Don Friesen
Some two centuries ago a Christian group in Germany broke with the Lutheran Church and was promptly banned from meeting. They soon moved to North America and settled in Pennsylvania. They called their community "Harmony," their intent to live in harmony. Their template was the New Testament community in Acts, so they held their goods in common. Nonviolent pacifists, they refused to serve in the military. Their community grew, and became prosperous.
They began encountering disharmony with neighbouring people – and also had difficulty growing grapes for their winery – so after a decade they moved to Indiana, having sold their town to Mennonites for ten times the amount originally paid. They called their new community New Harmony. Their success increased, in agriculture and manufacturing. Their new settlement boasted a church, a tavern, mills, and nicely-appointed homes, but being too far from the Eastern markets and encountering disagreeable elements over abolition, which they favoured, they moved back to Pennsylvania after a decade.
They called their third settlement, Economy, after the spiritual ideal of a Divine Economy, but it was their human economy that prospered, such that they dominated the trade and markets of Pittsburgh and down the Ohio River. Now their community also boasted a clothing factory, a sawmill, a tannery, vineyards and a distillery. They produced high quality silk for garments; built a museum containing fine paintings; and maintained their own orchestra.
The members of this harmonious community were industrious and utilized the latest technologies of the day in their factories. They helped build the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad, established a savings institution, a brick works, a lumber company, and an oil company. They donated land for the construction of Geneva College. They exerted a major influence on the economic development of Western Pennsylvania. They were accused of being a monopoly, some critics advocating that the state dissolve the community, but the community prevailed.
The story of this community is fascinating. Their success, however, was tempered by two ideas they held dear. Firstly, their founder, Johann Georg Rapp (1757-1847), predicted that on September 15, 1829 Christ would begin his reign on earth, and when his predictions did not come to pass dissension and disharmony set in. Secondly, this community practised celibacy, although not with the same fervour and consistency as the Shakers, with whom they had close relations. They suffered a serious division over this issue, losing a third of their members, mostly young men and women who had developed doubts about celibacy. By the end of the nineteenth century the community, with its depleted membership of aged people, was on the verge of bankruptcy. They were also overwhelmed with litigation instigated by would-be heirs, and the community was formally dissolved in 1906, Harmony having become defunct!
Harmony lives on, however, at Twin Oaks Community, a contemporary community of a hundred people in Virginia. Twin Oaks names all of its buildings after defunct communities, and "Harmony" is the name of one of the residences which houses the community wood-shop and laundry area. It's rather sad, a community that started out trying to live out a New Testament ideal of the Church, ending up as a laundry room!
A Beautiful, but Loaded, Tribute to Reconciliation
Harmony is a noble idea and ideal, and so is reconciliation, which is the restoration of harmony, and in our passage from the Epistles the Apostle Paul waxes poetic about it. This one of Scripture's finest texts on reconciliation. Several sentences and phrases in the passage are often excerpted as one-liners, such as verse 20: "We are ambassadors for Christ" (2 Corinthians 5:20), but there are others:
Just as disharmony eroded the inspiring story of the Harmony community, however, so there is underneath Paul's eloquent passage a hint of disharmony. After all, one would not promote reconciliation unless something needed to be reconciled. Reconciliation presupposes, if not irreconcilable differences, differences that are not now reconciled! The upbeat nature of Paul's words belies the tense relationship between Paul and the Corinthians at the time of his writing.
The situation was this: Paul felt that he was being viewed from a "human point of view," a contention that comes to fuller expression in later chapters (2 Corinthians 10-11) in which Paul musters a defence of his ministry. The Corinthians weren't crazy about Paul; they felt he didn't have the powerful presence of more charismatic leaders that captivated them – for a while, that is, until the next exciting apostolic-wanna-be came along. These preachers had been discrediting Paul and claiming that they had more impressive credentials. They stressed appearances over integrity and character. (5:12, CEV)
Paul, for his part, was pained that a community in which he had invested so heavily was drawn to apostles other than him. It was a personal affront, yes, but the Corinthians were also letting themselves be lured by those who preached a different Jesus than the one Paul knew. All of his apostolic efforts were slipping away through the cunning of those whose smooth patter promised glow and glitter. You know the kind! Nowadays they have television shows!
Paul felt bad about the break in their relationship. He desperately desired reconciliation with the Corinthian community, and within three verses of our passage Paul uses the word, "reconciliation," five times! God, through Christ, reconciles the world to Himself, and God has entrusted the ministry and message of reconciliation to us. "God is making his appeal through us," he writes. (2 Corinthians 5:20)
Paul saw himself as speaking for God; this is, after all, what ambassadors do. They need to adequately represent the authority that sent them and speak on behalf of whom they represent. Admittedly, it's a tricky situation. No doubt the apostolic wanna-be's were also purporting to speak for God. Paul was no doormat, and he mounts a spirited defence of his ministry, but we also see a very humble Paul, pleading with the Corinthian community not to forsake the essence of the gospel – the reconciling love of Christ. (2 Corinthians 5:11-15)
The message of reconciliation also finds expression elsewhere in the New Testament. Writing to the Ephesian congregation, Paul reminds them that they were once "strangers to the covenants of promise" (Ephesians 2:12), but God "brought (them) near...." (2:13) And applying this plan of reconciliation to Jewish-Gentile relations, Paul writes that Christ "made both groups into one, (having) broken down the dividing wall, ...the hostility between us" (2:14), his intent being to " create ...one new humanity in place of ...two, thus making peace, and (reconciling) both groups to God in one body...." (2:15-16) This double reconciliation – to God and to our fellow human beings – was as applicable to the Corinthians as it was to the Ephesians, and to us.
