16 Pentecost A Matthew 18:15-20 8 Sept.2002
Rev. Roger Haugen
In my final year of university at Camrose Lutheran College, I was in charge of one of the dorms. There was one guy determined to get my goat. He was always at the centre of disturbances, always living just over the edge of the dorm rules. There was a lot of tension between the two of us all year. One morning, after one particularly heated exchange, I discovered all of the tires on my car flat. I knew it was him and in order not to punch him in the mouth, I avoided him for the remaining weeks of school.
The conflict and tension ate away at me for a long time and I finally wrote him a letter that summer as a way of sorting it out at least for me. It was a difficult letter to write because I knew that I would have to take responsibility for my part of the conflict. It was also quite safe because I was not likely to see him again. When I had sent it, I felt relief.
Several years later at Homecoming, who should I run into but this same person. We spoke about the letter, it was humbling but freeing at the same time and our long-standing antagonism was gone. I wish I had dealt with it a lot sooner, the relief was wonderful and I felt Jesus’ presence in a real way that day.
About twelve years ago, a couple came to see me about getting married. In the process of our pre-marital counseling, I became concerned about a number of things in their relationship, the most serious being what I saw to be a volatile temper and the potential for violence. At one session I pushed a few of his buttons, to the point where I thought he was about to get out of his chair to punch me. I was hoping the bride-to-be would see what see was getting herself into and call it off but to no avail. Due to perceived pressure from her family, I married them only to find out that the violence began the evening of the wedding reception. If I had confronted the situation more openly or refused to marry them, I may have saved her from the two years of Hell it took for her to get out of the abusive relationship.
On my internship there were two farmers who were neighbours, members of the congregation. The problem was that one of the farmers had pigs but not good fences and every spring his pigs would get out and visit the other’s yard. One year they rooted up his garden, so he called his neighbour who came and picked them up. The next year, they got out and destroyed his lawn. Same response – a phone call, the pigs are picked up. This had gone on for a number of years with tensions rising, and the fences got no better. Finally, this one particular year, the offended farmer packed the pigs up in his truck and hauled them to the auction mart. He didn’t have the proper documentation, so he had to take them home again. No apology or restitution was made. The second farmer decided that the next spring he would just shoot the pigs.
The owner of the pigs quit coming to church. Sadly, he could no longer worship with his grown children and grandchildren because of the pig incident. I don’t know what the next spring brought. Neither farmer saw a need to deal with the conflict, one wanted to go about as he always did and the other wanted revenge. Long-time neighbours at odds, the church community weaker because of it. You must wonder what the neighbourhood thought about the Lutheran church in that town.
Conflict is a fact of life. I could give you many more examples from my life of failures to deal with conflict creatively, but you have your own examples. We have them as a congregation. We live in a society that seeks to avoid conflict and instead allow conflict to eat away at us creating bitterness and anger in the vacuum. The list of people to avoid grows longer and longer and grudges are held for years.
The texts for today bring the issue of conflict within the Christian community. Jesus knew as people came together in the body of Christ, the church, there would be conflict and we would need a process to help us. To those of us within the community who know the hurt that can occur within the church, he offers us a process and a promise.
The bar is raised for us within the community of faith. In our dealing with other people we are not to be motivated by revenge or spite but, more than that, within the community of faith, we are to deal with conflict openly and quickly so that when people see us and how we deal with one another, they see Jesus. Love is to be our motivation above all and is to be seen in all our doings. Our dealings with one another are to be so transparent that we are seen to be Christ to our community.
This is not optional. We are to confront sin that breaks community. Ezekiel makes this very clear. We read,
“If I say to the wicked, “O wicked ones, you shall surely die,” and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from their ways, the wicked shall die in their iniquity, but their blood I will require at your hand.”
If we confront the sin and they do not listen, we will have saved our lives. God desires that the wicked turn from their ways. We read:
I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from their ways and live.”
