Personal Politics
Sermon
Sermons On The Gospel Readings
Series II, Cycle A
Thomas Browne said that "the vices we scoff at in others laugh at us from within ourselves." More than any other relational failure this is true of hurt and vengeance.
When the great nineteenth-century Spanish General, Ramon Narvaez, lay dying in Madrid, a priest was called in to give him last rites. "Have you forgiven your enemies?" the padre asked.
"Father," confessed Narvaez, "I have no enemies. I shot them all."
Too often that is the story of our lives, and Jesus knows it. Lewis Smedes wrote a book we can hardly step around when thinking about Jesus' words in Matthew 18. Smedes' book is called Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don't Deserve (HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), and in it he wrestles with us about the commonplace pains we experience in our relationship. One of his stories, based upon true incidents, is about two people he calls Jane and Ralph Graafschap.
Hell Defined
This couple, says Smedes, had been married for more than twenty years. They had three children who had all grown well, and were just in those stages of getting married or leaving for college. Ralph and Jane were about to be empty nesters, and though they loved their offspring, they were secretly anticipating a new time of redeveloping their intimacy as a couple. Jane had given up her personal career goals in order to be a full-time mother and homemaker for these last decades, and she began to plan for reasserting her skills outside their home.
But then tragedy struck. Ralph's younger brother and wife were killed in a horrible car accident. They left three children as orphans, aged eight, ten, and twelve. The community rallied for a short while, providing all kinds of assistance and relief, but Ralph knew that he was the big brother, and to him fell the lot of caring for those kids.
So Ralph and Jane took the three into their home, and Jane started all over again -- clothes to buy and clean and mend; groceries to stock for voracious appetites; nighttime cuddling with scared and lonely little ones; Christmases and birthdays to plan for ... Jane's life settled right back into its old routine for another decade.
Ralph was well established in his career, and at the height of his business skills. So he traveled a lot and made deals, and spoke about the sacrifices a family makes when tragedies, like that which happened to his brother, happened. But Jane was left to shuffle three more teenagers through their changing identities and raging hormones. She had hoped to travel some with Ralph, but this new family required all her attentions. Even her biological children were not able to get all the doting they had hoped from their mother as they married and had kids of their own.
By the time nine years had passed, the toll of raising two families had robbed Jane of her vitality and sidelined any chance of another career. Only the youngest of the second tribe was at home, and he was seventeen years old. When he left for college the following fall, Jane would be relieved but emotionally spent. Ralph's rocket had been soaring, however, and Jane couldn't wait to join him for the ride.
That's when Ralph came home from a business trip and broke the news. His secretary, Sue, was a woman of great personality, huge skills, and a lot of good looks. She had made it possible for Ralph to be the man he had become, while Jane was too busy with the children. Sue had time for him. In fact, they traveled often together, something that Jane never seemed to make opportunities for. More than that, Sue absolutely doted on Ralph in a way that he couldn't count on at home. Sue really understood Ralph, while Jane didn't seem to anymore.
Ralph filed for divorce and married Sue. They were both deeply committed Christians, so they joined a church where they could sing and pray and get fed and contribute their considerable skills and money. They were welcomed by the pastor and the leadership team as if God has just sent a wonderful blessing to the church.
Jane, of course, felt cheated on so many fronts. Even in her own church she had become an outsider. Her social life grew very small, and her children didn't know what to do with a single parent. Ralph and Sue were always great fun, but Jane was becoming a bitter tag-along nobody cared to have around.
Ralph was truly a nice guy. Even as he slipped easily into his second marriage, he realized his responsibility before God to make things right with his former wife. So one day he called Jane and told her of his happiness. While he was still a bit unsettled as to the manner in which it had all come about, he could definitely feel God's blessing in all of this. But he also was aware that through the process Jane might have felt hurt at times, so Ralph wanted to ask her forgiveness for whatever pain he might have caused. If Jane could just give Ralph and Sue her blessing, he knew God would be pleased.
What could Jane do? What would you advise her to do? What would you do, if you were in her shoes?
"I want you to bless me," Ralph had said. And before she even knew what she should do, the words spat out of Jane's mouth. "I want you to go to hell!"
