In the summer of 2022, ­I had the opportunity to help chaperone the Mennonite Children’s Choir of Lancaster international tour. We traveled to Central Europe, spending most of our time in the Czech Republic.

On the first Sunday in the Czech Republic, the choir sang in a church in Česká Třebová. As the pastor on the tour, I was asked to share a short sermon. I drew from a text I frequently turn to: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:17-18, NIV).

Chatting with the interpreter, I learned “reconciliation” is a somewhat uncommon word in the Czech language. Thanks to the gift of biblical translation, he was able to work out that the theme of my message was smíření.

At one point in the sermon, I offered examples of the types of reconciliation Christ accomplished: between Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free, poor and rich. As I paused to think of other examples, the translator offered his own: “Smíření between Ukrainians and Russians?”

This Czech pastor, serving a congregation in the shadow of Russian bellicosity, was considering how reconciliation — not military victory or national defense — was the way of Jesus.

I’ve thought about that moment as I’ve served as moderator of Mennonite Church USA. As a convinced Anabaptist, I’m part of the Mennonite Church because I’ve come to see that reconciliation truly is the center of our work.

Paul continues his letter to the church in Corinth: “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.”

My Czech friend had hope for reconciliation in a conflict far more brutal than most of the ones I face. Yet, as I have encountered the parts of MC USA that remain unreconciled, I struggle to share his hope.

God has committed to us Mennonites the message of reconciliation, but it’s in danger of becoming as uncommon to our internal speech and practice as smíření is in Czech. While we work for peace in our external communities, our internal church life is marked by separation, withdrawal and schism.

Many of us have good reasons to resist reconciliation. Within our church, real harm has been done. The demands of justice sometimes seem to go unmet. Reconciliation has been used as a pretext to avoid accountability or make excuses for abuse. We wonder whether reconciliation across differences leads to unfaithfulness.

We probably have pettier reasons for why we resist reconciliation, too. Ego. Pride. Self-preservation.

At times, we gloss over our unreconciled state by couching it in the language of structure, bureaucracy, tradition or theology. “It’s not really a schism,” we tell ourselves. “It’s just a change in membership status.” While I have no doubt that we can foster healthy relationships outside our institutional structures, those structures remain the most visible and practical witness to our unity.

In my time as moderator, I have grieved for the Mennonite Church much more than I thought I would. This is the tradition that gave me a framework, language and examples for how to faithfully follow Jesus in paths of peace. I’m not sure I could have continued calling myself a Christian if I hadn’t discovered Anabaptism through Mennonite witnesses. We really do seek to be people of God’s peace, to experience and share the reconciliation that is the heart of the gospel. It saddens me to see how often our attempts to inhabit God’s peaceable kingdom are fractured by a lack of reconciliation.

Yet in the midst of our shortcomings, God’s work remains the same. “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us” (2 Corinthians 5:20).

Why would the world listen to God’s reconciliatory appeal from a people who mirror the divisiveness, polarization and animosity of the cultural moment? But if even the dysfunctional, factional church of Corinth can be offered God’s gift of reconciliation, then surely we can, too.

Pursuing reconciliation together would require difficult work. We would have to demonstrate love in a culture of skepticism, patience in a moment of acceleration, peace in the face of frustration. We would have to work through all our reasons — whether valid or petty — for resisting reconciliation. It would take far more time than most of us think we have.

Perhaps this is precisely the high call of God on our lives at this moment.

Echoing the Apostle Paul, I make this appeal for smíření to MC USA: As we are reconciled to God, may we also be reconciled one to another.

Jon Carlson is lead pastor of Forest Hills Mennonite Church in Leola, Pa., and moderator of Mennonite Church USA. A version of this article was published by MC USA at mennoniteusa.org/menno-snapshots/reconciled.