciliation, Healing, and Transformation in Post-Apartheid South Africa(PhD Thesis). Potchefstroom: University of the Northwest
THE HOLY BIBLE. 1999. New International Version. Cape Town: Bible Society of South Africa