"I want you to go to hell." That's really what a relationship that has moved into conflict without forgiveness amounts to, doesn't it? Hell is the place where justice is never tempered by mercy, where relationships are never mended, where grudges grow and grace takes a holiday. Hell is eternity apart from God's forgiving love, and hell is the prison of our unforgiveness into which we lock both our enemies and ourselves with no parole hearings. It's a bit like playing Monopoly and landing on a square that forces you to pick up a card which reads: "GO TO JAIL! GO DIRECTLY TO JAIL! DO NOT PASS GO! DO NOT COLLECT $200!"
Prickly People
Jesus' words to his disciples in Matthew 18 about conflict resolution and forgiveness are wonderful on paper. We read them and nod with understanding and trust. Yet, they are some of the most difficult words of challenge that face us anywhere in scripture.
We've all heard of Gilbert and Sullivan, the dynamic duo of the stage. They created fun-filled musicals and light operas a generation ago, giving high school drama departments and community theaters plenty of material to dazzle and delight. Their names always appeared in tandem on the programs: Gilbert & Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore; Gilbert & Sullivan's Patience; Gilbert & Sullivan's The Mikado; Gilbert & Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance.
It was as if they were a married couple. Indeed, much of their career felt like that. It was only right that their names be wedded together in common speech.
At the height of their success, they even purchased a theater together so that they could exert full creative control over their new works. Then came the nasty disagreement. Sullivan ordered the installation of new carpets. But when the bill arrived, Gilbert hit the roof at the cost and refused to share in payment. They argued and fought about it, and finally took the case to court. A legal judgment settled the claim, but it did nothing to heal the breach between them.
These grown men never spoke to one another again as long as they lived. When Sullivan wrote the music for a new production he would mail it to Gilbert. Then, when Gilbert finished the libretto, he would post it back to Sullivan again.
One time they were requested to make a curtain call together. Although they normally refused such things because of their ongoing animosity, this time it was a benefit honoring their joint work, and they couldn't get out of it with grace. So they stayed at opposite sides back stage, entered from the far edges of the curtain, ensured that there were props in between them so that they could not see one another on the platform, and waved in isolation to opposite portions of the gathered audience.
Gilbert quarantined Sullivan in the prison of his mind, and Sullivan banished Gilbert from his social continent. Eventually, they each became warders for the prison of the other. Yet, like the guards who traveled to Australia on the first convict ships, it became apparent all too soon that there was little difference between the jailer and the jailed. Both came ashore onto a deserted island in the middle of an alien sea with no way to escape.
Jesus' words are necessary. We are social creatures who cannot live in isolation. Yet, because of the sin and stupidity that trouble our human condition, we do not live well with those around us. The German philosopher, Schopenhauer, compared us to porcupines trying to nest together on a cold winter's night. We crouch toward one another because we need the heat of other bodies to survive. Yet, the closer we huddle, the more we prick each other with our porcupine quills. And, as Jesus indicates, it is most often those who are closest to us, our "brother" or our "sister," who feel the pain of our presence and we theirs.
Jesus outlines a strategy for addressing our troubled relationships with one another. It is important to follow him down this difficult path in our attempts to restore relational glue to our fractured worlds, for the alternatives are much more destructive.
Keep It Personal
First, Jesus reminds us that we have to make the process of restoration a very personal matter. When we are hurt and when our pride has been damaged, we often become vindictive and belligerent. We charge about and spew venom and seek to build polarized communities of those who are for "us" and against "them." The weapon of response most readily available to us is gossip and rumor. If I can send a toxic word to poison the atmosphere around the person who has hurt me, I hold a new advantage over her or him.
In so doing, of course, I demote the other person from humankind and relegate her or him to animal status or lower. She is no longer my equal; she is a slut or a witch or a bimbo. He has become a pariah or a jackass or a scoundrel.
When my friend becomes my enemy, I feel the need to degrade him or her until they no longer deserve respect and have ceased to be bound with me by the rules of gentlemanly conduct or even the combat and prisoner of war stipulations of the Geneva Convention. Then I can blast them with excessive force and hit below the belt.
