September 7, 2008 - "How to Have a Good Fight"

Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
Pentecost 17
September 7, 2008
W. Gregory Pope

SERIES: The New Monasticism

HOW TO HAVE A GOOD FIGHT

Exodus 12:1-14; Psalm 149; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20

We have before us in today’s texts and the ones for next week the most important words to a church in order to protect it from disaster. They are words that address disagreement, confrontation, forgiveness and reconciliation.

At work within these texts are two monastic values the Rule of Benedict addresses in detail but are foreign to contemporary church life: discipline and stability.

THE CALL TO LOVE, THE REALITY OF CONFLICT

All of which is wrapped up in the call to love even in the midst of conflict.

Benedict says the Rule is given in order to amend faults and to safeguard love. [1]

The apostle Paul writes, “Owe no one anything but to love them.”

When you sign up to be a disciple of Jesus you are taking a vow against hatred; you’re making a promise, in so far as you can with God’s help, to see all people through eyes of love. That includes our enemies. Jesus couldn’t have said it plainer: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

We continually bear out the truth the Bible teaches that human beings are broken by sin. So it ought not surprise us when people can’t get along. The Bible doesn’t teach us to expect a world where everybody naturally loves and respects everyone else. But Jesus does tell his disciples to “love one another.” And Jesus seems to think that the Holy Spirit will enable members of his body to do that. Indeed, that’s how Jesus says other people will know that there is good news for the world - because a church exists where people genuinely love one another. It’s a little scary to say it, but I think John Howard Yoder was right when he said, “Where Christians are not united, the gospel is not true in that place.” [2]

We all inevitably create trouble for the people around us. Not just because all of us are flawed, though we are; it’s also because we are simply different from each other, with different temperaments, and different ideas about how to proceed. And our differences rub up against each other.

There is possibly a place where differences do not rub up against each other. In his book The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis imagines hell as a vast, gray city that spreads out forever, inhabited only at the edges, the enormous center of it filled with millions of vacant houses on endless empty streets. All the houses were once occupied by citizens of hell, who disliked their neighbors and moved, and disliked their new neighbors and moved again and again. Preferring vast distance to dealing with difficulty and difference. [3]

We can’t love each other without some conflict. And we can’t keep loving each other without reaching through conflict to be reconciled. Jesus gives guidance as to how.

ACT I - ONE ON ONE

First: “If a brother or sister sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If they listen - a most important Benedictine, monastic word - if they listen you’ve got back your brother or sister.”

Notice two things:

One, Jesus is talking about people in a covenant relationship. When he says “brother,” he means a member of the family of faith, the church. Maybe an official church, like Crescent Hill Baptist, or an unofficial church, as in friends who live in a covenant of faith, or a family, the church in your house. He is talking to people in a love relationship, and he’s saying these things all for the purpose of staying faithful to each other.

It’s what Benedictine monastics strive for when they take a vow of stability. It is the promise to stay in one place for the rest of your life. Can you imagine in our highly mobile society that sees mobility as a symbol of our freedom, can you imagine deciding that you are going to remain in one place for the remainder of your life?

Whatever could be the benefit of such a vow? Well, Benedict would say that you can only grow in the spiritual life by staying with one community. Where people get to know you through and through and hold you accountable to grow and change. The vow of stability also helps the monastic avoid the temptation to believe that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence in another faith community. [4]

So, this guidance from Jesus on confronting one who lives with us in covenant community is for the purpose of helping us stay faithful to each other.

A second point about this guidance is that it is primarily for serious offenses. It’s not about someone who rubs you the wrong way or disagrees with your position or looks at you funny. It’s about someone who sins against you. Disagreements and annoyances are normal parts of relationship. What mature love does with those is to bear them with patience. But to be sinned against - lied to, betrayed, attacked, abandoned, having someone not live up to their responsibilities to you - this is serious because it has the potential of breaking covenant. And that’s why Jesus says we are to confront it.

