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I just returned from spending the weekend with our elders, on the Session retreat. We had just a great time together, and even found some sun (not the sunscreen, though!). I was struck again by how amazingly God has blessed our congregation with leadership. Not just folks to vote on new sprinkler systems or carpet, but people to lead us spiritually. It’s really a fabulous group of people. We worshipped, played, ate, shared, strategized and prayed. In fact, one of the last things we did was to pray through all of the pictures in the new Bethany directory. So if you felt a little extra “jolt” yesterday, it was you being prayed for…if your picture is in the directory. If you didn’t get your picture in…well…maybe next year!
Following Jesus…together. That’s what we’ve been talking about for the last three weeks. What is this thing called the church, the community of faith?
This morning we’re going to read together from the gospel of Matthew, 5:21-24, part of the block of Jesus’ teaching that we call the Sermon on the Mount. Each time we come to just sit before the scripture, we light a candle to mark this time, to set it apart, believing that in a unique way God’s Spirit speaks through the scriptures and to our hearts. Will you stand for the reading of the gospel?
Matthew 5:21-24
Some people think that Jesus sort of floated down onto the earth in a bright white robe, and talked in a gentle voice, and spent his whole time affirming people, making them feel good about themselves, and speaking soft truisms about “compassion” and “love.” They didn’t stop to read the Sermon on the Mount, I guess. Because Jesus has the most irritating way of speaking directly to us. And worse than that, he has an even more irritating way of making us squirm. Just when we thought we were doing pretty well living our lives.
You saw what Jesus just did in this passage. He took the commandment…and he intensified it. Instead of changing it, or eliminating it, he makes it go deeper. Far deeper. Uncomfortably so. He moves the commandment from governing the state of our actions to dealing with the state of our hearts.
I had a professor in seminary…who was quite a character. Probably not the most affirming of teachers. He had some truly biting sarcasm. One of his favorite lines when he wanted to be sarcastic was “Snort, Cackle, Wheeze!” He would quote something he didn’t agree with, and then shout derisively, “Snort, Cackle, Wheeze!,” and then “No, no a thousand times no!,” and then give what he thought was a clearly better position.
Someone made the mistake of saying rather flippantly one day that “the Old Testament is tougher than the New Testament.” To which my professor said “Snort, cackle, wheeze, No, no a thousand times no!” Then he said “Great. Tell you what: I’ll live by the Ten commandments, you take the Sermon on the Mount.” No comparison.
In our passage Jesus says “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder.”
Yeah. It’s one of those Ten Commandments. No murdering. Very straight forward.
“But I say to you…”
Oh-oh. There he goes again. If you are angry (and here the word really means nursing anger, nurturing, holding onto your anger, brooding over conflict), you’ve done the same thing. Murder…of the heart. Anger murders. From it comes all kinds of evil. Nurturing conflict, not treating your brother and sister well, not honoring them, bears serious consequences. In fact, it can be a killer.
We had a next door neighbor whom we knew and were on good relations with. One evening, we drove up in front of our house and saw, much to our surprise, that she was trimming the tree that was clearly in our front yard.
Trimming is a gracious word. She actually had butchered it, and crudely hacked the lower six or eight feet of branches off of a tall cedar, totally eliminating the privacy it gave our front steps and yard from the street. She had never talked about it, asked us, indicated it was a problem. We were absolutely incredulous. No, mad would be a better word. I sputtered something out that sounded like “What on earth are you doing?” And she said “trimming the tree.” What were we supposed to do then?
Conflict happens all the time. Our neighborhoods, our workplaces, our families, our friendships. There are lots of different ways to deal with it, but what’s clear to me is that it does happen. Regularly.
And guess what? It happens within the community of God’s people, too. Conflict happens here. Within this very gathering here are people who don’t get along. Grudges are nursed. Resentments have built. Business deals have gone bad. Friendships have soured.
