The psalmist this Sunday assures us that the Lord secures justice for the oppressed. Ever since a bloody civil war tore the nation of China apart in 1949, Taiwan and Communist China have had different ideas about what constitutes justice and what constitutes oppression. Now something new is afoot—or is it? The presidents of China and Taiwan may be making history when they meet for the first time this weekend, but the surprise summit has been greeted with suspicion and some anger in Taiwan, coming as it does at extremely short notice just two months before elections there. Leaders of the two sides have not met since Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists lost the Chinese civil war to Mao Zedong’s Communists and fled to the island of Taiwan.

Homily hint: We in the U.S. know from our own history that nothing tears at a nation more deeply than a civil war. While mistrust is understandable after such a conflict, the only way forward for any divided people is to sit down and start talking through their differences face to face. Efforts at reconciliation should be encouraged wherever people find themselves divided.

For more on the meeting between Chinese and Taiwanese leaders, see: The leaders of China and Taiwan to meet, amid widespread skepticism