This is the first of a few brief posts with thoughts I had and scribbled on the back of my name tag at the recent church convention I attended. (heh, heh, my anonymity is so mysterious, isn't it?)
I got to go to a breakfast one morning for people within the denomination working on anti-racism stuff. It was nice to see so many different people there. The speaker was a professor with a new book out about the history of African-Americans within our church. And he said this amazing thing...
He talked about the communion table, the experience of the Lord's Supper, as something very similar to South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
At first, it seems like a metaphor, but the more you think about it, the more you realize how literal a comparison it is. We talk about what happened, we confess our role in it, we ask for and receive and celebrate forgiveness and unity. Wow.
If that is the case (and I'm convinced that it is), then why are so many people so threatened by suggestions that Truth and Reconciliation Commissions could be helpful in certain other situations* and simultaneously so un-threatened by communion? Which one do you suppose we're sapping of its power?
*In my community, they were trying to do something like what South Africa did, but they were pressured into calling it a "Healing and Reconciliation" project, instead of "Truth and Reconciliation." Supposedly, people were too "intimidated" by the word "truth." I don't get how people don't understand that you can't have either healing or reconciliation without first having truth.
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