Moving Forward With God’s Help

Q. What is the mission of the Church?

A. The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.

An Outline of the Faith commonly called the Catechism – Book of Common Prayer page 855

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.

2 Corinthians 5:18-19

For an interminable amount of time we have been bombarded with divisive messages. The negative election landscape both locally and nationally has consumed our airwaves, our roads and highways, and much of our public discourse for months.

On more than one occasion, I have wondered what impression an alien who landed here from another planet would have. What would their assessment of who we are as a people be? My hunch is they would quickly assume that we are a divided — if not broken — world.

The elections are over, leaving some overjoyed and others devastated. Now what? How do we as a people move forward? And what is the role — even responsibility — of people of faith?

Reconciliation and restoration is at the heart of the mission God invites us to be a part of. How will we engage in God’s mission in a post-election world? What concrete steps will we take – regardless of our perspective on the outcome of how things turned out – that demonstrates our participation in reconciliation and restoration?

Trust me, I am acutely aware this is not easy work. The painful reality is that it is always easier to break down, denigrate, marginalize, or even destroy than it is to reconcile, restore, or heal. Yet, our calling is clear: to be about the ministry of reconciliation and to restore all people to unity with God and each other.

Now what? How do we move forward? As we state in our Baptism, “I WILL WITH GOD’S HELP!”