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Scripture: Matthew 18:15-20

Some of you have probably heard about the church where the pastor and the music director were not getting along. It wasn’t too noticeable until it starting manifesting itself in Sunday morning worship. It began the Sunday that the pastor preached about commitment and being dedicated to service, the music director led the choir in singing, “I Shall Not Be, I Shall Not Be Moved.” The next Sunday, the pastor talked about the importance of tithing and giving with a cheerful heart. The music director led the song, “Jesus Paid It All.” The Sunday after that, the pastor preached about gossip and spreading rumors. The music director led the song, “I Love to Tell the Story.” The pastor became discouraged and told the congregation the next Sunday that he was considering resigning. The music director led the song, “O, Why Not Tonight?” The pastor did resign and told the congregation the next Sunday that it was Jesus who led him there and it was Jesus who was leading him another direction. The music director chose the song, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”

Family, churches, organizations—they all have conflict—it’s part of being in a community. A pastor tells the story of two women, both leaders in their church named Alice and Anne. Alice was drawing up a list of people to head up the annual missions fund drive. She didn’t intend to hurt anyone’s feelings. She just thought that some new leadership on the committee would be good, so she left off Anne’s name.

Of course, it got back to Alice that Anne’s feelings had been hurt when she saw she was left out. Alice’s response to these hurt feelings was, “Everyone is sick and tired of being ordered around by Anne. Her high-handed ways are getting on people’s nerves, so I took it upon myself to let her sit this one out.” (Now that was a helpful comment, wasn’t it?)

Anne’s response was to quietly withdraw from activities that fall. However, she just couldn’t keep quiet and started talking to others (not Alice) about the fund drive and how it was going to fail. She also made the comment that Alice was ruining the church with her deceitful ways. (Things were heating up.)

Matters, as matters often do in any organization, went from bad to worse. By Spring, the church was split into those who wanted a revitalized church with new leadership and those who had been at the helm for 20-some years and had held the church together through thick and thin. In other words, the church was divided between those on Alice’s side and those on Anne’s side. Anne was proud that people had rallied behind her. Alice said that Anne’s underhanded ways only proved how unsuitable she was for church leadership. (It’s sounding a bit like the presidential campaign, isn’t it?) Some people just thrive on this kind of drama.

This continued through the summer, and it may have gone on into the next yea; but along came September, Year A of the Lectionary Cycle. George Mason, the worship leader for that Sunday stood and read the appointed lesson, Matthew 18:15-20. If a fellow believer hurts you, go and tell him—work it out between the two of you. If she listens, you’ve made a friend. If he won’t listen, take one or two others along so that the presence of witnesses will keep things honest, and try again. If she still won’t listen, tell the church. If he won’t listen to the church, you’ll have to start over from scratch, confront her with the need for repentance, and offer again God’s forgiving love…When two of you get together on anything at all on earth and make a prayer of it, my Father in heaven goes into action. And when two or three of you are together because of me, you can be sure that I’ll be there.

Anne straightened herself right up where she was sitting. It was as if this word of the Scripture had been addressed directly at her. She nervously looked around at the people around her to see if they were looking at her. Were they aware that the Bible was talking about her, speaking to her, her alone? She had clearly been wronged by Alice. Everyone said so, or at least her closest friends in the congregation had said so. Yet what had Anne done? She had silently seethed, then she had gathered her supporters around her. But she never directly spoke to Alice about it. That was what Jesus clearly said she ought to do. Had she the courage to do that?

Anne prayed about it. She thought about what she ought to do. She sat down and wrote a letter to Alice, so she could put her words exactly as she desired. She told Alice that this had been one of the most painful years of her life in the church. She told Alice that, while she had probably not intended to hurt her, she had. She asked: for the good of the church, for their own good, would Alice be willing to meet with her to talk.

Well, the short of it is, Alice was willing. The two met over lunch. There were tears. Alice apologized. Anne took responsibility for her actions, and they were reconciled.

Later, Alice would often say how grateful she was that Anne took the initiative and had the courage to come to her. Anne would say that she did it, not so much out of courage, but rather out of love. She loved her church; she even loved Alice, and couldn’t bear for things to continue as they had. It’s a wonderful story of reconciliation. It is the way it is suppose to happen. But you and I know that not every story of division, separation, and conflict has such a heart-warming ending. Jesus said, when we take the initiative and ask for reconciliation, sometimes the offending party agrees, sometimes not. Alice responded graciously and faithfully; but, she might not have. Then would Alice have taken the matter before others in the church? Jesus said, that is the process, and so she should.

Jesus said this in the midst of talking about the importance of community. Life in Christ is a community affair, he said. Life in Christ is like family.

When families work well, they are a way of teaching us important things, like how to share and how to work together and how to take care of one another. A healthy family has a way of smoothing our rough edges by making us bump up against each other, like tumbling pebbles in a jar. When we live with other people, we learn that we cannot have everything our own way. We learn to compromise. We learn to give up some of the things WE want so that others can have some of what THEY want. It is not easy to learn, but learning to give and take is part of learning how to be fully human.

Families also teach us how to fight, especially if you have brothers and sisters to practice on. I am the third child in a family of four. My sister is five years older. I have a brother four years older and a brother 2 years younger. I was very much a middle child. I observed the fights my older brother and sister had. They taught me that I would prefer to avoid conflicts. We were competitive. I would race my brother out to the car when I got my driving permit and he would win almost every time. I would play one-on-one basketball with my younger brother and beat him all the time, mercilessly. My fondest memories of my family was when it was whole—up to the day my father was killed in a hunting accident. After that day, my perception of my family was that we were on our own, individuals trying to get through our stuff by ourselves, rather than together. We didn’t talk about this extreme shock and change as a family that I remember. I was 14 and the grief was unpleasant and unmanageable. One unwritten rule I had learned was: if I had a problem with someone, keep it to myself, because harmony—even the illusion of harmony—was the most important thing in my family, more important than telling the truth, more important than my feelings, more important, finally, than me. Does this sound familiar to any of you? I learned this painfully well—the illusion of harmony. I practiced the “illusion of harmony” in 18 years of my marriage. I often ask myself the question, would my marriage have been over sooner or would it have survived if I had been better at telling the truth about my feelings and my needs, if I had learned to fight for myself.

