Community Counts

Scriptures:     Exodus 12:1-14                      Psalm 119:33-40

Romans 13:8-14                     Matthew 18:15-20

While I was channel surfing, on Hulu I came across a Canadian TV series by the name of Pure…it was actually a pilot run of six episodes, and wasn’t renewed.  Pure, a fictional series said to be based on actual events, is set in Canada, in a conservative Mennonite community, where most of the members travel by horse and buggy.  In the show, the community is dealing with a drug-trafficking ring in which many members of the community are involved, which is led by a long-lapsed former member of the community who relocated years ago to Mexico but maintains control over the community by way of his relatives who still live among the community in Canada.  Drug trafficking is the last thing I would associate with Mennonites, but in the show it was pointed out that the Mennonites were a perfect setting for a drug trafficking ring – they maintain strict separation from the mainstream culture, speak German, and have a reputation for strict moral rectitude, and so law enforcement tends to leave them alone to police themselves, and so wrongdoers are able to evade law enforcement.  I only watched a few episodes, but it was fascinating to see the ways in which the drug trafficking ring corrupted the community, how even those who weren’t directly involved were complicit, turning a blind eye to the evil  in their midst.   Again, it’s just a TV show, even if based on true events.  But it is also a fascinating study in how evil, if tolerated and protected, can take root in a community, even in a faith community – and once evil has taken hold, how terribly hard it is to uproot.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus is talking with his disciples about how to resolve conflict within the church.  Now, I hate dealing with conflict , with the burning passion of a thousand suns – in my family growing up, conflicts often ended with bruises and blood on the floor or with somebody leaving and not coming back for a while – or maybe both, an unwanted twofer.  Suffice to say, I didn’t have models of healthy conflict resolution growing up.  And yet from time to time, conflicts arise, and have to be dealt with, and I always end up losing way more sleep over other peoples’ conflicts than I need to. My own head trips aside, I don’t think most people necessarily look forward to dealing with conflict.  But Jesus was a realist about human nature, and took for granted that, this side of heaven, people will sin against one another, won’t always play nicely together in the sandbox, will bump into each other and step on each other’s toes, will offend one another, even in the church, and so he gave his disciples some guidelines to deal with it.  He said, first talk to the person who offended you, one on one, and explain to the person how they offended you.  With any luck, the person will recognize their fault and change their behavior.  But, if the person persists, take two or three other people and confront the offender, so that there are witnesses.  But note, at this stage, the entire congregation is not yet brought in.  And perhaps the offender, seeing that the offended party and a few church leaders are serious in pursuing the matter, will repent.  But if the person persists in offending, only then bring them before the entire congregation, and if the person still persists, then they have separated themselves from the community by their behavior, and their formal expulsion by the congregation only ratifies the separation they initiated by their own actions.

This is not a text that makes you want to shout “Thanks be to God.”  It doesn’t sound like good news.  In fact, it sounds really harsh.  In fact, when I sent out my Sunday preview this week with some preliminary thoughts about this text, someone wrote me to ask whether I had chosen this reading because there was some sort of problem at the church.  And I wrote back, “No, it just happens to be the lectionary text for this week, and I closely follow the lectionary, the three-year cycle of readings used by Roman Catholics and a number of mainline Protestant denomination, so across our denominational lines we’re in a sense all reading Scripture together.  I didn’t pick the text because I have an ax to grind.” And, really, today’s reading is part 1 of a two-part series of readings on conflict resolution, and part 2 which we’ll read as next week’s Gospel text, is about forgiveness – there’s something more pleasant to look forward to for next Sunday.  So today we recognize that conflict exists and consider immediate steps to deal with it and minimize the damage, but next week we’ll talk about ways to move forward.  

Clearly we can think of situations in which the sequence of actions recommended by Jesus would not be appropriate – for example, in the case of child abuse or domestic violence, we would not want to force a vulnerable person who was violated to confront their attacker one on one, and set them up to be violated yet again.  And in some churches these guidelines have been abused by bigoted or power-hungry leaders who have expelled church members because of their personal characteristics – race or ethnicity, nationality, economic status, sexual orientation - and not because of bad behavior.  We can also point to the unedifying spectacle during the Reformation of leaders of various denominations excommunicating one another instead of listening to one another  – Catholic bishops excommunicating pastors who sympathized with Protestant teaching, and Protestant leaders excommunicating Roman Catholic leaders – so the church basically turned into a kind of circular firing squad.  We can also think of the practice in Amish communities of shunning people who violated community norms.  So this is a text that may not be universally applicable, and certainly subject to abuse.

