Sermon 2011 Pentecost 12 9-04-2011 Text: Matt 18:21-35 Theme: Conflict 101 When I took my first class in counseling, I thought my job was to eliminate conflict. I saw conflict as a horrible and evil thing that caused people pain and anger and my job, as the counselor, was to teach people how to live in harmony and never to be in conflict. Clearly, I was not married yet and I also was not old enough to have processed my childhood. I only knew that in my life, conflict had always been painful and bad and I had been taught by a very loving mother to always smooth everything over and just move on. My mother was a wonderful, Christian woman, but she would have told you herself in her later life that she, in her younger years, was also the poster child for codependence. So there I was, sitting in Counseling 101, ready to learn the magic words that would end conflict once and for all. Then the professor announced that conflict is neither good nor bad. It just is. Wait. What? You mean we have to live with conflict forever? Apparently so at least this side of Heaven. So, if we have to live with it, I suppose we better learn to work with it too. And Jesus is most helpful to us in that regard. Step One: Humble yourself. Jesus says, Page1
Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. I know it s not easy. Like I tell Dänya all the time, I m not always right, but I m never wrong. It is not easy to put yourself and what you think second, but we have too. Jesus calls us to walk into every situation wide-eyed and innocent. We put all of our preconceived ideas and judgments aside and listen to everyone without prejudice, like a little child. Step Two: Always protect and preserve the integrity and dignity of the person with whom you are in conflict. Understand that win-win is the only option for Jesus. He says, So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. Sometimes we act as though people are expendable. We often act as though it s okay that we run rough-shod over people, their reputations, their feelings, because we are right. Well we may or may not be right, see step one, but even if we are, the person must be preserved, even if at our expense. Remember what Jesus said last week? Not pick up your pride and sit in a comfy chair but Pick up your cross and follow me. So in any conflicted situation, we don t yell. We don t disrespect the other person. Above all, we preserve the integrity Page2
and dignity of the person or people with whom we are in conflict, not because we necessarily want to, but because that is God s will and his will trumps our will. Period. Step Three: When a conflict arises. Go to the person with whom you have the conflict PRIVATELY. Jesus says, If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. Don t tell me about it. Don t share with your friends. Don t address it publically and make the person look bad. Go to that person privately and tell him what your concern is. Now there is some additional information on this in Matt. 7 where Jesus says, "Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. In other words, be careful about thinking you have it all right. You have your share of issues too so before you address someone about something, make sure it isn t a Page3
log in your own eye that you are seeing or at least approach the situation knowing that it might be you and not him who is the problem. Step Four: The goal is to fix the relationship between you and the other person, not to win and not to be right. But if the other person will not work on the problem, Jesus says, But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. Not your friends who are on your side. Not your family who has to love you. You take people who are impartial and understand that the goal is always to resolve conflict for the good and build the relationship. These are people who are not afraid to tell you that you are dead wrong. Step Five: This is the step people tend to rush to in the first place, skipping steps one through four. If the person absolutely refuses to deal with the conflict, then Jesus says, If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the Church. This is where I get involved. In the event that you have been completely unable to resolve this conflict for the good, you come to me. You come to me not because I am so brilliant that I know things that no one else knows. I don t have magic words to heal all ills, but you Page4
come to me because of the office I bear. As pastor, it is my duty to shepherd the sheep and when sheep are in conflict, it eventually affects the whole flock. So that s why I am called to step in. But obviously, by the time it gets to me, sometimes the situation is not going to be reconciled because people are so proud and sometimes stupid that we would rather sacrifice relationships than admit we are wrong or even consider the possibility. By this time we have over-reacted and said inflammatory things. We have hurt feelings and attacked reputations. By this time we have made irreconcilable decisions and I get to be the bad guy who calls people to account. Step Six: Jesus says, And if he refuses to listen even to the Church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. He has set himself outside the boundaries of the family. Now remember step two, So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. Now our job is to reel him back in. Too often there is bad conflict that is not resolved in a positive way and the Church just ignores the loser. No. If someone is wrong and the Church agrees that he is wrong and he refuses to change his position, that person becomes the target of our special focus. Now we do all we can to reach out to that person and try to bring him back to the family. It is not God s will that anyone should Page5
be lost and so many people are outside the Church because of unresolved, unmanaged, unchristian conflict. Conflict is neither good nor bad. It just is. Human beings are going to have conflict but it is what we do with it that matters. If we believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross to save us from our sins, then we are going to do everything possible to prevent anyone from losing that gift. We are going to seriously pursue repentance and forgiveness in every situation so that even though we will never always agree with one another, we will always love one another and strive to feed one another s faith knowing that God s Word and Sacraments are all powerful and can overcome every conflict. Page6