After the tragedy of September 11, 2001, our nation experienced something of this intentional projected dehumanization. Those who hijacked the planes, according to many speeches and articles, were not humans, but terrorists. They did not play by the rules. They did not value life as we did. They were schooled in barbarianism. For all these reasons and others like them our nation uttered cries for vengeance, many of which exceeded limits of human respect. It was General Philip Sheridan who gave us the striking reflection in 1869 that "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." Post 9/11 there were many voices that seemed to echo his advice in the new and painful context.
But Jesus demands that we keep our hurting relationship and all its parties personal. "If your brother sins against you go and show him his fault, just between the two of you" (Matthew 18:15 NIV). This instruction strips me of my most destructive weapons and forces me to rehumanize the very one from whom my heart wants to pull away in disgust. Jesus does not claim it will be an easy thing to do. No psychologist would pretend the process is a lark, or carries us along like a carnival ride. Hurt is painful, and so is restoration.
Keep It Communal
Second, Jesus challenges us to keep these matters under the eye of the community. It is hard for us to think communally in our highly individualized societies, yet this is precisely what we need to do. To keep these matters under the eye of the community means to place ourselves in submission to at least some form of group identity. This is not easy. Our consumerist way of life constantly tells us that all of reality revolves around us and our tastes and schedules and desires. In stark contrast, to enter a community means that I give up some of my personal agenda for the sake of the greater good.
We must be absolutely clear here. The Bible never suggests that our individual lives and personalities and desires and actions are of no value. Nor is a complete commitment to communal living the biblical norm. Significantly to the contrary, the scriptures raise high the importance of the individual and the responsibility of the person. In fact, much of economic capitalism, psychological personhood, and political democracy are rooted in and supported by serious reflections on theologies and philosophies drawing on orthodox Christian perspectives.
Yet, our strong obsession with personal rights and self-absorbed experientialism turns our attention too much toward myopic self-interest and away from group dynamics or social interdependence. After years of reflection on the human condition in books like The People of the Lie (Touchstone, 1998), The Different Drum (Touchstone, 1998), and The Road Less Traveled (Touchstone, 2003), M. Scott Peck came to believe that one of the primary maladies of our age is our resistance against community. In his book A World Waiting to Be Born (Rider, 1993) he claimed that religious submission was the only cure for the incivility of our age. When we stop being submissive to some form of higher power, he said, we invariably become gods to ourselves and degenerate into a mad world of petty power brokers who are limited only by the striking range of their swinging fists and demanding fingers.
In the church, at least, we must become more aware of what Body Life means. How is it that Jesus has a stake in multiple lives, and what does this mean for our connection to the head of the body? What is the implication of the church's role in multi-ethnic relations for international politics? How do we allow the leadership of the church, empowered by the Spirit and ordained by the community, to speak into the tensions of our lives that disrupt and fracture the fellowship of faith?
There are no easy answers, of course. But Jesus' teaching here demands that we wrestle with the issues. We cannot claim fidelity with God and at the same time play cavalierly in our daily relations with those around us. Each person and each congregation will have to be part of the process of determining how the community and its leadership will invest in reconciliation and restoration.
Thomas Merton, when writing about the religious community with which he spent many years, noted that every prospective participant was initially brought in and made to stand in the center of a circle formed by current members. There he was asked by the abbot, "What do you come seeking?"
The answers varied, of course, in line with the individual's recent experiences. Some said, "I come seeking a deeper relationship with God." Others were more pragmatic: "I desire to become more disciplined in my practices of life." And there were always a few who were simply running away: "I hope to find solace from the world and refuge from the problems that have plagued me."
But Merton said that there was really only one answer which all needed to voice before they could take up residence. "I need mercy!" was the true cry of the heart. "I need mercy!"
Merton said that any other answer betrayed our prideful assertion of self-determination. We wanted, we planned, we were running away from, we desired ... But the person who knew his need of mercy had stepped out of the myopic circle of self-interest long enough to begin to see the fragile interdependence of all who were taken into the larger fellowship of faith. We cannot create community, for it does not revolve around us. We can only enter community or receive it as a gift. Hence, we need mercy in order to walk through its door.