But let’s look at what this procedure does try to accomplish.  It gives the offender a chance to preserve his or her dignity and reputation, in that a first or second offense is not broadcast to the entire church.  It seeks to eliminate gossip, with the inevitable “whisper down the lane” distortion of what actually happened, with the inevitable taking of sides, lining up with the offender or the offended – only those who need to know about an offense are brought in, unless the situation rises to the level where the entire congregation needs to be brought in, and then everyone is brought into the situation together at the same time and on the same level.  It also excludes violence as a form of conflict resolution.  Had the church followed this procedure, the church’s sad history during the Middle Ages of imprisoning and torturing and even executing so-called heretics would have been eliminated.  The Crusades and the Inquisition would not have taken place, had this procedure been faithfully followed.  There would have been no need to stamp out so-called heretics by imprisonment or execution – they would have been excluded from the church, but otherwise allowed to live their lives on earth in peace, leaving their eternal destiny to God.  So compared to the alternative ways in which the church actually has tried to resolve conflict over the centuries, it’s actually remarkably humane.

Although Jesus’ recommendations end on a note of exclusion – “let the unrepentant offender be as the Gentile and the tax collector” – Jesus’ goal is not punishment, but ultimately restoration, while preserving the health of the community.  This passage appears only in Matthew’s gospel – and by tradition, Matthew was – guess what – a tax collector.  And we know that Jesus ministered to Gentiles.  So even if someone is excluded for a time, the longterm goal is restoring a forgiven offender to the community.   There may be a need for a kind of time-out, even a years-long time-out – but time-outs don’t last forever.

What Jesus took very seriously in setting up these guidelines was the dignity of the individual *and* the health of the gathered community.  It also takes very seriously the reality of sin, of evil and the effects that one person’s offenses can have on the larger community.  Now in our country, we are big into individualism.  We hear and use words such as “I, me, mine” more often than we hear and use words such as “We, us, our”.   And while we may point at the sins of others, we often minimize or ignore our own.  As a result, our culture seems to be losing its ability to create and maintain community.  It is a stereotype, but perhaps with some truth in it, to observe that when technologically plugged in people get together, they may be glued to their own I-phones, intently messaging people across the country while ignoring people across the table, exalting virtual community while devaluing in-the-flesh community.  But here in the church, transformation in the lives of individual Christians comes as we encounter one another in community, in real life and in real time. We learn not only from the pastor on Sunday morning, but from one another as we work together whenever we gather. Bumping into one another in real life and in real time has the effect of knocking off the sharp corners and rough edges of our individual lives, so that we fit well together, as Paul and Peter wrote, as living stones for that spiritual temple, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.  If we focus on ourselves as individuals, it’s easy to tell ourselves that our actions affect only ourselves.  But in community, we can see how the effects of our actions play out in the lives of those around us – and if we don’t like what we see, we can change our actions.

To live in a healthy community requires mutual accountability, among members, and between pastor and members.  We have to keep ourselves and one another honest, to speak unpleasant truth when necessary, but always in love.  Failure to hold one another accountable for actions affecting the community can have horrific consequences.  I began this sermon with a fictional account of a Mennonite community corrupted by drug trafficking  – but we can think of the very real life consequences of child abuse perpetrated by clergy over many decades – and not only Roman Catholic clergy.  Instead of holding these clergy accountable immediately, the church turned a blind eye to crimes that damaged children for life, covering for these clergy by passing them from one congregation to another without informing the congregation of the clergy’s past offenses.  Many offended directly, but many more were complicit in enabling the offenses of others.  It was only when the stench of this evil reached the general public by way of various news investigations and grand jury reports that secular authorities forced the church to do what it should have been doing voluntarily all along.  And it does not look good when secular legal codes hold people to a higher moral standard than the church. We, the church, should be leading the way, not following.   We can also think of religious cults, in which the ordinary members are held accountable in horrific ways, but nobody holds the leadership accountable, and so the sins of the leadership eventually wind up deeply damaging the members and destroying any healthy sense of community.

Bottom line:  community counts.  For Jesus, community counted for so much that he promised that wherever two or three are gathered in his name, he would be in their midst.   For Jesus, community counted so much that he promised that whatever decisions his followers made in his name would somehow be honored in heaven as well.  And sin has consequences, damaging not just the individuals who commit it, but the entire community.  Healthy community requires boundaries and mutual accountability – but also forgiveness – and, thankfully, next week’s Gospel text is all about forgiveness.  Thankfully, because we all need forgiveness, without exception.   Forgiveness is part of God’s great good news to us.  God forgives us so that we can forgive others. Thanks be to God! Amen.