In the Galapagos there is a species of bird, the Sula granti or as it is also known, the Nazca booby. This feathered creature reproduces by laying two eggs a couple days apart. But here’s the kicker! Mr. and Mrs. Sula granti only raise one chick. When the second egg hatches, the now several days old firstborn chick actually pushes the second newborn out of the nest to die. And the parents? They merely watch this go on. Apparently there’s a little Cuckoo in the Sula granti.
This is known as, and no, I am not making this up, obligate sibling murder. Naturalists call this the Cain and Abel syndrome. So to the Sula granti the second born child is just a spare, a mere afterthought, and simply gets booted out of the nest by sibling rivalry with apparently no care for reconciliation whatsoever. There is even a Sula granti t-shirt that sells among birders like Brewer’s playoff tickets among Milwaukeeans. It defiantly declares: “Reconciliation is for the Birds – Be a Nazca booby!” I did just make that up but you can’t tell me it wouldn’t sell!
I’m a second born child by one minute as an identical twin. Are you a second born child? I sure am glad my mom and dad didn’t get the t-shirt and be Nazca boobies. But you don’t have to be a second born child to experience the Cain and Abel syndrome. The spirit of Cain is so pervasive in our society. And who of us personally has not acted like a Cain to someone else, as if reconciliation is for the birds? What!? Am I my brother’s or sister’s keeper? If you are like me so often you’d rather kick people out of the nest, vote them off the island of whose “in,” or just walk away and leave well enough alone rather than do the hard work of loving reconciliation. After all, you’ll only get burned again, right?
But this is not the way of Jesus. Our Savior was no Sula granti. Notice when Paul teaches us that God decided to do his best reconciling work for each of as sinners stuck in the spirit of Cain. “For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life” (Romans 5:10). We once were God’s enemies. This is when God did his best reconciling work for us.
Not that we consciously hated God – mostly we were blind to our defensive attitude. If anything, we blamed him for not seeming closer to us. But our clueless resistance did not stop God. He moved toward us with relentless love and even with sacrifice through Christ. He took his own righteous wrath against our rage by the atoning death of his Son as our Substitute. No wonder, then, that we “rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation” (Roman 5:11). Sin is gone. His record is mine. Reconciled to God because he took the initiative.
God’s grace reminds us we didn’t earn our reconciliation, and we didn’t meet God in the middle. We contributed nothing except sullen indifference. God accomplished our reconciliation for us at the cross, and God was the one who offered our reconciliation to us in the gospel. All we ever did was receive it by grace with the empty hands of God-given faith.
But biblical reconciliation doesn’t stop with vertical love toward God. It goes further, reaching into horizontal love, with one another. It makes us uncomfortable in our lonely pride, and pushes us out of our comfort zone, to pursue peace with precisely the people we naturally find most difficult, pessimistic, or loveless.
Jesus has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, creating a new community by reconciling us all to God on the same terms – his own broken body on the cross. His great message to us now is peace, since we all share the same access to God. How can we stomach a genuine lack of fellowship any longer between Pastor and parishioner, brother and sister? How is it possible to leave some people in the nest, while denying access to others or pushing them out? How can we nurse our racial prejudices or nurse our nepotism? We all come to God together by the reconciling power of the gospel and that same gospel compels us to seek to reconcile with others irrespective of their character or charisma.
A farmer had a neighbor, a constant complainer, always a louse in his liver, and a man who had kicked him from the nest of friendship in Nazca booby fashion on more than one occasion. The farmer decided he was going to reconcile with this sour apple of a man and get him to admit for once in their relationship that he had brought him joy and wonder. So he went out and bought this farmer – at great expense – the world’s greatest hunting dog. He trained it thoroughly and invited his joyless loveless neighbor to go hunting with him.
“Here I got this for you because I love you,” said the neighbor to the farmer. “It’s the world’s greatest hunting dog, and it is all yours. Let me show you!” He showed the less than impressed farmer how that dog could stand point motionless for 10 to 15 minutes, pick up a scent from a mile away, obey amazing multiple commands in a snap. No response from the gargoyle like farmer. None. From the blind the neighbor shot a duck that landed in the middle of the pond. On command the dog trotted out, walked on the surface of the water, retrieved the bird, and dropped him at the feet of the neighbor in breathless fashion. To which the farmer slowly responded, “Your dog, can’t swim, can he?”
Let’s ask ourselves some hard questions: Who are we keeping our distance from? Who are we avoiding? Who are we hoping we won’t run into when we go to worship? Whose presence makes us feel angry or awkward because of some past history? To whom might we owe an apology? If we say we love the gospel of reconciliation, we don’t want to let any relational breakdown go on and on without at least trying to reconcile. This is the way of Christ’s reconciling love. It is! And if we are unwilling to try, then let’s admit it: we are trifling with God. We are, in practice, denying the gospel and in desperate need of repentance.
The Holy Spirit helps us prove our sincerity about the vertical gospel of reconciliation in Christ through our willingness to move toward horizontal relationships that need reconciliation. Simply put – love for Jesus engenders love for others. Maybe that person or that church or that group won’t listen to us. But still, we want to and must try to reconcile. And we might be surprised at how God blesses our imperfect but prayerful effort to give a neighbor joy and wonder in Jesus. God has not only reconciled us to himself, but he has given us the ministry of reconciliation. What are we waiting for? Let’s go make some peace. After all, reconciliation is not for the birds but for those blessed by a great love in Jesus.