At the first church I served in 1996 as an Associate Pastor, my job description was pretty much “Come help us change and grow.” It was a small congregation that looked very much like it had in the 1950’s. My job, I teased, was to at least help them get into the 70’s! So my job description said “help us change.”
As you might imagine, there was some resistance to that. One woman, Susan, was an elder who seemed to think her job description read “help us stay the same.” No matter what I did, it seemed to be wrong. It got to the point where if Susan was walking towards me down the hall, she would look down at the ground. When I greeted her by name, she looked the other way and said nothing. I’d never had that happen before.
Sigh. Sort of makes you long for the good old days, like back when the church first started, doesn’t it? You know, when everything was idyllic, new, fresh, and (Acts) “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers…they were together and had all things in common…and day by day God added to their number.” Must’ve been wonderful. If only we could go back there.”
Well, that pretty picture is in Acts 2. Now the bad news. By Acts 15 it’s all messed up. Mark read us the first part earlier.
Paul and Barnabas were partners in ministry, spreading the news about Jesus Christ…that it was in Jesus Christ that people were forgiven & saved from sins and for God! But right in the middle of their ministry, some other men came from Jerusalem saying something different (saying “Jesus or no Jesus, you have to be circumcised to be saved among God’s people”). “And Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them.” Here we go. Conflict. Paul and Barnabas go to Jerusalem. Some people greet them warmly, but others with a chilly reception. Paul and Barnabas have to argue their case with the leaders of the church. Conflict. The leaders essentially agree with Paul and Barnabas. Whew. Peace.
The peace lasts approximately 6 verses. Paul and Barnabas plan their next mission trip, Barnabas wants to take Mark with them. Paul doesn’t, because Mark had deserted them for awhile. Barnabas and Paul disagree. Sharply. So sharply that they split up and go separate ways. Conflict.
There has been conflict in the church since the beginning. Being a follower of Christ, being in the community of faith doesn’t eliminate conflict. It’s there. It’s here. The question is, what will we do when it comes?
I’m going to be honest. I’m dying for places where the community of faith offers our culture something different. I’m so tired of the culture influencing how the community of faith is going to think and act. It doesn’t matter what the topic is: politics, sexuality, social issues. So often it seems like the church says “We’d better get on board with the culture or we’ll be left behind. We’ll be irrelevant.” I long for places the church can lead, can go against the grain, can look different. The gospel is different! How we handle conflict is a great place to try that.
I heard a story this week about a man named Ted who was a new Christian, and didn’t get along with his supervisor at a government agency. His supervisor was fairly antagonistic about Ted’s faith, and seemed to pick on him. Even knowing Ted had a serious back problem, the supervisor gave him unusually physically demanding work, and Ted hurt himself and had to take several months off work. He lost several thousand dollars in wages and medical expenses. He filed a lawsuit against the agency and his boss.
The agency offered to settle out of court, still leaving Ted short on money. Lots of his friends pressed him to demand more, or continue the lawsuit. Ted decided to go a different way. He dropped the lawsuit and refused the settlement…deciding that in his case “laying down his right to restitution would be an effective way to demonstrate the mercy and forgiveness he himself had received from God.” That’s what he told his boss as well, who was rather amazed.
And as word got out about this, Ted had someone come up and say “Is it true that you dropped this because you are a Christian?” And when he said yes, the person turned to someone nearby and said in a puzzled tone, “Well, that’s the first time I’ve ever seen a Christian’s faith cost him anything.” Ouch. Ted ended up in a number of other conversations about his faith. He said later it was the best investment he had ever made.
I don’t tell you the story to advocate you go bankrupt. But it intrigued me that here was a different way of dealing with conflict. A surprising way. A costly way. A deliberate choice the culture didn’t understand.
In most places in our lives, we deal with conflict in one of three ways:
a) we deny it is happening.