If we know this, then when we experience tension and broken bonds with someone else in the community, it is not ours or theirs to resolve in isolation. The community itself has a stake in all lives and their interactions. Therefore, says Jesus, it is absolutely imperative that we engage the power of the community in addressing the hurts that affect any of its members. Failing to do so does not so much destroy community as it does isolate us from it. We become impoverished when we think we have all the resources to force others into obedience to our way of thinking or living.
Keep It Focused
One more thing that becomes apparent in Jesus' teaching is that the entire emotional content of our relational difficulties needs to be reframed. Jesus says that our goal is to have a brother restored. Moreover, if that does not happen through our own initiatives and those of the community, the outcome must be that we treat the other person in the broken relationship as if he were a "pagan or a tax collector."
These designations sound ominous to us. They are off-putting to our sensibilities of associating with "nice" people. But we need to recall that Jesus was accused of spending too much time with tax collectors and sinners. To treat people in this manner is not to throw stones at them or to turn away in disgust. Rather it is a call to re-engage with them as those whom God is seeking and saving.
When Bill Hybels was a college student in Iowa, he had a roommate who trained his pet dog to growl whenever the town mayor's name was mentioned. No matter what might be happening at any time, if someone happened to say the mayor's name in passing, the little mutt would bristle and growl.
So it is with each of us, when relationships have become strained or undone by someone's carelessness, craft, or calumny. We bristle and growl. In the middle of other conversations, the name might be mentioned and we can feel our stomachs tighten and our breath catch. There is an autonomic response that drives us to pain and frustration.
Only if we can somehow reframe the other person's image in our senses as a "pagan or tax collector" -- that is, someone who needs to experience the grace of God -- can we still the inner growls and get the beast of our hatred to stop bristling. It is not easy. I have two names in particular that set me off every time I hear them. I wish it were otherwise, but it is not. These people have genuinely hurt me badly in the past, and I carry angst about them into my eternal present.
Yet, I have also learned, over the years, to imagine Jesus standing next to each of them. I have pictured Jesus sitting at table with them, and carrying on conversations of earnest intensity or goodhearted laughter. When I have seen Jesus eating and drinking and sharing the kingdom of God with these two people, the growling of my heart stops, and the menace of bristling disgust or bitterness is tamed.
It is only then that I can hear Jesus saying to me, "You have gained again your sister. You have found again your brother." And something in the world smells sweeter because of it. Amen.
When the great nineteenth-century Spanish General, Ramon Narvaez, lay dying in Madrid, a priest was called in to give him last rites. "Have you forgiven your enemies?" the padre asked.
"Father," confessed Narvaez, "I have no enemies. I shot them all."
Too often that is the story of our lives, and Jesus knows it. Lewis Smedes wrote a book we can hardly step around when thinking about Jesus' words in Matthew 18. Smedes' book is called Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don't Deserve (HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), and in it he wrestles with us about the commonplace pains we experience in our relationship. One of his stories, based upon true incidents, is about two people he calls Jane and Ralph Graafschap.
Hell Defined
This couple, says Smedes, had been married for more than twenty years. They had three children who had all grown well, and were just in those stages of getting married or leaving for college. Ralph and Jane were about to be empty nesters, and though they loved their offspring, they were secretly anticipating a new time of redeveloping their intimacy as a couple. Jane had given up her personal career goals in order to be a full-time mother and homemaker for these last decades, and she began to plan for reasserting her skills outside their home.
But then tragedy struck. Ralph's younger brother and wife were killed in a horrible car accident. They left three children as orphans, aged eight, ten, and twelve. The community rallied for a short while, providing all kinds of assistance and relief, but Ralph knew that he was the big brother, and to him fell the lot of caring for those kids.
So Ralph and Jane took the three into their home, and Jane started all over again -- clothes to buy and clean and mend; groceries to stock for voracious appetites; nighttime cuddling with scared and lonely little ones; Christmases and birthdays to plan for ... Jane's life settled right back into its old routine for another decade.
Ralph was well established in his career, and at the height of his business skills. So he traveled a lot and made deals, and spoke about the sacrifices a family makes when tragedies, like that which happened to his brother, happened. But Jane was left to shuffle three more teenagers through their changing identities and raging hormones. She had hoped to travel some with Ralph, but this new family required all her attentions. Even her biological children were not able to get all the doting they had hoped from their mother as they married and had kids of their own.
