St
Luke’s,
“This day shall be a day of remembrance … throughout your generations
you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.”
I’m quite certain my Old Testament scholar wife
would like me to preach on our first reading today, and I have to admit that
it’s tempting. The story of the Passover and how it has become enshrined not
just in Hebrew history but within the very psyche of Judaism is both wonderful
and disturbing and as it forms part of our story as well we should take time to
explore it, but not today, because I’m afraid there’s something even more
important and disturbing lurking in our Gospel reading.
One of the great opportunities a month’s
sabbatical offers is the chance to visit a few different churches. It’s been an
interesting and sometimes quite disheartening experience for me to go to some
other places, some fairly healthy, some almost literally with two or three, but
in all of them I’ve been reminded, as I often am even here, just how odd we all
are. While other people are sleeping in or mowing the lawn or walking the dog
or reading the papers, we’re at church, and on a good day, when the wind’s just
right and our best foot’s forward, we’re even busy being Church, and that makes
us odd, but not perfect.
Here like everywhere whenever you bring together
a group of people from different places and backgrounds there are inevitably
some issues. It’s just a reality of human nature, even in this individualist
age people still crave human company, but it always comes at a price, as it did
in Corinth and in Rome and in Thessalonica and in the Johannine community and
even among the apostles and disciples. The kinds of personality conflicts and
power plays that take up so much of Paul’s attention in the epistles exist in
every group of people where the challenge of living together sometimes
threatens to tear us apart.
So what do we do about it? How do we handle
conflict? That’s the focus of today’s Gospel reading and it really is both as
simple and as hard as it sounds.
‘If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the
fault when the two of you are alone.’
It seems like such a small thing, almost trivial
really. But in this Gospel that’s already told us to love our enemies and give
all we have to the poor, to risk humiliation and rejection and even death and
to put absolutely nothing before Christ, to take up our cross not just
occasionally or now and then but daily and follow him, in a this Gospel that’s
already challenged us with so much, this, for me, is the biggest challenge of
them all – to risk my life for Christ is one thing, to try to get on with all
of you is something else entirely, especially if we have to do it one on one,
personally, privately and inevitably sometimes painfully.
So why should we do it? Why should we put so
much time and energy into this difficult task? Not just because the Bible says
so, although it does. In many, many places the Bible makes it clear that how we
treat each other, how we behave with and to each other, matters greatly. Paul
in today’s Romans reading puts it bluntly when he says every commandment we’re
given – which is where things are heading in that first reading we heard today
– every commandment, says Paul, can be summed up in one sentence – love your
neighbour as yourself, and I think you’ll find that was originally said by
someone even more important than Paul.
But we still don't do these things just because
the Paul or Moses say so, we do them because when it works, if it works, “you
have regained that one.” These o so practical and o so hard words in our gospel
today aren’t laid out there just to provide a method of conflict resolution for
conflict resolution’s sake. No, Jesus says we do this so that there might be a
‘regaining’ of the person involved. In other words, the split between the two
disappears and reconciliation happens.
“If another member of the church sins against
you.” So many of us, myself included, need to listen carefully to the words we
find here. The goal of this process is not to win the battle, or to score
points, or make a point, or even to solve a problem. The goal of this process
is reconciliation.
I so believe we need to hear this shouted from
the rooftops. As another September 11th approaches, as we think
about Father’s Day which sadly for some isn’t a happy thought, as
internationally the Anglican Communion seems determined to pull itself apart
and equally determined to take as long as possible doing it, all in the name of
proving my side is in the right, we need to hear this reading. As we think
about how we relate with other churches and faiths, we need to hear this
reading. Yes, I believe Christianity is right, and yes, I believe Anglicanism
has some advantages, if I didn’t believe those things I wouldn’t be here, I’d
be at the mosque or St Columba’s, but when I find myself in disagreement with
someone else, this reading says, the goal of working through it isn’t to prove
I’m right it’s to achieve reconciliation, and the same goes for what we do in
our communities, in our homes, and right here in our church congregations.
And reconciliation doesn’t happen at the end of
a gun, or as a result of threats, or because someone wins a fight. Reconciliation
happens when hurts are shared, people are heard, faults are admitted and
forgiveness is given.
Of course it doesn’t always happen that way and
Jesus knew that. “But if you are not listened to” – if reconciliation doesn’t
happen between the two of you. I want to urge caution about following the
pattern in this reading too precisely or pedantically, for the same reason I
wouldn’t recommend choosing a Vicar by drawing lots like they did in the Book
of Acts. Ultimately what we read in Matthew was written for a specific time and
place and we need to realise that and understand it, but that doesn’t the
principle or the goal.
When tensions arise, when problems occur, when
conflict is present, our ultimate goal is reconciliation, but not at any cost.
“If the member refuses to listen to you … [or to] the church, let such a one be
to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” And before we decide that’s a good
enough excuse for us to cast people out into the outer darkness where there is
much gnashing of teeth, let’s remember for a moment that these words supposedly
come from Jesus and ask ourselves, how did Jesus treat Gentiles and tax
collectors? Even when the relationship seems too broken, the problems too big,
even when it all seems hopeless, reconciliation remains the goal, the door is
always open, no one is never welcome back.
And if all that sounds hard, it’s because it is.
Most people wouldn’t know it, but as Vicar I spend more time on bent or broken
relationships than anything else. Put a bunch of people together, especially
when they’re from often vastly different backgrounds, and peace and harmony
don’t just happen. There are always tensions and issues and hurts and
misunderstandings, and to paraphrase today’s reading slightly, ‘where two or three
gather, there will be problems,’ there’s no escaping that. So I guess I come
back to that question again, why do we do it? Why put so much energy into it?
Why not just stay home and read the paper, or if we do insist on being odd and
coming to church, why not just do it with people we like and are like? Why
waste time on difficult relationships? Why not just focus on the good ones?
After all, isn’t this our church?
“For where two or three are gathered in my
name.” No, at the end of the day this is not our church, this is Christ’s
Church and we’re all welcome, but on Christ’s terms, not ours, and that means
they’re all welcome too, because whether we like it or not, whether it’s easy
or hard, whether it’s what we want or not, this Christianity thing is as much
about how we get on with each other as how we get on with God. And if Jesus
really is here among us, right here and now and whenever there are even just
two or three of us gathered in his name, then what difference does that make to
the way we treat each other and speak to each other and approach each other?
Ultimately we odd people who choose to get out
of bed and come here on a Sunday morning to sit next to people who may or may
not be like us and whom we may or may not choose to socialise with at any other
time, we do this because we want to belong to Christ’s Church. We do this
because we have been called to do so. We do this because this is our purpose in
life. And when you find your purpose, when you listen to your calling, when you
follow the way that Christ has pioneered, incredible things are possible.
So may we continue to be odd. May we strive for
reconciliation. May we open our doors and our hearts to all who would come in.
And most of all, may we continue to gather, in twos and threes and hopefully
many mores, in the name of the Christ whom we welcome and worship among us.
Amen.