We ignore it. We tiptoe around, we think the most loving thing to say is…nothing. The elephant is parked squarely in the living room, but nobody is looking at it. It would have been like me walking up the front steps, and someone saying “did you see what your neighbor did to your tree?” And me saying “tree? What tree?”...as I stepped over big limbs laying on the ground. Deny.
b) we run away.
I mean, who likes conflict? You have to be wired totally differently to enjoy it. So we just run. Switch friendships, home groups, church communities, whatever it is to avoid conflict at all costs. Our lives can easily become littered with people we used to know.
c) we go on the offensive.
“Win the argument, prove the point, get what you want.” File a lawsuit, browbeat someone verbally, make sure everyone knows you are in the right.
Jesus has a different idea:
“So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.”
What do you do when there is something between you and someone around you? How does the community of faith handle conflict?
There’s a number of things to notice from just this one little sentence.
First, there is a sense of urgency.
Is there a conflict you have with someone?
...Attend to it now.
It is so important, Jesus says, stop in the middle of worship (that’s what taking a gift to the altar was, an act of worship), delay honoring God in worship by honoring God through resolving a conflict. Maybe that is part of worship.
Honor God by not letting things fester. Take care of it now. Go when the Holy Spirit nudges you and says “you need to talk to that person…there’s something awkward between you.”
Don’t wait! Community of Jesus ought to look different!
Second: talk to the person who the conflict is with.
Talk directly to them. If directness, gentleness, apologies where appropriate don’t work, scripture provides ways in other places to try other things…like getting another person involved, or a leader in the church…but the first thing is. Go directly. “Leave your gift at the altar and GO…be reconciled to your brother or sister.”
And if I may be so bold as to add to the scripture…please don’t do this by e-mail! I’ve made this mistake before. Is there a problem between you and someone else? Do you even think there is a problem? Don’t email it. Go to them, look them in the eye, take their hand…do this person to person. Electronic communication may cause more misunderstandings than it assists.
Third: You may say “There is a problem in this relationship, but it wasn’t me who caused it. The other person should take the initiative and come to me.”
That’s a natural thing to think. But there’s two problems.
- Most often if there’s a disagreement, both people think the other person caused it. Someone needs to step forward. Why not you? Why not honor God’s desire for there to be no barriers between His people?
- I was so interested to notice that Jesus says nothing about whose fault it was. In all the times I’ve read this passage, I always heard it as “if you have something against your brother or sister, go to them.” If you’re the one with the problem, or that did something to injure someone, then go …
but here, Jesus, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, then you go.
Maybe it’s your fault. Maybe it’s their’s. All Jesus says is, “if you know they have something against you…go.” Try to reconcile. What Jesus cares about is that there is something between you…not who done it.
That might grate at us. It might make us say things like this:
“Why should I be the one to go, I’ve done nothing wrong?”
“But I’m innocent.”
“But that’s not fair.”
It strikes me that Jesus himself could have said all of those things, in a far more profound way than we might…as he said went to the cross. “Why me? I’ve done nothing wrong, I’m innocent, it’s not fair.” But it was more important to Jesus to bring about our forgiveness, our restoration with God…than it was to be perceived as right.
It was interesting to me this week to discover that there was a practice of the church in the very early centuries…that as they gathered together for worship, they would often take a period of time before sharing in communion…to circulate amongst each other, greeting one another and confessing to one another, asking forgiveness, reconciling with one another. That would probably feel awkward here, wouldn’t it? Straight pews, not much room. It might feel weird to, when we’re singing, walk across the room and ask someone if you could talk to them. It would be different. But the gospel is different.
Is there conflict in the community of faith?
Of course there is. Always has been. Always will be, because we’re imperfect people.
But what will we do with it?
Deny it? Avoid it? Attack?
Or will we be different people, followers of Jesus?
Here’s how The Message says it:
“This is how I want you to conduct yourself in these matters. If you enter your place of worship and, about to make an offering, you suddenly remember a grudge a friend has against you, abandon your offering, leave immediately, go to this friend and make things right. Then and only then, come back and work things out with God.” Amen.
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