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In the weeks before my wife and I were married, someone gave me a book of advice on how to have a healthy marriage. One little gem of wisdom I remember from that collection read simply, "Fight fairly." I remember thinking that was an odd thing to tell a couple of soon-to-be-newly-weds. I thought good pre-marital counseling was supposed to teach us how to avoid fights, not how to have them. But the author of this little resource apparently knew something important: people -- even people who love each other -- are going to hurt one another. And when they do, husbands and wives must know how to respond without stooping to immature or unhelpful tactics. They must learn how to fight fairly.
As in marriage, even so in church. Yes, even Christians -- for all our talk about brotherly love and the importance of community -- even we are going to hurt each other. Wrongs will be committed. Relationships will get strained. Jesus clearly understood that. Jesus may have had high expectations for the fellowship of believers, but he wasn't naïve.
A story is told about a man who was marooned all by himself on a deserted island for several years. When he was finally discovered, his rescuers were intrigued by two impressive structures the man had built on the beach. They pointed to one and asked him what it was. He told them it was his church. Then they pointed to the other structure a little further down the beach and asked him what it was. "Oh," he said, "that's the church I used to go to, but then there was a fight so I started another one."
I've heard more than one critic point out that churches often multiply by dividing.
Jesus wasn't blind to this. Given the pervasiveness of human sin, he knew that conflict would happen. So, we shouldn't be surprised to find him dealing with it openly and directly in this morning's gospel reading. Here in the 18th chapter of Matthew, Jesus teaches how to have a good fight -- one that's not only fair, but more importantly, one that is redemptive, a fight that honors God and edifies the church.
In a moment we will go step by step through the process he teaches us and discuss its specifics. But first, I want to give you what I think are two underlying principles that we need to keep in mind as we go through that process. (Both of these principles were gleaned from Thomas G. Long, Matthew, in The Westminster Bible Companion Series, Patrick D. Miller and David L. Bartlett, eds. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 210.)
First, in dealing with conflict we must always remember that relationships are more important to God than is efficiency. Relationships take time to nurture and grow, and we have to be patient while they do. We cannot rush things. We live in a fast food culture that wants things instantly, but there is no such thing as an instant relationship, whether we are talking about our family, or our friends, or our relationships in the body of Christ.
Now, if that is true even when there is health and unity in the body, it will also be true when there is conflict and division. When you read through Jesus' instructions for dealing with broken relationships, you will notice that it is fairly time intensive. It is a multiple step process. When a relationship is strained you don't just give it one shot at reconciliation and then wash your hands clean of it. That's because relationships matter to God, and He expects us to go back over them and over them until we get them right.
To be fair, there need to be healthy boundaries to this. One of the things that I have learned in ten years of pastoral ministry is that conflict can be all-consuming. When people are at odds with each other it can eat up all of our time and energy, but that is usually a sign that we are not dealing with the conflict the way Jesus desires. The strategy Jesus provides does set limits. It seeks to reconcile the relationship without allowing it to overtake everything else. But even still, we must be patient. Broken relationships cannot be healed in an instant.
The second principle for dealing with conflict is this: reconciliation matters more than revenge. In fact, we can even take it a step further and say that revenge should play no part in the process. When someone wrongs us in the church, the goal of our response can never be to get even with that person. If it is, then our response has ceased to be Christian.
In the passage that immediately precedes this one, Jesus tells us the parable of the lost sheep. He says that if a man owns a hundred sheep and discovers that one of them has wandered off, he will leave the ninety-nine and go in search of the one who is missing. And when he finds that lost sheep, he doesn't beat it or punish it; he rejoices over it. Why? -- Because the goal of a loving shepherd is to keep the flock whole. A good shepherd will do everything in his power to make sure that none are excluded from the love and care of the fold, not even those who have wandered off by their own fault.
That is how it should be with us. When a brother or sister of the faith wrongs us, Jesus tells us to go to the offending party, not with the hopes of getting even, but (and I am paraphrasing Jesus here) with the hope of winning our brother over. In other words, the goal is not to push away the offending party, but to restore him or her to the fellowship of the church, a fellowship that has been momentarily broken by his or her sinful action.
