Transcription
For the church. Now, before you even think about this as not a miracle, bear in mind, we are not the best building blocks that God could have used for the church. We are sinners, we argue, we fight, we have interpersonal problems, and guess what? If Jesus didn’t give us a path forward on how we deal with this, we would have probably as many churches as we have people who believe in God. And if you’re trying to figure out what I just said, basically everybody would be their own church because we couldn’t get along with anybody else. The truth is conflict is going to happen in the church. And Jesus, in giving us this path forward, admits that. Jesus understands that churches are made up of individuals and groups, and they aren’t always going to get along. It is almost naive to think that the 12 disciples got along all the time. You have a couple of sets of brothers, and you think those brothers are always agreeing. You can imagine Peter always getting needled by Andrew about the time 30 years ago when Peter fell out of the boat. And Peter gets in his feelings, and he gets frustrated with Andrew, and then one of the other disciples, who’s friends with Andrew, tries to step in and heal the wound. And meanwhile, Jesus is saying, guys, guys, guys.
The fact is Jesus knows if the disciples have to be held together by the sheer will and strength of Jesus, the Son of God, what hope does the church have? Jesus knows that the very basis of the church, who we are, the different people we are, means that Jesus needs to give us a way to be together, to work together, to be in unity together, to show grace, to experience grace as a body of believers. How we are to commune together as one body is as important as following the teachings of Christ. And as easy as it is for Jesus to lay this guideline out for us, this flow chart, if you will, it is hard and deliberate action that keeps it going. This flow chart is not one that you can just wing it with. You have to go and address a sin that was against you with one of your brothers and sisters in private. You don’t get to go on Instagram or Facebook and say, well, somebody told me at church. No. You go to them. You one-on-one talk to them as we teach children to do this. And then if they won’t listen, if the restoration that is called for by God doesn’t happen, what’s our next step? You don’t bring in those other people to side with you, to agree with you. You’re not bringing people along in order to deepen the divide between you and the other person. You bring them along so that they can watch and see and help.
But then after that, if restoration has not happened, what’s your next step? To talk to the church, the whole body, and see if healing can happen then. And if restoration, if communion with your brother and sister doesn’t happen after that, what is to happen next? And here is where often we get it wrong. We look at what Jesus says, and he says, treat that person like a Gentile and a tax collector. And some of us say, well, great, that means I get to ignore them, not deal with them, and just walk away from them. No. Because when we look at this passage, we have to ask ourselves that 90s question of what would Jesus do? What would Jesus do with a tax collector and a Gentile? What would Jesus do? Well, he’d sit right down with them, and he would work all that he could to build the relationship with them.
What is the one thing the Pharisees are constantly throwing in his face? That he eats, that he communes and breaks breads with sinners and tax collectors. When he goes up and heals the woman who is a foreigner, she is a Gentile, she has had animosity upon animosity in her family’s backstory towards Jesus’ family, and guess what? Jesus heals her daughter. That is how you live out what Jesus is talking about. Not by walking away, not by ignoring that person, but by going the extra and extra and extra miles to restore what has been broken. Each step Jesus gives us along here is centered on clearing the air and restoring the brokenness that exists. The challenge is not that we have a clear process. The challenge is not that Jesus is giving us this confusing batch of instructions. It’s that we must be willing to restore what has been broken. We have to be willing to heal the relationship. And not only that, but we have to value this person that has hurt us enough to want to do this, want to love them, want to restore what has been broken, even though they have sinned against us. We have to value them. We have to give them a place in our hearts.
But the valuing of the person doesn’t get less and less at every step along this way. It doesn’t get smaller as you check off the boxes, because these are not boxes to check. Every step, every time you hit this, it is effort on every Christian’s part. Effort to restore the community of Christ. And within this, it comes this counter-world, counter-cultural work. Because here’s the reality of how we work this out, and how conflict exists in our world. And that reality is we walk away. We don’t want to deal with them. We ignore them. It’s the most awkward coffee hour ever. We just sit down and do our best to turn our back at all times so that we don’t have to see them. And then others notice. And then sides happen. The fact of the matter is, even at its worst, in Jesus’ flowchart, in his description, he tells us to treat this brother or sister like a sinner or a tax collector, a Gentile or a tax collector. And he calls even them to be his followers. He calls them to be his disciples. Jesus does not give us permission to ignore or walk away from our brothers and sisters. He doesn’t tell us to cast aside the person, but to make every effort and then more effort to establish and re-establish the community of believers.
And we fail often to live into this. We fail. And it’s because it is hard, emotional, and even physical work to do. The easy solution so often is to pull up stakes and head to another church nowadays. This is an extreme example, but one that I’ve always kind of shaken my head at, that I lived through. When I was an intern in Zeeland, Michigan, I was excited because we had a new family attending worship. And I was really excited. I went up to the senior minister. I said, John, John, we’ve got a new family. Did you see him? Did you visit with him? He was a little lukewarm about it. I said, but what’s going on? So I approached a friend in the congregation. I said, Matt, we’ve got this new family and they’re here. And John wasn’t very enthusiastic. And Matt smiled that knowing smile that a friend gets when his friend doesn’t know all the information. And I found out that this family was on a cycle. Now, Zeeland, Michigan, has about 20 reformed churches in an area the size of Kingston. And those 20 reformed churches, this family would go to. And when one upset them, they’d go to the next. And then when they got upset at the next, they went to the next. And then they went to the next and went to the next and went to the next. They constantly were running from the troubles. And everyone knew it. And yet no one sat down and said, can we talk about why you left in the first place? No one took the time and the effort. Everyone just smiled and said, well, they’ll be gone in a month. And that’s how we treat it. That’s how we act. The fact of the matter is community means being in communion with one another, commuting together. That means problems are going to exist. And that means because we are Christ’s children, we are his servants, that we value one another. And we put in the efforts with one another to heal those gaps that happen. And is it hard? Let’s be honest. It is just as hard to get a five-year-old to tell their older brother that they’re sorry as it is to tell a 45-year-old to tell a 50-year-old that they’re sorry. It doesn’t get any easier. It doesn’t get any easier for us to heal the wounds that exist. But just because it’s not easy does not mean we get out with God. God has never looked at a task and said, you know what, the degree of difficulty on that is a little too much. I made it a little too hard for you. We’re going to dial it down. No.
More often than not, as the difficulty goes up with Jesus, the work really begins. And as we are his disciples, the work begins for us to heal the wounds that exist, to love and care even when we hurt one another, to live into this call for wholeness and restoration. It’s hard work. It’s a challenge for all of us to deliberately engage in this process. But we need to ask ourselves, isn’t God’s love, the love of God and love of our neighbor, and communing and living in communion together, worth a little awkwardness? Isn’t it worth a little reach of saying, I am sorry? Or, hey, when you said that, I was hurt. It means willingness to be together.
So brothers and sisters, may we forgive one another, may we seek forgiveness, and may we live together as one. Amen.
And now, brothers and sisters, let us respond to God through our gifts.