By the time nine years had passed, the toll of raising two families had robbed Jane of her vitality and sidelined any chance of another career. Only the youngest of the second tribe was at home, and he was seventeen years old. When he left for college the following fall, Jane would be relieved but emotionally spent. Ralph's rocket had been soaring, however, and Jane couldn't wait to join him for the ride.
That's when Ralph came home from a business trip and broke the news. His secretary, Sue, was a woman of great personality, huge skills, and a lot of good looks. She had made it possible for Ralph to be the man he had become, while Jane was too busy with the children. Sue had time for him. In fact, they traveled often together, something that Jane never seemed to make opportunities for. More than that, Sue absolutely doted on Ralph in a way that he couldn't count on at home. Sue really understood Ralph, while Jane didn't seem to anymore.
Ralph filed for divorce and married Sue. They were both deeply committed Christians, so they joined a church where they could sing and pray and get fed and contribute their considerable skills and money. They were welcomed by the pastor and the leadership team as if God has just sent a wonderful blessing to the church.
Jane, of course, felt cheated on so many fronts. Even in her own church she had become an outsider. Her social life grew very small, and her children didn't know what to do with a single parent. Ralph and Sue were always great fun, but Jane was becoming a bitter tag-along nobody cared to have around.
Ralph was truly a nice guy. Even as he slipped easily into his second marriage, he realized his responsibility before God to make things right with his former wife. So one day he called Jane and told her of his happiness. While he was still a bit unsettled as to the manner in which it had all come about, he could definitely feel God's blessing in all of this. But he also was aware that through the process Jane might have felt hurt at times, so Ralph wanted to ask her forgiveness for whatever pain he might have caused. If Jane could just give Ralph and Sue her blessing, he knew God would be pleased.
What could Jane do? What would you advise her to do? What would you do, if you were in her shoes?
"I want you to bless me," Ralph had said. And before she even knew what she should do, the words spat out of Jane's mouth. "I want you to go to hell!"
"I want you to go to hell." That's really what a relationship that has moved into conflict without forgiveness amounts to, doesn't it? Hell is the place where justice is never tempered by mercy, where relationships are never mended, where grudges grow and grace takes a holiday. Hell is eternity apart from God's forgiving love, and hell is the prison of our unforgiveness into which we lock both our enemies and ourselves with no parole hearings. It's a bit like playing Monopoly and landing on a square that forces you to pick up a card which reads: "GO TO JAIL! GO DIRECTLY TO JAIL! DO NOT PASS GO! DO NOT COLLECT $200!"
Prickly People
Jesus' words to his disciples in Matthew 18 about conflict resolution and forgiveness are wonderful on paper. We read them and nod with understanding and trust. Yet, they are some of the most difficult words of challenge that face us anywhere in scripture.
We've all heard of Gilbert and Sullivan, the dynamic duo of the stage. They created fun-filled musicals and light operas a generation ago, giving high school drama departments and community theaters plenty of material to dazzle and delight. Their names always appeared in tandem on the programs: Gilbert & Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore; Gilbert & Sullivan's Patience; Gilbert & Sullivan's The Mikado; Gilbert & Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance.
It was as if they were a married couple. Indeed, much of their career felt like that. It was only right that their names be wedded together in common speech.
At the height of their success, they even purchased a theater together so that they could exert full creative control over their new works. Then came the nasty disagreement. Sullivan ordered the installation of new carpets. But when the bill arrived, Gilbert hit the roof at the cost and refused to share in payment. They argued and fought about it, and finally took the case to court. A legal judgment settled the claim, but it did nothing to heal the breach between them.
These grown men never spoke to one another again as long as they lived. When Sullivan wrote the music for a new production he would mail it to Gilbert. Then, when Gilbert finished the libretto, he would post it back to Sullivan again.
One time they were requested to make a curtain call together. Although they normally refused such things because of their ongoing animosity, this time it was a benefit honoring their joint work, and they couldn't get out of it with grace. So they stayed at opposite sides back stage, entered from the far edges of the curtain, ensured that there were props in between them so that they could not see one another on the platform, and waved in isolation to opposite portions of the gathered audience.