Now, as with the first principle, there are limits to this one as well. Jesus honestly tells us that there may be extreme cases where the fellowship cannot be restored because the offender refuses to acknowledge his or her error. But even still, we are to imitate the good shepherd. We are to do everything in our power to keep the flock whole and to make sure that none are excluded from the love and care of the fold -- even those who have wronged us.
There are probably many other principles we could glean from this passage when it comes to dealing with conflict, but these are the two I want us to keep in mind this morning. The first is that relationships matter more than efficiency and the second is that reconciliation matters more than revenge.
Now, with those two principles in mind let's look at the actual process Jesus gives us. What are the steps Jesus wants us to take when someone in the church wrongs us? The first thing Jesus tells us to do is, I think, the most radical step in the whole process. When someone sins against us we are to go to them and tell them about it. We actually go to the person and point out his or her fault.
I call this a radical step for two reasons. One is that it insists upon Christians sitting down and having face-to-face, direct communication. In other words, this step assumes that people will actually talk to each other. From what I have seen when there is conflict in the church, people are more likely to talk about each other than they are to talk to each other. When someone offends us our first reaction is go off and tell someone else about it. We do it, I think, because we are hoping to gain other people's sympathy or support for our cause. And the more we talk to others about it, the more we end creating this little coalition that takes our side. And the more that happens, the more our anger and resentment build, and the deeper the divide becomes.
But while all that is happening, there is something else that's not happening: nothing's been done to actually resolve the conflict. No communication has been established with the offending party (expect, possibly, by way of the church rumor mill), and nothing has been done to right the wrong that occurred and restore the relationship that has been broken. All because people won't talk to each other.
The other reason this first step in the process is so radical is that it requires the injured party to take the initiative. Jesus says that if your brother sins against you, you are not to sit in the corner and wait for him to come apologize. No, you are to take the first step. Jesus says essentially that our desire for restored fellowship should outweigh whatever pride or wounded ego we are experiencing.
There may be extreme cases where, because of an imbalance of power in a relationship or other extenuating circumstances, this step cannot be followed directly. If, say, a pastor is abusing an adolescent, you can't expect the teenager to confront the pastor by herself. But the point Jesus is making here is that we are to care about the spiritual wellbeing of others, even of others who hurt us. We are to seek reconciliation with those who sin against us.
But what if that first step doesn't work? What if we go to the other person and point out the problem, but there is no resolution? Well -- and it's here that our first principle comes into play -- we go back over it again. Common sense would say that we drop the matter. We tried. It failed. Forget about it. But Jesus says that we try again. Only now we bring one or two other people into the conversation.
The purpose here is not to build a coalition or to spread a scandal. The purpose is to establish the credibility of the charge. A consistent requirement throughout the Old Testament Law of Moses was that persons could never be convicted of wrongdoing solely on the basis of one witness -- especially in extreme cases that involved the death penalty. (See, for example, Numbers 35:30, and Deuteronomy 17:6, 19:15.)
The possibility of bias or prejudice on the part of the accuser was and is too great. The same is true here. What if an actual wrong hasn't occurred and the accuser either has an ax to grind or is simply being too sensitive? Bringing one or two others into the conversation with the offending party helps guard against bias or prejudice.
This step acts as a check against the church becoming a community of over-zealous faultfinders. But it also adds spiritual weight and moral significance in situations where wrong has been done. It makes it clear to the wrongdoer that his or her actions are serious enough to warrant repentance. If two or three people in the church agree that a sin has been committed, then Jesus says there is sufficient authority to proceed with confronting the one who has sinned.
But what if the matter still isn't resolved after that? You tried to work things out on your own to no avail. Then you lovingly and gently brought along a couple of witnesses, but the offending party still refuses to own up to his or her sin. Well, says Jesus, it is then and only then that the church acts to discontinue fellowship with that person. When all other attempts at reconciliation have failed, then Jesus says the church not only has a right but also an obligation to exclude that person.
