Resolved to Reconcile
Matthew 18:15-20
Pentecost + 12, September 4, 2011
Last weekend, while we were cooped up waiting out the hurricane,
Andy & I watched a movie called You Again. It centered around a young woman named Marni. Now poor Marni had had a rough go of it during high school. For whatever reason, she was singled out by the popular kids in her school, and made fun of, tormented, bullied really – told she was a loser and treated like one too. But after graduation, she put the awkwardness of adolescence behind her, went on to college, got a great job. High school was a part of her life she wanted to forget, and she thought she had – until on her way home for her brother's wedding, she discovers, much to her dismay, that her brother is marrying none other than Joanna, her arch-nemesis, the head cheerleader, the ringleader – and in an instant, all the pain and anger and hurt and insecurity of those years just come flooding back.
Now when they meet up again, Joanna pretends not to recognize Marni. She pretends she has no idea who she is – but of course she does, and eventually, she and Marni have it out. All Marni wants is for Joanna to admit what she had done and to apologize, but Joanna won't do it – and of course, everything spirals downward from there. That's the kind of stuff movies like this are made of!
You know how this kind of thing goes, when someone hurts you in some major or on-going way and you don't address it. You've seen that undercurrent of conflict unresolved, when we just try to sweep it under the rug and pretend that everything's okay. Here in this church, or perhaps some other church you've been a part of. Or at your job. Or in your neighborhood. Or in your extended family. You know, the problems and fights that lurk just below the surface, the ones that everyone knows about or at least senses, the same ones nobody talks about – or at least not to the person or people involved. It's pretty typical for us to complain to everyone else about how we've been wronged. It's so easy to do that. And yet it doesn't solve the problem. Worse yet, it doesn't make room for the relationship to heal.
Conflict. Sin. Hurt. Jesus isn't a stranger to any of these things. They're as old as humanity. We are sinners. We hurt each other. It was true of the disciples too – and Jesus knew it would be that way in the church that was to come, just as it happens in all kinds of relationships.
Jesus knows this. He knows also that this fledgling church will need each other. What is translated here as “member of the church” is really the word brother – and I'm sure the scholars responsible for this translation have good reasons for saying “member of the church” instead, but we miss out on some important connotations when we drop the word brother. Because in the early church, in that society, following Jesus often meant leaving your biological family behind – or having them cut you out of their lives. And family was everything back then. It told you who you were; it told others who you were. It gave you status and standing. Family gave you your whole identity. They were your support – your lifeline; there was no health insurance or social security or pension or retirement savings. Family took care of you. So to be cut off from your family was serious business. When you became a follower of Jesus, when you joined the church, those people became your family. They became your brothers and sisters. There was a closeness, an intimacy between the people in those small groups that we can hardly imagine based on our experiences in church. They were deeply involved in each other's lives. They counted on one another. And if one sinned against the other and they didn't make peace, the whole group would suffer. It was like poison, weakening the whole system, eating away at their unity, breaking down their witness to the wider world.
That's what the family in You Again found out. When Marni and Joanna couldn't get past their past, it worked its way out to the whole family. Marni outed Joanna to the whole clan at the rehearsal dinner – but the way she did it, you knew she was out for revenge. She wasn't seeking reconciliation.
And that, really, is at the heart of Jesus' words in Matthew's gospel today. He is offering his disciples and us a course in Conflict Resolution 101. If a brother sins against you, go and point it out, 1 on 1. If that doesn't work, take a few others along. And if that doesn't work, tell it to the whole group. Logical steps. It's a method lifted up in all sorts of groups – from the model constitution for congregations in the ELCA to the group home I used to work in to grievance boards in unions. They make sense, even if they're not all that easy to put into practice, but even more important than teaching a method, Jesus is trying to get at motivation. Why bother to do anything so personal, so time-consuming? Why not just write them off or ignore them or put up with it? Why go to such lengths? The point of all of this, Jesus is saying, is not to rub the sinner's nose in what they have done wrong, but to bring about reconciliation! It's about providing an antidote to the poison that's invading the wider body so that wholeness can be restored, not just to the individuals involved, but to the entire group.
Over and over again, this is what we see Jesus doing – prizing relationship over being right, desiring reconciliation instead of revenge. It's hard to live out, but it shouldn't be a surprise to us that this is what Jesus teaches us to do, what he expects us to do. After all, that is exactly the reason he came – not to rub our noses in our sins, but to make a way for our relationships with God the Father to be restored. The whole arc of the Biblical story can be summarized this way – God makes people, God loves people & enters into relationship with them, people screw up, there is distance between God and people, God reaches out to draw people close again. Over and over and over, this is what happens, until finally God sends Jesus the Son – to knock down the walls that grow between us and our creator, to show us the depth of our brokenness and how we have sinned, but always, always, always doing so to restore our relationship; always reaching out to re-create us; always seeking reconciliation. It's hard work. It's not without a price. Jesus lays down his life to make it possible. He calls us to become the kind of people, the kind of community, where this hard work is done, where we seek not the easy fix, but true repentance and reconciliation, so that we may be a reflection of God's deep love for us and for all creation. Jesus said, Wherever 2 or 3 are gathered in my name, I am there among them. May we experience his presence among us, may we be filled with his Spirit, strengthening us to to work for restoration and reconciliation.
Amen.
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