Gilbert quarantined Sullivan in the prison of his mind, and Sullivan banished Gilbert from his social continent. Eventually, they each became warders for the prison of the other. Yet, like the guards who traveled to Australia on the first convict ships, it became apparent all too soon that there was little difference between the jailer and the jailed. Both came ashore onto a deserted island in the middle of an alien sea with no way to escape.
Jesus' words are necessary. We are social creatures who cannot live in isolation. Yet, because of the sin and stupidity that trouble our human condition, we do not live well with those around us. The German philosopher, Schopenhauer, compared us to porcupines trying to nest together on a cold winter's night. We crouch toward one another because we need the heat of other bodies to survive. Yet, the closer we huddle, the more we prick each other with our porcupine quills. And, as Jesus indicates, it is most often those who are closest to us, our "brother" or our "sister," who feel the pain of our presence and we theirs.
Jesus outlines a strategy for addressing our troubled relationships with one another. It is important to follow him down this difficult path in our attempts to restore relational glue to our fractured worlds, for the alternatives are much more destructive.
Keep It Personal
First, Jesus reminds us that we have to make the process of restoration a very personal matter. When we are hurt and when our pride has been damaged, we often become vindictive and belligerent. We charge about and spew venom and seek to build polarized communities of those who are for "us" and against "them." The weapon of response most readily available to us is gossip and rumor. If I can send a toxic word to poison the atmosphere around the person who has hurt me, I hold a new advantage over her or him.
In so doing, of course, I demote the other person from humankind and relegate her or him to animal status or lower. She is no longer my equal; she is a slut or a witch or a bimbo. He has become a pariah or a jackass or a scoundrel.
When my friend becomes my enemy, I feel the need to degrade him or her until they no longer deserve respect and have ceased to be bound with me by the rules of gentlemanly conduct or even the combat and prisoner of war stipulations of the Geneva Convention. Then I can blast them with excessive force and hit below the belt.
After the tragedy of September 11, 2001, our nation experienced something of this intentional projected dehumanization. Those who hijacked the planes, according to many speeches and articles, were not humans, but terrorists. They did not play by the rules. They did not value life as we did. They were schooled in barbarianism. For all these reasons and others like them our nation uttered cries for vengeance, many of which exceeded limits of human respect. It was General Philip Sheridan who gave us the striking reflection in 1869 that "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." Post 9/11 there were many voices that seemed to echo his advice in the new and painful context.
But Jesus demands that we keep our hurting relationship and all its parties personal. "If your brother sins against you go and show him his fault, just between the two of you" (Matthew 18:15 NIV). This instruction strips me of my most destructive weapons and forces me to rehumanize the very one from whom my heart wants to pull away in disgust. Jesus does not claim it will be an easy thing to do. No psychologist would pretend the process is a lark, or carries us along like a carnival ride. Hurt is painful, and so is restoration.
Keep It Communal
Second, Jesus challenges us to keep these matters under the eye of the community. It is hard for us to think communally in our highly individualized societies, yet this is precisely what we need to do. To keep these matters under the eye of the community means to place ourselves in submission to at least some form of group identity. This is not easy. Our consumerist way of life constantly tells us that all of reality revolves around us and our tastes and schedules and desires. In stark contrast, to enter a community means that I give up some of my personal agenda for the sake of the greater good.
We must be absolutely clear here. The Bible never suggests that our individual lives and personalities and desires and actions are of no value. Nor is a complete commitment to communal living the biblical norm. Significantly to the contrary, the scriptures raise high the importance of the individual and the responsibility of the person. In fact, much of economic capitalism, psychological personhood, and political democracy are rooted in and supported by serious reflections on theologies and philosophies drawing on orthodox Christian perspectives.
Yet, our strong obsession with personal rights and self-absorbed experientialism turns our attention too much toward myopic self-interest and away from group dynamics or social interdependence. After years of reflection on the human condition in books like The People of the Lie (Touchstone, 1998), The Different Drum (Touchstone, 1998), and The Road Less Traveled (Touchstone, 2003), M. Scott Peck came to believe that one of the primary maladies of our age is our resistance against community. In his book A World Waiting to Be Born (Rider, 1993) he claimed that religious submission was the only cure for the incivility of our age. When we stop being submissive to some form of higher power, he said, we invariably become gods to ourselves and degenerate into a mad world of petty power brokers who are limited only by the striking range of their swinging fists and demanding fingers.