Jesus tells us in today’s Scripture lesson that in the household of God, when your brother or sister sins against you, you need to go and talk to him or her, and if that does not work you must keep going back—taking people with you next time—doing everything in your power to get that household member back again.

There are two curious things about this process Jesus gives us. First, he puts the burden on the victim, on the person who was sinned against. Second, he seems less interested in who is right and who is wrong than he is in getting the family back together again. The important thing, he said, is we are to listen to each other. However, if a member of the family refuses to listen—then we are not to pretend that nothing has happened. We are to recognize that one of our members has left the family, because the only thing worse than losing a brother or sister is pretending that you have not lost them and letting that person fester in your midst like an open wound.

This is a tough, but honest process, something that we know is right to do, that we should do, but so very hard to act upon. Can you imagine doing exactly as Jesus suggests? Can you imagine us practicing this in our church community? I’m thinking Jesus has got to be kidding. What about ignoring it and maybe it will go away? Oh, it may feel awkward. Or, what about the cold shoulder treatment? Shun the person who does something you do not like. For goodness sake, don’t ever ask them what they think happened between the two of you because you already know. They were wrong; so they should figure it out and make it right. Or, how many times has something happened and our response was revenge—the silent, deadly kind—where you start questioning the other person’s character or tell a little joke at their expense, or embarking on a private smear campaign, telling yourself that it makes you feel better. And you keep on talking to everyone except the one with whom you have a problem. And pretty soon your life is sounding like national politics. But the truth is: you don’t feel any better at all.

C.S. Lewis wrote a book titled The Great Divorce. It’s not about divorce, it’s about hell. In it is a haunting picture of hell as a vast, gray city inhabited only at the outer edges, with rows and rows of empy houses in the middle—empty because everyone who once lived in them has had an argument with their neighbors and moved, and then argued with the new neighbors and moved again, leaving empty streets full of empty houses behind them. Lewis says, that is how hell got so huge—empty at the center and inhabited only on the fringes—because everyone there chose distance instead of confrontation as the solution to a fight.

Confrontation is just what the dictionary says: bringing two people face to face, front to front, to sort out what is going on between them. That is what today’s scripture says, and it is also what many of us avoid at all costs. The excuses run rampant. Who am I to judge? It doesn’t really matter all THAT much. It’s his fault—he should apologize. Tell her that my feelings are hurt?? What if he doesn’t listen? Or, worse yet, what if she says something even more hurtful? I wouldn’t know what to say. I feel stupid. What’s the use, anyway, he will never change.

Great excuses—I’ve used them all. Great excuses if you like living on the outskirts of hell. Jesus says, those excuses will not do, not if you want to live in community as part of the human family the way God wants us to live. There is something much more important than being right or wrong, and that something is keeping the family together. For us, the real problem is not the brother or sister who sins against us but our own fierce desire to defend ourselves and our actions regardless of the cost. The real problem is in ourselves…we forsake relationship in favor of nursing our hurt feelings, our wounded pride. In traditional language, the real problem is that we are more willing to repay sin with more sin.

In today’s Scripture, Jesus says, there is another way. There is an alternative to putting distance between ourselves and those with who we are in conflict. We can go to them, directly. We can tell them what is wrong, or what we think is wrong, because you know what? The best way to end a fight is to admit that we too might be wrong. Ask yourself: Am I sure I know what I am talking about? Have I given the other person the benefit of the doubt? What are my motives—to make them feel bad or do I really want peace. What am I afraid of? Is the relationship worth the risk?

The last question is an important one, because the only reason to take Jesus’ advice at all is to win back a relationship that is in danger of being lost. Once you have decided that is what you want, it helps to remember that you are working for the relationship, not against it; that your goal is reconciliation , not retribution, and that being right is less important to you than being in relationship.

If you want to salvage the relationship, the first step is to set a lunch date, or make a telephone call, or write that letter that will stop the spread of hell. If this is something you are reluctant to do, do not let that stop you. Jesus does not say one word about wanting to reach out to your brother or sister. Just go, he says, and try to get the relationship back.

You know what? Sometimes it is a real pain to belong to a family. Sometimes it can be that way in a church. Wouldn’t it be easier if we were a bunch of individuals, loosely bound by similar beliefs, whose affairs remain an essentially private matter between us and God? Yes, I think it might. But, according to Jesus, there is no such thing as privacy in the family of God. Life with one another is the way that God has chosen for being with us. It is of ultimate importance to God. Our life together is the place where we are comforted, confronted, tested, and redeemed by God-- through one another. It is the place where we come to know God—through relationship. When two or three of us are together because of God, we can be sure that God is there.

When someone crosses us, we are called by God to be the first to reach out, even when we are the ones who have been hurt, even when God knows we have done nothing wrong, even when everything in us wants to fight back or flee—still we are called to be in community with one another, to act like the family we are. That is how we know God and how God knows us. That is what we are called to do: to confront and make up, to forgive and seek forgiveness, to heal and be healed—and to throw a block party right smack in the middle of the deserted city of hell, to fill the place with music and laughter, merriment and mutual affection—so much, that all the far-flung residents come creeping in from their isolated fringes to see what the fuss is, where the light is shining, what the JOY is all about, to experience heaven in the center of hell.

Amen.