Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is helpful to me in my ministry. – 2 Timothy 4:11

Today’s Scripture Reading (March 4, 2015): 2 Timothy 4

The Rwandan genocide continues to be a nightmarish example of the recent condition of the human race. We question how something as bad as the Holocaust could take place under our noses. Between 1941 and 1945, 67% of the Jews in Europe were wiped off of the face of the earth. The enormity of that disaster still boggles the mind. It is almost unbelievable, which is probably why we have people today who insist that it never happened, in spite of all of the evidence that we have saying that the Holocaust is a very ugly reality. But in Rwanda, it might have been even worse. In Rwanda, over a period of a little more than three months, 70% of the Tutsi people were executed. Neighbors turned each other in to the roaming execution gangs – or they just killed their neighbors themselves. And when it was all over, just stopping the killing was not good enough. Rwanda had two people groups that somehow had to be reconciled to each other. If that did not happen, then there could be no future for Rwanda.

Anglican Bishop John Rucyahana seems to have understood that. In his book “The Bishop of Rwanda: Finding Forgiveness Amidst a Pile of Bones” Rucyahana wrote -                        

I knew that to really minister to Rwanda's needs meant working toward reconciliation in the prisons, in the churches, and in the cities and villages throughout the country. It meant feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, caring for the young, but it also meant healing the wounded and forgiving the unforgivable.

I knew I had to be committed to preaching a transforming message to the people of Rwanda. Jesus did not die for people to be religious. He died so that we might believe in Him and be transformed. I'm engaged in a purpose and strategy that Jesus came to Earth for. My life is set for that divine purpose in Jesus Christ. I was called to that--proclaiming the message of transformation through Jesus Christ.

As Christians, this is the ministry to which all of us have been called – a ministry of reconciliation. And the truth is this – sometimes the big reconciliations are actually the easy ones. As hard as they are and as impossible as they may seem to be, the Rwanda’s and the Holocaust’s are easier than some of the other reconciliations in our lives - partially because deep inside of us we understand that there can be no future for us as a race if reconciliation in the big items cannot be made a reality. But what we miss is that the little reconciliations in our lives are just as important. To move forward as a race we must be reconciled to each other, no matter how big or small the issue is that separates us.

Paul not only writes about the importance of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5), but he also lived it. Paul had been in a conflict with Mark. The conflict was serious enough that it ended the missionary partnership between Paul and the man that might be best described as his mentor – Barnabas. Barnabas ended up going with Mark, while Paul teamed up with Silas.

But there is evidence here that Paul and Mark had reconciled. And more than that, now Paul saw Mark as being someone who was important to his ministry. Something that Paul would have never seen before. Paul’s relationship with Mark highlights an important factor of life. Unless we are reconciled to each other, we will never understand how important the “other” is to our own life and our own purposes. Paul needed Mark, and because the two men had been reconciled, Mark was in a position to help Paul. And this is exactly what Rucyahana means when he writes that “Jesus did not die for people to be religious. He died so that we might believe in Him and be transformed.” That transformation cannot be just for Rwanda, it needs to be available for all of us as we are continually reconciled to each other.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 2 Peter 1