No other Solution?
It's a formidable challenge Paul had taken on – to work for the reconciliation of two communities who long had been at enmity with each other – but Paul was convinced that as God reconciled humanity to Himself, so God's powerful Spirit could reconcile human beings to each other. The two are inextricably linked. Human reconciliation is the fruit of our reconciliation with God. It requires, however, a recognition of our estrangement, the humility to examine our own complicity in division, and a lot of hard work.
Calvin and Hobbes, one of the more theological comic strips of our day, features a precocious six-year-old boy and his stuffed tiger. In one strip, Calvin confesses to Hobbes, "I feel bad I called Susie names and hurt her feelings. I'm sorry I did that." To which Hobbes replies, "Maybe you should apologize to her." Calvin thinks about it for a moment and then says, "I keep hoping there's a less obvious solution."
Wouldn't that be nice? Why can't we be reconciled without me having to admit my mistakes, and without changing any of my behaviour that may have contributed to the absence of harmony. It's difficult. Two men who belonged to the same club had a long-standing quarrel, and one New Year's Eve another member of the club urged one of them to reconcile with the man with whom he had a quarrel. "It is very unkind to be unfriendly at such a time," said the friend. "Go over now and wish him a happy New Year." Chastised, he crossed the room and spoke to the other man, saying, "I wish you a happy New Year," he said, "but only one."
Reconciliation is difficult. Like Calvin, I wish there was a less obvious solution to estrangement, for the lack of a solution can be most distressing. Elizabeth Barret Browning (1806-1861), one of the most prominent and popular poets of the Victorian era, was a woman of great learning. She was another precocious child, having read passages from John Milton's Paradise Lost and a number of Shakespearean plays before the age of ten! By the age of twenty she had read the principal Greek and Latin authors and Dante's Inferno in their original languages. She learned Hebrew and read the Old Testament from beginning to end in its original language.
Elizabeth loved her father, but he had a strange custom; he disinherited any of his children who married. So when Elizabeth met and married Robert Browning (1812-1889), her father disowned her and refused to see her again. Robert and Elizabeth moved to Italy, but Elizabeth wrote her father almost weekly, asking for a reconciliation. He never replied, and after a decade Elizabeth received, by post, a huge box, which to her dismay contained all of the letters she had written to her father. Not one had been opened! Today those loving letters are among the most beautiful in classical English literature, but the stubborn old fool did not have the suppleness of spirit, or character, to admit his foolishness.
I witnessed, as a young child – not a precocious one – in fact, a rather dull – but sensitive – child ... I witnessed any number of disharmonious relationships in my family and felt their insidious effects. Even as a child the solution was obvious to me – be reconciled to one another! Sadly, some of these broken relationships followed people right to the grave! Christians are not immune to the poison of intractability.
Reconciliation is Difficult and Demanding Spiritual Discipline
Reconciliation is difficult and a demanding spiritual discipline, on a personal level as well as on more complex and encompassing community levels. An interesting event will happen this summer in Germany, when the Lutheran World Federation full assembly will meet in Stuttgart, and ask forgiveness for the Lutheran role in the persecution of Anabaptists. This act of contrition is the fruit of a five-year conversation between Lutheran and Mennonite leaders. The Mennonite World Conference is committed to grant that request, not blithely, but in a spirit of reconciliation and humility. Recently, however, there was an unfortunate headline in the Canadian Mennonite (November 16, 2009) that did not reflect a reconciling spirit. The national leader of our church – Mennonite Church Canada – was quick to respond, describing the process as a "path of healing and reconciliation," and as the "fruit of the power of God's relentless grace: the same all-encompassing grace of God that Lutherans have taught us to embrace more fully in our own confession and spiritual walk." (Robert J. Suderman, Canadian Mennonite, January 11, 2010)
We have a choice: we can diminish the Lutheran request, wondering what good it does coming several centuries too late – or – we can see "this courageous action as an opportunity for self-examination". (Jeremy Bergen, cited by Bert Lobe, Mennonite World Conference North America representative) Both communities have sinned by keeping these historic divisions alive.
One of the gifts the season of Lent gives us is an opportunity to recognize and admit the sin and waywardness within and among us. Only as we recognize and confess our sin will we experience the joy of reconciliation, immortalized so movingly in the parable of the prodigal child, whom God welcomed with an exuberant embrace and with a feast of celebration! So God wishes to welcome us home.
The Harmony community is also described in The Palgrave Companion to North American Utopias, 2004, by John W. Friesen and Virginia Lyons Friesen.
No doubt it was beautiful phrases like this that inspired and upheld the Harmonists.
Quotations of Scripture are from the New Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise noted.