And you do it yourself, just you and the other alone, face to face. We keep the matter private. There’s no spreading of the news to others. We must not go about condemning the offender. You don’t gossip about your hurt, but neither do you nurse it in wounded silence. You could do that if it were all about you, but it’s not about you. A relationship is at stake. And not just a personal relationship, but a community covenant relationship. The purpose of this guidance is not to help justify the anger or hurt feelings of the offended but to restore relationship.

So you take the initiative. Isn’t that something? Jesus hands the initiative to the sinned-against. He tells us to make time to talk, one on one, with those who have done us wrong.

We take the initiative because, in some cases, the offender may be unaware of the offense. It is a gesture of reconciliation. The one who has been offended bears the responsibility of initiating reconciliation and mending the breach. The offended is not to sit back and wait for the other to apologize.

If this guidance gives us pause, I think it’s meant to. The very difficulty of deciding to go to someone like this invites us to pause and consider how we ourselves may also have been at fault. Maybe we’ll come to see that the greater sin was our own. Maybe we’ll go and tell them more about our sin than theirs.

David Garland wants us to notice that this call to reprove a fellow Christian is preceded by demands to be humble as a child, to purge one’s one sins, and to seek urgently after the one who strays like a shepherd after a lost sheep, and that it is followed by a demand for unlimited forgiveness. [5]

Barbara Brown Taylor suggests we ask some questions before we proceed, such as: Am I sure I know what I’m talking about? Have I given the other person every benefit of the doubt? What are my motives in confronting her with my feelings? Do I want to make him feel bad, or do I really want peace? And remember, Taylor says, being right is less important than being in relationship. [6]

Those are important questions to ask before pressing on to the difficult task of saying hard truth to people who have sinned against us.

It’s all the harder because of the tone it must take: not castigating or shaming, just telling the truth in love. This is a call for direct confrontation but not verbal abuse. Do you remember those words from Ephesians? “Speak the truth in love. . . Be angry, but do not sin . . .Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up . . . And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” Kindness is the best chance we have of winning back a brother or sister. Scripture says it is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance. And that is the point - not to get something off your chest, or to heal yourself, but to restore relationship. And that’s what makes it a good fight.

Even if harm was done deliberately, your attitude of love and gentleness may very well lead to reconciliation. What matters is repairing the relationship between the two family members. It’s about winning your brother or sister, not winning an argument. It is possible to win the argument and lose your brother.

If the person listens, which would seem to include hearing, accepting, repenting, and perhaps requesting forgiveness, then you have gained your brother or sister back to full relationship, to make the flock whole again.

Sometimes, though, it doesn’t succeed. Some of us don’t listen well, even when we are lovingly confronted with our sins. So Jesus goes on.

ACT II - TWO OR THREE ON ONE

“But of you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by two or three witnesses.”

Now, what is this - a posse? No, this is about people in covenant who aren’t about to give up on each other. To bring witnesses is to convince and persuade not to judge and convict. It’s about how incredibly precious our relationships under God truly are, and how all of us are harmed when even two of us are estranged. Jesus learned this from the Law of Moses in Deuteronomy (19:15).

So, you take one or two with you, and not your best buddies either, maybe their best buddies; but most importantly, one or two people who live in covenant with both of you, helping you both hear and say and see what’s true. It may be that we are wrong and we need wisdom outside ourselves.

But of course, even this can fail.

ACT III - THE CONGREGATION ON ONE

If it does, then Jesus says go ahead and bring in the whole family, the entire congregation. Let all of you stretch toward the healing of a wound and the restoring of relationship. This is the length that covenant love will go to. We’re to go as far as we possibly can for the sake of reconciliation.

Frank Stagg says that these instructions picture a community where every member watches over another, the whole church assumes responsibility for every member, and every member is accountable to the whole church. [7]

To engage the congregation is to get the congregation to exercise its moral influence, not its disciplinary muscle. [8]

The goal of Benedictine discipline “is always meant to heal, never to destroy; to cure, not to crush.” [9]

And the church, Jesus says, must pray together before disciplining the erring person.

