September-October 1997
PERSONALRepairers of the BreachFinding strength in shared by Sally Shoemaker Robinson | 
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You will
rebuild those houses left
in ruins for years; you will
be known as a builder and repairer of city walls and streets.
-Isaiah 58:12, CEV
Ruined houses and breached walls: Why do these seem to be such powerful images for preacher and politician alike in these troubled times?
And why are so many leaders, of so many varieties of communities of faith, feeling that people of faith are being called into new awareness of these breached walls and ruined houses and called by God to new ministries of rebuilding and creating bridges across all kinds of boundaries that divide us?
Yet most of us have no idea how to go about building bridges or "repairing the breach."
Several recent experiences have kindled my own excitement about a tool already in our hands, one we already know how to use. At a conference last fall in Canada, delegates from 135 countries gathered for the World Assembly of the United Bible Societies.
The planners of the conference had decided that each day, after a plenary Bible study session, we would move into groups of 10 to discuss the presentation. I was assigned to a group from Asia, Central Europe, Western Europe, New Zealand, Africa -- everywhere!
On day one, I was disappointed. Not much form or structure, a few tentative thoughts shared. On day two, we got as far as learning first names and nationality. On day three, things were better -- we actually began to talk and share insights on the Bible study. By day four, we were engaged and listening. By day five, we had become a family.
On the last day, as we exchanged addresses, we pledged to pray for one another daily, maybe forever. With our Bibles open to the Word, we were strangers no longer.
I have talked with counselors and mediators about this phenomenon, and all agree that a shared experience and at least one shared understanding can be the beginning of reconciliation in a troubled relationship. It is my experience that the most powerful of shared understandings takes place when we come together around our sacred text, the Bible.
Why should that be surprising? Jesus, in our Christian Scriptures, promised that when two or three are gathered "in his name," he would be there in the midst of us. That promise is echoed over and over in the Hebrew Scriptures as well. So we may gather in interfaith groups across all boundaries that divide us and learn to be "repairers." Imagine what would happen in this nation if every faith community decided to reach out to another unlike itself and gather to study God's Word.
When we undertake such a thing, we need to remember some ground rules: God does not love "me" or "my way" better than "you" or "your way." God has no favorites. We each have the same birthright as God's own children. And so, too, we need to accept that "rightness" and "wrongness" may look very different to others -- and no one of us can be sure God thinks we are right! That allows for a wonderful openness of hearts to the spirit. We might learn something entirely new.
What we have agreed to do is to struggle to discern God's Word as it might have been understood by the first hearers, and to try to discern God's Word for us now. In so doing, God is with us, and by God's grace, we discover we have become truly "repairers of the breach" and "builders and repairers of ruined streets."
Sally Shoemaker Robinson is chairman of the board of the American Bible Society.