Mediator

Christ Brings Us to Confession Within the Dark Night of Our Soul

Christ, the scriptures tell us very specifically and more than once, is our mediator. Most of us probably have a decent understanding of what a mediator does in the worldly sense. When two parties have a conflict, their dispute can so cloud their judgment about a proper resolution that they seek a skilled, balanced, and disinterested person to help them resolve their dispute. That’s the role of a mediator, to bring the parties together. Importantly, a mediator is not a judge. Mediators do not ordinarily impose a resolution. Instead, a mediator helps the parties see that a compromise resolution is best for both of them rather than running the risk of a judgment imposed involuntarily on both parties. Judgments tend to have winners and losers. In mediation, everyone goes home happy or at least in agreement with the resolution.

You can clearly see in this brief description Christ’s role in the reconciliation process. Humankind stands opposed to God, beset with sin. A righteous God must be just and cannot simply ignore human sin. Christ stands in the gap between God and humankind, bringing the two sides together through his own human divinity or divine humanity and the sacrifice he endured for that renewed communion. We understand how Christ is our mediator in that fundamental sense. God has a serious dispute, indeed a deadly dispute, with us, and we have no reconciliation with God without Christ’s mediation. Christ is the great mediator, and thank God for his mediation.

But a mediator actually does more than resolve disputes. Because a mediator cannot impose the mediator’s will on the parties, forcing them into an outcome, the mediator must instead follow a process of reconciling the parties’ conflicting views. Some people think that mediators have it easy, with no direct stake in the game. But mediation is instead hard work, indeed the hardest work, and not merely because it requires the mediator’s sacrifice of time, effort, and skill. The mediator Christ has much more to do than to die in payment of the penalty only we are due. Christ must also bring us to willing our renewed communion with God.

Interestingly, modern mediators follow a method to bring the parties together. They begin the mediation with a joint meeting to set the ground rules. Typically, neither side accuses the other at the initial meeting, which is instead only about the rules. Further accusations help no one. You need instead to begin with civil rules for discourse. The mediator then separates the parties into what mediators call private caucuses, one party in one room and the other party in another room. Why? Because only in private caucuses can a party discuss frankly with the mediator all the things the party needs to confess. And each confession brings the responsible party a little closer to the offered resolution. The mediator then goes back and forth between the parties in private caucuses until the parties’ positions finally meet and overlap.

Some see Christ’s role as doing little more than bringing everyone together in one big stew of love. But in spiritual terms, Christ also sets the ground rules. And Christ both brings together and separates, separates and brings together, in private caucuses sometimes stretching deep into the soul’s night. Yes, Christ constantly intercedes with his Father on our behalf. Yet Christ also establishes the categories, informs the repentant soul, and receives the confessions of that soul. Christ as mediator has far more to do than to come down from the cross and rise in resurrection. He must also walk with each of us through that dark night of the soul.