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.