And if in the efforts of everyone together, the other refuses to be reconciled, what then?

ACT IV - WHAT TO DO WITH THE UNREPENTANT

Then, Jesus says, “If the offender refuses to listen to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

This gets to the act of church discipline.

Part of the discipline is to let them go. Honor their freedom. Let them be as separate as they choose to be. Tell the truth about what has broken. Grieve them and let them go. It may seem harsh. It has been used as the basis for that ugliest of words, “excommunication.”

What it’s really about is an utter commitment to the practice of covenant love. So vital is it that when it’s threatened we risk hard conversations, make every attempt to get it back. And it’s so cherished that when it dies, we don’t pretend it hasn’t. This too, in fact, is love for members of the family who won’t reconcile: to accept and formalize their choice to be separate, and to honor love by giving burial to what has died between us.

We often see our sin as a personal matter between ourselves and God or us and the offended party. But it is a matter of the Christian congregation to which we belong, and may damage its life.

These instructions are set in the context not of self-righteous vindictiveness, but of radical caring for the marginal and straying, and of grace and forgiveness beyond all imagining.

This is a people who are to love another so intensely that they refuse to risk the loss of the one who has gone astray - or the loss of ourselves in harboring resentments. [10]

But whatever others do, we don’t stop loving. Not ever. As a matter of fact, did you notice something odd about how Jesus said to treat those who finally refuse all our efforts at reconciliation? He said let them go. But he also said, “Treat them like Gentiles and tax collectors.”

In one sense, treating someone as a Gentile and tax collector means rejection, exclusion, excommunication. In another sense, and quite ironically, it means the radical, offensive inclusion demanded by the gospel itself.

How did Jesus treat Gentiles and tax collectors? He had lunch with them and went to parties with them. He gave covenant love to anyone, and he never broke covenant with anyone, not even with us. And he never set limits on human forgiveness.

Listen to how the Rule of Benedict describes our love for the offender. He writes: The [monastic community, or the church] must exercise the utmost care and concern for the wayward because “it is not the healthy who need a physician, but the sick” (Matt 9:12). Therefore they ought to use every skill of a wise physician and send in . . . mature and wise members who . . . may support the wavering sister or brother, urge them to be humble as a way of making [amends], and “console them lest they be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow” (2 Cor 2:7). . . . As the apostle [Paul] says: “Let love be reaffirmed” (2 Cor 2:8), and let all pray for the one who is [not reconciled]. [11]

So my fellow Gentiles, no matter what others may choose to do, as followers of Jesus we are never in position to break covenant love with anyone.

We come to the table of One who never has broken covenant relationship with us. And never will. He reached out to us to the point of death. And is risen and lives among us as we gather together, reaching out to us still, calling us to forgiveness and reconciliation.

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1. St. Benedict, The Rule of St. Benedict, ed. Timothy Fry, Vintage Spiritual Classics, 1998, Prologue
2. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, New Monasticism: What It Has to Say to Today’s Church, Brazos, 2008, 128
3. C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, Simon and Schuster, 1946, 20-21. Barbara Brown Taylor connects Lewis’ vision of hell with Matt 18:15-20 in The Seeds of Heaven, Westminster John Knox, 2004, 87-88
4. Christopher Jamison, Finding Sanctuary: Monastic Steps for Everyday Life, 117
5. David Garland, Reading Matthew, Crossroad, 1993, 190-191
6. Taylor, 88-89
7. Frank Stagg, “Matthew,” Broadman, 184
8. Garland, 191
9. Joan Chittister, The Rule of Benedict: Insights For the Ages, Crossroad, 1992, 104
10. Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew, Brazos Press, 2006, 165
11. St. Benedict, Chapter 27