In the church, at least, we must become more aware of what Body Life means. How is it that Jesus has a stake in multiple lives, and what does this mean for our connection to the head of the body? What is the implication of the church's role in multi-ethnic relations for international politics? How do we allow the leadership of the church, empowered by the Spirit and ordained by the community, to speak into the tensions of our lives that disrupt and fracture the fellowship of faith?
There are no easy answers, of course. But Jesus' teaching here demands that we wrestle with the issues. We cannot claim fidelity with God and at the same time play cavalierly in our daily relations with those around us. Each person and each congregation will have to be part of the process of determining how the community and its leadership will invest in reconciliation and restoration.
Thomas Merton, when writing about the religious community with which he spent many years, noted that every prospective participant was initially brought in and made to stand in the center of a circle formed by current members. There he was asked by the abbot, "What do you come seeking?"
The answers varied, of course, in line with the individual's recent experiences. Some said, "I come seeking a deeper relationship with God." Others were more pragmatic: "I desire to become more disciplined in my practices of life." And there were always a few who were simply running away: "I hope to find solace from the world and refuge from the problems that have plagued me."
But Merton said that there was really only one answer which all needed to voice before they could take up residence. "I need mercy!" was the true cry of the heart. "I need mercy!"
Merton said that any other answer betrayed our prideful assertion of self-determination. We wanted, we planned, we were running away from, we desired ... But the person who knew his need of mercy had stepped out of the myopic circle of self-interest long enough to begin to see the fragile interdependence of all who were taken into the larger fellowship of faith. We cannot create community, for it does not revolve around us. We can only enter community or receive it as a gift. Hence, we need mercy in order to walk through its door.
If we know this, then when we experience tension and broken bonds with someone else in the community, it is not ours or theirs to resolve in isolation. The community itself has a stake in all lives and their interactions. Therefore, says Jesus, it is absolutely imperative that we engage the power of the community in addressing the hurts that affect any of its members. Failing to do so does not so much destroy community as it does isolate us from it. We become impoverished when we think we have all the resources to force others into obedience to our way of thinking or living.
Keep It Focused
One more thing that becomes apparent in Jesus' teaching is that the entire emotional content of our relational difficulties needs to be reframed. Jesus says that our goal is to have a brother restored. Moreover, if that does not happen through our own initiatives and those of the community, the outcome must be that we treat the other person in the broken relationship as if he were a "pagan or a tax collector."
These designations sound ominous to us. They are off-putting to our sensibilities of associating with "nice" people. But we need to recall that Jesus was accused of spending too much time with tax collectors and sinners. To treat people in this manner is not to throw stones at them or to turn away in disgust. Rather it is a call to re-engage with them as those whom God is seeking and saving.
When Bill Hybels was a college student in Iowa, he had a roommate who trained his pet dog to growl whenever the town mayor's name was mentioned. No matter what might be happening at any time, if someone happened to say the mayor's name in passing, the little mutt would bristle and growl.
So it is with each of us, when relationships have become strained or undone by someone's carelessness, craft, or calumny. We bristle and growl. In the middle of other conversations, the name might be mentioned and we can feel our stomachs tighten and our breath catch. There is an autonomic response that drives us to pain and frustration.
Only if we can somehow reframe the other person's image in our senses as a "pagan or tax collector" -- that is, someone who needs to experience the grace of God -- can we still the inner growls and get the beast of our hatred to stop bristling. It is not easy. I have two names in particular that set me off every time I hear them. I wish it were otherwise, but it is not. These people have genuinely hurt me badly in the past, and I carry angst about them into my eternal present.
Yet, I have also learned, over the years, to imagine Jesus standing next to each of them. I have pictured Jesus sitting at table with them, and carrying on conversations of earnest intensity or goodhearted laughter. When I have seen Jesus eating and drinking and sharing the kingdom of God with these two people, the growling of my heart stops, and the menace of bristling disgust or bitterness is tamed.
It is only then that I can hear Jesus saying to me, "You have gained again your sister. You have found again your brother." And something in the world smells sweeter because of it. Amen.
