A sermon for the 12th Sunday after Pentecost, given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on September 4, 2011.
Psalm 149
Romans 13:8-14
Matthew 18:15-20
Let us revisit the teaching of Jesus in verse 15 of today’s gospel reading:
If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother.
I’d like to begin my thoughts on this passage with someone else’s thoughts. The following is excerpted from an article on the eighteenth chapter of Matthew’s gospel that Elaine Ramshaw of Luther Seminary wrote in the periodical Word and World.
"When someone hurts another, she is using some power she has over him. She may continue to exercise control over her victim, or she may be "one-down" now in their relationship, with the victim having the power of injured innocence, the power of one to whom something is owed (cf. the parable of the unforgiving servant). If she is identified by the community as a wrongdoer, she may be abused by the community or by its leaders. Alternatively (or even simultaneously!), she may have great power to disrupt the community. The one she hurt may be abused by the community because of the stigma of victimhood, or he may find sympathy and support. He may be abused by being told that if he doesn't forgive her unilaterally and immediately, God will hand him over to the torturers! And on top of all this, there's the further confusion that many situations of interpersonal harm are not neatly divided into victim and victimizer; often a relationship has gone bad and there is a shared responsibility for the harm done."
Situations of conflict bring out the worst in individuals and communities.
How do we go forward, how do we repair what has been broken? How do we reconcile? Is it possible to amend the wrongs? How do we keep one wrong from breeding many?
How do we untie the tangled emotions – the power struggle that is spawned out of the dynamic of victim/victimizer?
Jesus makes clear that the way forward is not the way of self-preservation. It is not the way of vengeful seeking of dominance, of seeking to regain power over the enemy, control over the situation. We are not called to be the one with the last word, the last punch.
Jesus makes clear that the most important thing is that we love.
The instructions given in today’s gospel lesson are instructions in how to respond to injury with love.
Aurelius Augustine, or “Saint”, as he’s become known through the ages, shows how Jesus’ instructions that “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone” are instructions of how to love your neighbor who has made himself your enemy.
In his sermon on this passage he says,
"Hatred then is darkness. Now it cannot but be, that he who hates another, should first injure himself. For while trying to hurt another outwardly, he lays himself waste inwardly. Now in proportion as our soul is of more value than our body, so much the more ought we to provide for it, that it be not hurt. But he that hates another, hurts his own soul. And what can he do to him whom he hates? What can he do? He takes away his money, can he take his faith away? he wounds his reputation, can he wound his conscience? Whatever injury he does, is but external; now observe what his injury to himself is! For he who hates another is an enemy to himself within. But because he is not sensible of what harm he is doing to himself, he is violent against another, and that the more dangerously, that he is not sensible of the evil he is doing to himself; because by this very violence he has lost the power of perception. You are violent against your enemy; by this violence of yours he is spoiled, but you are wicked. Great is the difference between the two. He has lost his money, you your innocence. Ask which has suffered the heavier loss? He has lost a thing that was sure to perish, and you have become one who must now perish yourself. Therefore ought we to rebuke in love;
not with any eager desire to injure, but with an earnest care to amend.
If you neglect [Jesus’ instructions], you are worse than [the one who did you wrong]. He has done an injury, and by doing an injury, has struck himself with a grievous wound; will you disregard your brother’s wound? Will you see him perishing, or already lost, and disregard his case? You are worse in keeping silence, than he in his reviling. Therefore when any one sins against us, let us take great care, not for ourselves, for it is a glorious thing to forget injuries; only forget your own injury, not your brother’s wound. Therefore “go and tell him his fault between you and him alone,” intent upon his amendment, but sparing his shame. For it may be that through embarrassment he will begin to defend his sin, and so you will make him whom want to help, still worse."
Our enemy in harming another, has done more harm to himself than to the harmed person.
This is an insight that we cannot miss and is incredibly important in understanding the compassion that we see as Christ cries from his place of execution, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
So often the person who harms is caught up in the darkness of anger, resentment, and hatred – perhaps the product of a long stewing of emotion, perhaps the product of a moment’s inciting.
The ones who harm another cut themselves off from the community and for as long as they go on without recognition of their wrong, cut themselves off from having a truthful relationship with God – who knows and sees all. They begin to participate in the darkness of hatred and of self-seeking and the lies which they have to tell themselves in order to justify their hatred and hateful actions or speech.
The one wronged stands with the unique opportunity to extend God’s love to the one who wronged them. They are able to bring back that one to the community and to right relationship with God. They stand able to shed light on the darkness that has already clouded the wrongdoer and wounded their soul.
