Love Reconciles
Bishop Festo Kivengere, 1919-1988
In our community, after Christians were
liberated by the power of the risen Lord, people of all sorts were shaken by
contact with them.
Take, for instance, a Muslim shopkeeper. One
day a customer came into his shop and said, "Here, these 200 shillings are
yours. I cheated you out of this money and you didn't find out." He
explained how it happened.
"Well! Why do you bring it now?"
"Jesus has changed my life and has told me
to pay my debt to you. I felt poor with 200 shillings in my pocket, but I am a
rich man now that you have them. Please forgive me."
In those days that was a lot of money, and so
when the man left,
the shopkeeper's mouth was gaping.
Some British officials were jarred. At times
there were so many people waiting outside to return or pay things that the
district commissioner complained that it was hard to get his work done.
A man would say, "I have evaded my taxes
for ten years; here is a cow to pay them."
Another would say, "Here, sir, please take
this shovel which I stole from the government when I worked on the road
crew."
The officer would ask, "Why did you bring
it back?"
"I was arrested, sir."
"Who did that?"
"Jesus did."
Some British colonial officers were educated
agnostics, but they learned some practical theology from humble people.
When Jesus took hold of me, these believers in
whose fellowship I found myself said, "Be careful to obey the
Lord. Do quickly whatever He tells you to do."
Gradually I realized that I had a lot of things
to make right. The Monday morning after I met Jesus, before starting to teach
my class in the boys' school, I asked them to forgive me for treating them as
mere cases to receive instruction. I told them that Jesus had turned me around
and opened my eyes to see them as my precious brothers.
Most of the boys were glad. All were surprised.
After school and on weekends, Jesus sent me to
the town and through the fields to people I had cheated, slandered, or hurt, to
ask forgiveness. Paying debts came easy. When the risen Christ takes His throne
in the heart, no poverty is there, because He is King, rich in mercy, grace and
fullness. The Holy Spirit floods the heart and liberates the whole personality.
My uncle, the chief, resented what had happened
to me because I had been his stalwart ally.
He crossed my name out of the tribal book as
dead.
Then one night his wife was converted in their
bedroom. There was no preacher there. The Holy Spirit simply penetrated the
room. The woman woke up crying like a baby and began asking my uncle's
forgiveness for a great many things. He shouted, "This thing is invading
even the bedroom at night. There is no privacy left!"
Our women used to put veils over their faces to
hide their beauty. Now the chief's wife put off the veil and began to speak
publicly. Everybody expected her to collapse and faint, but she told the new
things that Jesus had done for her. She was talked about everywhere, and my
uncle was sick with anger. Whatever had happened to tradition and the ancient
culture?
After fifteen years of battle, in the year
1956, my uncle surrendered to Jesus Christ. He returned thousands of shillings
to people he had falsely fined. People he had oppressed he summoned and asked
to forgive him. He emptied his bank account and gave back many head of cattle.
All knew that the chief had changed, and his enemies became his friends.
At his funeral, there was a great gathering.
Christians were singing "Hallelujah" and speaking the praises of the
Saviour. The occasion became a resurrection as well as a burial because a
number of people came to the Lord, including his own elder brother, another
uncle of mine who had been a staunch pagan.
One day soon after I met the Lord I felt God
was saying to me, "Go and be reconciled with your step-father." He
was not a Christian and things had been bad between us for years. So I went to
his home with a feeling of fear. What would he do to me?
He was sitting outside his home. He looked at
me coldly. I mumbled and blurted out something about the hatred I had had for
him being gone and that I loved him now.
"I knew you hated me," he observed,
studying me.
"You knew only a little. I came to tell
you the whole story and to say that it is all over. Please forgive me."
An hour later he rose and put his arms around
me, and we stood there for a while. I was overcome. I never expected such
a reaction, but love is a language which anyone can understand. The barrier was
gone and we became friends; our homes are open to each other.
Nothing short of Jesus' poured-out love on the
cross could have made possible the mending of that estrangement. Not even the
tribal ceremony of the "Karabo" (Atonement) could have done it.
