Reconciliation or Justice?
March 29, 2025
Today’s Gospel reading tells the well-known Parable of the Prodigal Son. And this Gospel reading shows a connection with the theme of reconciliation found in both the first and second reading. And it is this theme of reconciliation that I want to explore today.
We may perhaps find it difficult to distinguish forgiveness and reconciliation. Of course forgiveness makes reconciliation easier, but reconciliation may be a goal even without forgiveness. If we remember the well-known Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC, 1995-98) set up in South Africa, we will remember that it played a huge role in ensuring that that country was not torn into pieces once apartheid finally ended. That commission did not ask the victims to forgive, for forgiveness cannot be ‘ordered’ from the outside, and it is the prerogative of each victim to choose to forgive. The Commission only sought to reconcile, by focusing not on the kind of retributive justice that, despite what is claimed, seems to be the basis of most of our legal systems, but on restorative justice. The TRC did not attempt to hide any of the injustices and horrors that had been inflicted on the black population in particular, and on those brave others who supported them, but it gave the victims a chance to tell their stories and the perpetrators to publicly acknowledge and apologise for all that they had done. The victims were compensated in a manner that helped them to get on with their lives, and only those perpetrators were granted amnesty (not forgiveness) who came forward and publicly accepted all that they had done. Could some have gamed the system and only been pretending when they came forward to accept their past atrocities, just in order to be granted amnesty? One never knows, but if anybody did in fact try to trick the system, they must have been very few, for the fact is that South Africa was able to move forward and did not deteriorate into violence and anarchy. That was reconciliation.
I was recently listening to some interviews and talks by a Jewish trauma specialist, Dr. Gabor Mate, whose family included both those who were killed during, and those who survived, the holocaust that was unleashed by Hitler against the Jews. And yet, when one Israeli woman in one of his audiences in North America asks him as she referred to the Hamas attack on October 7: “You tell us we must have compassion, but how do I find compassion for these animals?”, he first responds with a lot of facts about the horrors inflicted by so many groups of human beings including Israelis, Canadians and Americans on others. And then he points out how for instance 70% of Canadians know nothing of the horrors inflicted on indigenous children in the residential schools in Canada, though it is well-documented in Canada itself, and how many Israelis do not know of the horrors inflicted by their compatriots on the Palestinians. He then ends with: “I do not condone any of the horrors inflicted by anybody, but I don’t want to live in a world where we call people animals. If you want to live there, it is your choice. I want to live in a world where I want to understand people, and to know why they did what they did.” And then, feeling that he himself had not shown compassion to the woman who asked the question, he ends by saying: “I am sorry. I allowed myself to be triggered by what you said, and so I apologize to you. We live in different worlds, but I should not have allowed myself to respond in the way I did.”
Reconciliation is not to deny the harm inflicted by the other on us. It is to choose not to get mired in that swamp of demanding retribution, and to find a way to restore lives by moving forward. Because, holding on to the resentment or hurt has a huge price to pay (both at an individual and community level), and so we need to consciously choose, as a community, to let go. It is only then that we can move ahead. Forgiving can, of course, aid reconciliation, but it is not always a necessary condition.
In the parable of the Prodigal Son, the father chooses to forgive and reconcile with his wayward son, and wants to draw his elder son into an environment where they can all move forward, but the elder son cannot let go, because he wants retribution inflicted on the prodigal son who has wasted their family wealth. He has a point in what he is demanding, but his choice keeps him stuck in a milieu of anger and resentment. He will probably never be happy till retribution is inflicted. Reconciliation demands the ability to look beyond our own hurt, to see the larger good that would come to all of us, if we let go of our need to ensure that the other gets punished.
This is the attitude that we desperately need in our own world, where, as individuals, as cultural groups, as religious groups, as national groups, we nurse historical wrongs, and tie ourselves up in tangled knots demanding retribution - knots that never get loosened. I am reminded of the cattle walking around a threshing pole who may believe that they are free because they can walk freely, but the fact is that they are never really free until they uproot that central pole that ties them down to that circle. And unlike the cattle, it is we ourselves who keep ourselves tied to that central pole of demanding retributive justice.
Unless we as a human race choose to live side-by-side in peace, including in this effort all those who have been our adversaries and have harmed us in the past, we, as a world, will only perpetuate a cycle of hate and anger that spirals us downwards towards the worst in us as human beings. India and Pakistan, South Korea and North Korea, and even more starkly, Israel and Palestine, are examples of such self-defeating spirals to the bottom. West and East Germany found a way to bring down the Berlin wall - and today it would seem, despite all the problems that are still there, they seem to be better for it.
We as Christians are called to foster this reconciliation, for in Paul’s words from today’s reading: “…. 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 are called to be ambassadors of reconciliation in this world. But perhaps we first need to try to practice such reconciliation within our own families. I have seen siblings who cannot reconcile with each other, parents and children who cannot reconcile, cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents and many others who cannot reconcile - because the hurt that was caused is so much, that we find it difficult to do what Yahweh did for Israel, as we read in the first reading today, of rolling away the sins of the past. And so we continue to circle that pole of ‘just retribution’ for it seems to us that we have a right to demand retribution. Maybe we do, but the point is whether it is a right we want to exercise if we want to be Christ’s ambassadors of reconciliation.
First Reading: Joshua 5: 9a, 10-12
Then the Lord said to Joshua, “Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.” So the place has been called Gilgal to this day.
On the evening of the fourteenth day of the month, while camped at Gilgal on the plains of Jericho, the Israelites celebrated the Passover. The day after the Passover, that very day, they ate some of the produce of the land: unleavened bread and roasted grain. The manna stopped the day after[ they ate this food from the land; there was no longer any manna for the Israelites, but that year they ate the produce of Canaan.
Second Reading: Second Corinthians 5: 17-21
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that 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.
Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
Then Jesus told them this parable: “There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.
Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.
“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ So he got up and went to his father.
“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
“The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’
“But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.
“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’
“The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’
“‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”
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