The lesson from Romans speaks to our motivation. We are to “owe no one anything, except to love one another.” Love requires that we confront those who sin against the community, those who break relationships, because it is the loving thing to do. If there is no love, there is no desire to maintain a relationship, love requires that we do the difficult thing, confront the break. Doing so requires that we also face our part in the broken relationship. Our dealing with one another is to reflect God’s love for us, lived out among us so clearly that all who see us are directed to Jesus Christ who creates this love in us.
Love given and received is the motivation to follow the difficult process that Jesus sets before us. Love that gives us the power. We are to speak privately to the one who has offended us, hoping that restoration results, but if not, to take witnesses along, always hoping for restoration. The motivation of love, will be a check on our desire for vengeance, a need to get even or to make the offending person pay appropriately. It will be the mark that assures us of the presence of Jesus.
The promise is that we will not be alone as we seek to resolve conflict. We are told that “for where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” Peace in a congregation is not an easy task, and we need to be assured of Jesus’ presence. Peace is not the absence of war, but the presence of love among us. This is not for the weak of heart, it is hard work. Yet, we are assured as we are intentional about dealing with conflict, not only are we restored to relationship, those around us see our love and see Jesus, we will also sense Jesus’ presence.
There was a famous monastery which had fallen on very hard times. Formerly its many buildings were filled with young monks and its big church resounded with the singing of the chant, but now it was deserted. People no longer came there to be nourished by prayer. A handful of old monks shuffled through the cloisters and praised their God with heavy hearts.
On the edge of the monastery woods, an old rabbi had built a little hut. He would come there from time to time to fast and pray. No one ever spoke with him, but whenever he appeared, the word would be passed from monk to monk: "The rabbi walks in the woods." And for as long as he was there, the monks would feel sustained by his prayerful presence.
One day the abbot decided to visit the rabbi and to open his heart to him. So, after the morning Eucharist, he set out through the woods. As he approached the hut, the abbot saw the rabbi standing in the doorway, his arms outstretched in welcome. It was a though he had been waiting there for some time. The two embraced like long-lost brothers. Then they stepped back and just stood there, smiling at one another with smiles their faces could hardly contain. After a while the rabbi motioned the abbot to enter. In the middle of the room was a wooden table with the Scriptures open on it. They sat there for a moment, in the presence of the Book. Then the rabbi began to cry. The abbot could not contain himself. He covered his face with his hands and began to cry too. For the first time in his life, he cried his heart out. The two men sat there like lost children, filling the hut with their sobs and wetting the wood of the table with their tears.
After the tears had ceased to flow and all was quiet again, the rabbi lifted his head. "You and your brothers are serving God with heavy hearts," he said. "You have come to ask a teaching of me. I will give you a teaching, but you can only repeat it once. After that, no one must ever say it aloud again." The rabbi looked straight at the abbot and said, "The Messiah is among you."
For a while, all was silent. Then the rabbi said, "Now you must go." The abbot left without a word and without ever looking back. The next morning, the abbot called his monks together in the chapter room. He told them he had received a teaching from "the rabbi who walks in the woods" and that this teaching was never again to be spoken aloud. Then he looked at each of his brothers and said, "The rabbi said that one of us is the Messiah."
The monks were startled by this saying. "What could it mean?" they asked themselves. "Is brother John the Messiah? Or Father Matthew? Or Brother Thomas? Am I the Messiah? What could this mean?" They were all deeply puzzled by the rabbi’s teaching. But no one ever mentioned it again. As time went by, the monks began to treat one another with a very special reverence. There was a gentle, wholehearted, human quality about them now which was hard to describe but easy to notice. They lived with one another as men who had finally found something. But they prayed the Scriptures together as men who were always looking for something.
Occasional visitors found themselves deeply moved by the life of these monks. Before long, people were coming from far and wide to be nourished by the prayer life of the monks and young men were asking, once again, to become part of the community.
In those days, the rabbi no longer walked in the woods. His hut had fallen into ruins. But, somehow or other, the old monks who had taken his teaching to heart still felt sustained by his prayerful presence.
(from "Stories for the Journey" , William R. White)