So, let’s imitate Christ and seek the reconciliation of the enemy who has wronged us. But how should we approach such an awkward subject?
Common wisdom urges us to “bury the hatchet.” Common wisdom urges us to “Forgive and forget.”
But forgiveness without truth is a house built on sand.
And truth only comes out painfully and through a process that requires patience and a faith in the healing power of truthful love.
Stanley Hauerwas has explored the dynamics involved in the messiness of peacemaking founded on truthfulness and forgiveness and writes the following words regarding this passage in Matthew 18:
"The procedure outlined by Jesus in Matt. 18 is how and what it means for his disciples to be at peace with one another. Jesus assumes that those who follow him will wrong another and, subsequently, they will be caught in what may seem irresolvable conflict. The question is not whether such conflict can be eliminated, but how his followers are to deal with conflict. He assumes that conflict is not to be ignored or denied, but rather conflict, which may involve sins, is to be forced into the open. Christian discipleship requires confrontation because the peace that Jesus has established is not simply the absence of violence. The peace of Christ is nonviolent precisely because it is based on truth and truth-telling. Just as love without truth cannot help but be accursed, so peace between the brothers and sisters of Jesus must be without illusion.
Yet we confess that truth is about the last thing most of us want to know about ourselves. We may say that the truth saves, but in fact we know that any truth, particularly the truth that is Jesus, is as disturbing as it is fulfilling. That is why Jesus insists that those who would follow him cannot let sins go unchallenged. If we fail to challenge one another in our sins, we in fact abandon one another to our sin. We show how little we love our brother and sister by our refusal to engage in the hard work of reconciliation."
It is not an easy road, but there is no other way to follow Christ but to be willing to tell it as it is. To see ourselves, our neighbors, our enemies, and the world as they truly are. And to do this is to learn to speak truthfully about our actions and the actions done to us.
Jesus’ instructions about resolving conflict provide a practical framework not only for reconciling ourselves to the one who has wronged us, but also of providing the “moment of truth” for both people involved, that both might participate in the freedom of being to connected to “the way things really are.”
Relationship is able to be restored both between the wronged and the wrongdoer and between both and God. And this restoration can only happen once truth has been acknowledged and on that foundation, forgiveness and restorative action enacted.
We cannot have peace with one another or unity as a community, without a common desire for truth and a common practice of speaking truthfully. Often times the truth requires us to give up our dignity or to do some form of reparative action. This strikes our independent maverick selves the wrong way.
But if we continue on without being reconciled to our neighbor, we become more and more isolated from the community, unable to tell the story of our lives truthfully (there’s too much to lose!) And therefore we are disconnected, out of fellowship with God and our community, because we create and live in a world of our own making, brought about by the need to defend our pride and tell our story in the most flattering light.
If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother.
So, truthfulness and forgiveness are essential for restoring our own and our neighbor’s participation in the fellowship of God and our community.
Another thing that needs to be stressed concerning Jesus’s instructions for reconciling is that we first need to go to our neighbor ALONE.
This is crucial. In our pain, sometimes we seek out others to come with us to make sure the perpetrator is sorry. But this is not reconciliation, this is revenge. I’m sure there are extenuating circumstances where it would be dangerous for the harmed to go confront alone. But in most cases, it is most appropriate to settle the matter privately. To let what was between you, your neighbor, and God stay between you, your neighbor, and God.
Verses sixteen and seventeen which follow do speak to the need to bring others if the person does not want to reconcile after you have approached them alone.
The others that then accompany the wronged need to also greatly desire the reconciliation, the restoring of the offender to the community. They join with the wronged in confronting the wrongdoer out of love for their soul, out of desire for their restoration and healing. It is never for the purpose of embarrassment or punishment, but only for the returning of truth and love.
Augustine brings up the reality that follows when we do not first seek to settle the matter privately, but immediately bring others into the conversation:
through embarrassment he will begin to defend his sin, and so you will make him whom you want to help, still worse.
By scolding and embarrassing, you may have gained a sense of pride and you may have gained a satisfaction that justice has been done, but you have not gained your neighbor and you have not restored community. You have allowed the person to remain in their sad estate, the darkness of their hatred. Only now that darkness is intensified and you have participated in it yourself.
We are a community of light, following the light of the world, who did not seek to dominate but to give his life for others.
Can we put our pride down and live not for ourselves, but that others might be made whole?
Go to one who offended you, out of love for them and out of desire for truth and forgiveness, out of desire for the greater healing that happens when both offender and offended share in the light of God’s love.
Go alone, because this is not about power and saving face, but about truth and love.
Go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. And the violence that divided has been replaced with peace which unites. Evil has been overcome by good.
Amen.