Jesus doesn't spell out the exact mechanism for how that should occur. Should it occur in a closed door meeting with the Deacons, or should it happen at a church business conference? I think Jesus would have us understand here that the church can work out such details on a case-by-case basis. And hopefully such cases will be rare enough that we won't ever have to find out.
What Jesus does spell out for us here is the authority and significance of the church in the kingdom of heaven. The church is called to respond this way because sin matters, and as God's representative community -- as the colony of heaven -- the church must take sin seriously. It cannot ignore it. When there is real sin, the church must respond. But it must respond in imitation of and faithfulness to the One who died for sinners. Our response to sin and to the relationships it breaks must have love at its core. Our desire must not be to shame but to save, just as Christ did for us.
I've given you a lot of principles and process. Let me close by giving you a story. In my former church there was a man whom we will call Frank. Frank was a gruff old fellow who mostly kept to himself. When he did speak, it was often with a sharp tongue, so most people were quite happy for him to keep to himself.
One Sunday morning during the Sunday school hour, two young ladies in the youth group were in the sanctuary rehearsing a duet they planned to sing during worship. Frank didn't attend Sunday school, so he came in that morning to take his seat early, as he did each week. He would later say it was so he could meditate. Well, when he entered the room, he didn't like either the song they were singing or the volume at which it was being played, and he let them know about it. In fact, he started yelling at them, stopping just short of using profanity. The two girls ran out of the room crying.
As an interesting twist on the story, it just so happened that these two young ladies had set up a video camera in the back of the sanctuary so they could record themselves as they sang. Frank didn't know it, but the camera was rolling when he pitched his little fit that morning, so that afternoon I got to watch his temper tantrum on tape.
I was furious. I already didn't care for Frank's demeanor. You see, I had been on the receiving end of his wrath on a previous occasion. I had been able to let that event go by, chalking it up to his rough personality, but here he had belittled two impressionable young women and had cast a very negative spirit on that morning's worship service. It was only by the grace of God that they had managed to go ahead and sing that morning after what had happened.
Well, when I saw that tape, I immediately sat down and fired off a letter to Frank. I told him exactly what I thought of his behavior and even some of what I thought of him. The letter was as bitter towards him as he had been towards them. I signed the letter with feelings of righteous anger and couldn't wait to get it in the mail the next day.
But I decided before I mailed it to share it with the chairman of our Deacon body at the time. He was familiar with Frank's ways and knew about the incident. After reading it, he advised that I not send it. He said the letter was too angry and would only make matters worse. Some other approach was needed.
When I got to my office the next day, I read Matthew 18 and I knew what I had to do. I picked up the phone and called Frank and asked him if I could come by his house to speak with him. He agreed, and the two of us sat down in his living room to talk about what had happened. I explained to him how hurtful his words had been to those young ladies and how his actions had made worship painful for them. To my surprise, he apologized.
He then went on to explain how the volume of sound in our sanctuary was a constant problem for him. He had to wear hearing aids to hear what was said from the pulpit, but that meant when the music was loud it made his ears hurt. He had complained about it on several occasions but nobody ever listened to him. They just always wrote him off as a gruff old man who liked to complain. By the time I left that morning, not only had Frank and I dealt honestly with his bad behavior, but we also had also begun to patch up our rocky relationship.
By the way, I spoke to a friend of mine in that congregation just a few months ago. He told me something interesting. "You're not going to believe this," he said, "but something has happened to Frank. He's actually nice to people. He hangs around and talks to folks after worship instead of being the first to get in his car and drive off. He's even started coming to our potluck suppers."
Can I say that my visit in Frank's living room is the reason for that change? No. It has a lot to do with the fact that Frank's wife recently died and the church went out of its way to reach out to him with food and comfort in the days to follow. I can say that if I had fired off that letter, it would have likely been the end of Frank's relationship with that church family. Instead of reaching out for reconciliation like Jesus tells us to do, I would have effectively jumped straight to the last step in the process and cut him off from the fellowship. And if that had happened, the church might not have ever had the opportunity to minister to him in his time of need.
Mending broken relationships when someone hurts us is hard. It is painful. And yet it may well be the most Christ-like thing we will ever have the chance to do.
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