In our tribe the "Karabo" was a
ritual that was supposed to end hatred and revenge. It was done after there had
been a murder, usually an accidental one when people were drunk. It was in
order to prevent more killing, for otherwise revenge would have been taken on
all the members of the murderer's clan.
When the family of the killer acknowledged the
culprit's guilt and sought reconciliation, then all the elders of the tribe
were called together in solemn assembly under the sacred oak in the presence of
the king.
With all the witnesses around him, the priest
slaughtered a perfect cow or sheep at the junction of two main paths. Both the
offender and one of the offended, in slow motion, and savoring the meaning of
it, laid down their weapons. Together they came to the sacrifice and plunged
their hands into the blood. Then they soberly shook hands, each using both
hands.
An audible sigh of relief could be heard around
the circle. Dancing and celebration followed. Now there could be no more
thought of avenging the dead. The heads of all the clans had witnessed that the
guilt was taken care of and the hatred was supposed to be dissolved. The
customary laws of hospitality were restored and normal brotherly loyalty in the
tribe observed. Outwardly this worked, but it takes the far costlier sacrifice
of the bleeding love of God's Son to heal inward resentments.
I experienced the effectiveness of that healing
on a weekend soon after. The Holy Spirit had reminded me that I hated a
white man — a missionary. He lived fifty miles away, so I thought I need not do
anything. But the Spirit said, "Take your bicycle on the weekend and go to
see this man. Now that you are liberated, he is your brother."
"My brother? An Englishman?" I
nearly fell over.
"Yes, your brother. You have hated your
brother."
"What shall I do when I see him? You know
him, Lord."
"Yes, I know him. Tell him that you love
him."
That fifty miles to Kabale had never seemed so
hard. The rivers seemed much wider than usual and the escarpment steeper than I
had ever seen it. Approaching the house, I was tired and frightened and hoped
he was not at home.
He was there, and suddenly I was standing in
his proper English living room telling him what Christ had done for me, that I
was free, and saw him now as my brother.
"I'm sorry," I said. "For the
past five years I have hated you and talked against you. I must have made your
life terribly difficult. Please forgive me."
English though he was, there were tears in his
eyes and we put our arms around each other. When I left, I was no longer his enemy
but his beloved brother. What a change!
On the way home, my bicycle flew as if it had a
motor on it. My heart was beating fast, my world was different, and in that
house there was no longer a lonely "European" but a brother — a true
brother to this day. Many times since then I have proved that the cross is the
end of race prejudice, and of separating walls of all kinds.
Zacchaeus, the little publican, came into that
same kind of joy after he had been at a distance from society [Luke 19:1-9]. In
Jesus there was a hand outstretched to restore him to the humanity he had lost.
The warmth of God's Son penetrated that guilty heart, releasing him from his
prison.
I can see him standing there, his face relaxed,
with the corroding forces of selfishness removed. His values had changed and he
couldn't help saying, "Master, if I have cheated or defrauded anyone, I
will restore it fourfold!"
The scribes must have fidgeted. They had never
heard anything like that before.
The following day in his office,
"Zack," as I call him, was explaining to a man about his taxes:
"You paid sixty, but ten of that I stole. I am returning fourfold, so
here, take this forty."
"Wha-at! What happened?"
"Jesus of Nazareth came home with me, and
I no longer feel the same. I have discovered myself and you too!"
When that man told his news, there must have
been a line-up outside Zack's office. So enmities died and walls were removed
in the light of the love of God...who gave the gift of humanity and knows how
to restore it.
I don't believe that those first wonderful days
were the last time in Zack's life that he knew the fresh joy of restoration
into the love of God and the love of his fellows. If his experience was
anything like mine and others, he heard again and again, in the years that
followed, that quiet Inner Voice [John 16:8] that spoke of what had gone
wrong to bring in tension or a barrier, and he took the quick way back into
fellowship — the way of the cross.
Source: “Love Reconciles,” in Revolutionary Love by Festo
Kivengere, 1919-1988; [pp.25-30, 1983, CLC , PA
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