October 2024- Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot?
Nicola and I are no longer on speaking terms’. Those were the chilling and frank words of Alex Salmond in the recent BBC documentary 1 exploring the breakdown of the long-term political partnership between him and Nicola Sturgeon. She in turn spoke about the uneasy feeling that she lives with when she considers that some of the best moments of her life feature the man who she is now at odds with. Certainly no love lost in this textbook impasse.
When sorry seems to be the hardest word
As I watched, there was one thing in particular that struck me. The cause that they both so passionately believe in and have given their lives to, Scottish independence, is not big enough to encourage them to find a way through their difficulties. There is little doubt that the independence cause has suffered as a result of their relational stalemate.
The Bible of course is no stranger to relational tensions. Cain and Abel 2 . Joseph and his brothers 3 . David and his son Absalom 4 . Paul and Barnabbas 5 . It’s par for the course in life east of Eden.
One of the most prominent is the relational breakdown that happened between Euodiaand Syntyche in the Phillippian church. The fact that Paul names both of them illustrates what a high profile and potentiality divisive breakdown this was. These two prominent women weren’t non-believers. Nor were they young believers. These women were Paul’s co-workers in the gospel who had laboured with him side by side. 6 Indeed, this may well be the issue that Paul was writing to address as he encourages the church to embody the humility of Christ in their relationships with one another.
When God in the gospel speaks a bigger word
What’s interesting is that Paul doesn’t tell Euodia and Syntyche to agree to disagree. That modern mantra just won’t cut it. No, Paul gives them something much more viscous and powerful than that. He tells them to agree in the Lord. In other words, the gospel gives these two individuals a bigger story in which they can seek an intentional, gracious, humble and patient reconciliation to their differences.
Australian author and speaker Stephen McAlpine writes; But imagine a church in which, when we get it wrong, we don’t have to cancel anyone or leave the community and find another one because sorting out the problem is too hard. What if neither we hid our sin nor held the sins of others against them,but in both instances sought confession and redress7 In our world that too easily walks away, how different the body of Christ.
So is there someone is your life right now you need to reach out to? Is there a situation that the Spirit is laying on your heart that you need to sort? My heroes through the years are those everyday Christians who I’ve watched make themselves extremely vulnerable as they sought a restored relationship with a brother or sister. Reconciliation, after all, is the very heart of the gospel itself.
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1 Salmond and Sturgeon: A Troubled Union, BBC documentary first aired 10 Sep 2024.
2 Genesis 4
3 Genesis 37
4 2 Samuel 15-19
5 Acts 15:36
6 Philippians 4:3
7 S. McAlpine, Futureproof, p.61.
