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Good morning. When, 25 years ago today, the plane carrying the Rwandan and Burundian Presidents was shot down, it became the catalyst for the ongoing Rwandan civil war to tip over into genocide. In the following 100 days, close to a million people were killed, as the country descended into ethnic based violence. One survivor of the genocide, who has worked for many years to bring healing and reconciliation to his traumatised nation is Anglican priest Dr Antoine Rutayisire. He has also stressed a wider need for people actively to oppose situations of injustice wherever they occur, since these too readily become seedbeds for prejudice, oppression, violence and worse. He offers this vivid picture of the dynamics of division:‘If I were to step on a nail in your hallway and cry out in pain, you would come running and throw away the nail so it could not hurt anyone else. But I would still be injured. Throwing away the nail does not heal my foot.’ And he spells out the consequences: ‘The injustice has been removed, but healing has not been embarked upon. That wound and the pain it generates are dangerous.’
I can hardly begin to grasp the scale of woundedness and pain in Rwanda, and the enormity of the work of reconciliation, but I am struck by Dr Rutayisire’s insistence that all of us can make a difference. Whoever we are, wherever we are, he calls us to wake out of apathy and even complicity, opening our eyes to blind spots where we have failed to see injustice.Then we can live as the transforming people and communities Christ calls us to be.  Holy God, you reconciled the world to yourself in Christ, and entrust your ministry of reconciliation to us. Open our eyes to do our bit, here and now. Amen.