Sermon for September 6th
Our faith is many things, but it is never easy. God challenges us and stretches us in ways that we can’t even fathom. Whether we are asked to be merciful, or to forgive, or whether we are being asked to be open and loving to all people and to be servants of all people, God will push us time and time again to move beyond the walls of what we perceive of as right or comfortable. Even the act of prayer is a difficult one for us to wrap our minds around when we want to be self-sufficient and we want to prove to the world that we are enough and we are masters of our own life. Every aspect of our faith flies in the face of how we think life should work. Yet the challenge remains. Faith will call us out to these greater pursuits. It will push us into being that which we were meant to be, without excuses or caveats or deferrals. We haven’t been set free to willfully walk back into the sinful, destructive life we once knew. We have been set free for something greater than our own petty desires. We have been set free so that we can be a light to the world and so that we follow Christ wherever he may lead.
Our text for today is no different. Our text today is about how we reconcile with one another when we face a dispute. And the process offered here is a good one.
“If your brother or sister sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If you are listened to, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If that person refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church, and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a gentile and a tax collector.”
We don’t often act this way when confronted with conflict. Some of us get angry and argumentative. Others shut down and hold on to the grudge silently. We gossip behind each others back and cut each other out of our lives and we feel justified doing it. Yet, Jesus is telling us that we need to work to reconcile with one another. We need to talk to each other and when it is appropriate, bring in the wider community, all in an effort to repair the damaged relationship.
And that’s the part that is outmost importance. To repair the damaged relationship. We aren’t meant to live a life filled with broken relationships. We are meant to live a life of community, because we are at our best when we surrounded by people and who we work to uphold and who in turn work to uphold us. A broken relationship might be ultimately inevitable, but the process that Jesus outlines here is one that is meant to salvage the relationship and not let disagreements and grievances spell the end of connection with another human being. The reality is, when we are burdened down by the hate and anger that has led to the breach of this relationship, then that hate anger will stay with us. They will weigh us down. They will tear at our very being. Too many relationships like this in our life will lead us to turn in own ourselves and become broken, bitter people, not to mention the harm it inflicts on the other party.
Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
The anger and hate and other hurt we carry with us and inflict on other people is something that is bound to them and to us and it is only in an act of reconciliation that we and the other can be set free.
I often think of a funeral I presided over during my time at Augustana. When I met the gentleman in question, he was far gone in dementia and didn’t know who I was or why I was there to visit him. He passed away a few months later and I was able to meet his family. It was during these interactions that I discovered they had very little use for their Dad. According to them, he was mean and fairly abusive. They loved their mother, but she had been gone for years and since her passing, they had little to do with their father.
That still breaks my heart when I think of a family who couldn’t be around their own dad, so much so that when the funeral date was decided on, one son did not return from his holidays to be at the funeral. I suppose I could understand their reaction, as there was a lot of hurt that had been caused by the father in that relationship, but as a father, I couldn’t imagine being cut out of my children’s lives in such a way.
When it came to the funeral, I had no idea how the son who was performing the eulogy was going to manage it. And yet, he found a way. He talked about how, after the dementia had grown quite severe, their father had changed. He became happy and many of his nurses commented on how much they enjoyed being his nurse. This was not the man that he and his siblings had grown up with. The son took the idea that when we go to meet God, we become the people we were always meant to be and applied it to what happened with his father. Perhaps this new, gentle version of him was a glimpse of who he was meant to be, once the hurt and bitterness of his own life was stripped away and he could be the child of God he was always meant to be.
It was a beautiful idea and one that offered an avenue of forgiveness for the son. He couldn’t forgive the father for what he had been, but he could hope that one day, reconciled in God’s eternal love, he could see his father as God had always intended him. In that moment, the son let go of what his father had been and looked with some measure of hope on what his father would become. It was a beautiful moment.
If we let hate and anger rule our relationships, then we will always be plagued with the pain the comes from that brokenness. The way Jesus outlines here is difficult and not often our natural way of responding to these hurtful moments in our life, but it is an opportunity to have find reconciliation and peace again.
But as in all things that have to do with our faith journey, none of this is possible without God by our side and without the Spirit breathing God’s grace into our souls. The journey of faith is the hardest thing we will ever do, but it will also be the greatest and with God’s help, it is possible, even the hard work of reconciliation and protecting the fabric of our communities.
Amen