COME HOLY SPIRIT, HEAL AND RECONCILE: CALLED IN CHRIST TO BE RECONCILING AND HEALING COMMUNITIES

Abstract

“Come Holy Spirit, heal and reconcile!”, the pneumato-centric theme of the forthcoming world mission conference, is a prayer of mutuality. While we invite the Holy Spirit to come to ud (to heal and reconcile), we are simultaneoudly invited by the Spirit of God to co-journey with God on the mission route. In several ways, the conference theme is a re-affirmation of the missio Dei paradigm. A Spirit-centric theme also provides us with a mission agenda of integral liberation, as the Holy Spirit is portrayed as the divine force of liberation throughout the Bible. This is of crucial import in today's world that is governed and ruled by several forces of injustice and oppres-dion. The distinct focus on the Holy Spirit will certainly help us in developing a trinitarian framework for a mission of identity affirmation. In the trinitarian divine family, the identity and dignity of each perdon is recognised. The focud on the Holy Spirit who trandcendd both androcentrism and antbropocentrism, is relevant in addressing the ecological issues of our times from a mission perspective. The sub-title of the conference, “Called in Christ to be reconciling and healing com-munities”, is as important as the pneumato-centric main theme. This is because invoking the Spirit without any reference to the person of Jesus Christ can lead to either a militant form of pneumato-monism, or to syncretum. The dub-title affirns the fact that it is the Spirit of Christ who is being invoked here. Reconciliation, brought about by the Spirit of Chrst most decisively on the cross, is a trinitarian state of being, i.e. a state of reconciled diversity where everyone enjoys freedom, identity and equality. This, however, is a costly affair becuse it required the breaking down of the barriers and walls of separation. However, it needs to be reaffirmed, particularly in a context where there are attempts to de-link reconciliation from justice issues, because it implies that reconciliation entail) struggles for liberation and justice. The focus on healing is also significant because healing figures as a central theme in the soterblogy of almost all major confessions. The challenge of HIV/AIDS and the current ecological impasse raise several questions about the (in)adequacy of traditional understandings of healing. Thus, the conference theme invites us to address these contemporary mission concerns in a new and pertinent manncr.