Called to Reconciliation

Called to Reconciliation Sermon By Pastor Kristen Larsen-Schmidt September 3 and 7, 2014 Calvary Lutheran Matthew 18:15-20 If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one.but if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them. Dear sisters and brothers, grace to you and peace from God who sent Jesus for our reconciliation. Amen. At home in our dog care book, there is a very useful flow chart that helps us know what to do when our dog is having health problems. It starts out with some symptom at the beginning, like dog is vomiting. And then it asks yes or no questions like, has dog vomited for more than 24 hours? The answers to the questions help us to determine whether we need to take her to the vet or not. It s very helpful as we try to care for her dog body. In today s gospel reading, it s almost like Jesus has given us a chart for taking care of the body that is his church. It is some of the most clear and practical teaching in the whole Bible. At the top of this flow chart are these kinds of symptoms: tension, disagreement, unmet expectation, gossip and griping, (which is a lot like vomit, when you think about it) in other words and dis-ease between members of the body of Christ. Jesus says if these symptoms occur with seriousness or frequency, and if you are a part of the body feeling injured or imperiled, the first step is to go directly to the person you have a problem with, and talk to them privately. Next question.: Did they hear you out? Did they see where you were coming from and recognize their fault? If the answer is YES, they did listen and responded with, You know, you re right I shouldn t have done that, then, he says, you have regained a friend, as well as a sister or brother in Christ. If the answer is, NO, they didn t listen, then, you should bring a friend along to bear witness to the whole conversation, and to serve as intermediary. If they

still won t listen, and it is a matter of some import, then you may need to take it to a larger group to the church council, perhaps, or it maybe even to a congregational vote. If the person still won t listen, and if their stubborn refusal to repent is causing problems for the entire community of believers, they may actually have to be asked to leave, cut off from the body of believers, like a cancer, for the sake of the health of the whole body. This is THE official flow chart for conflict resolution in the church. Now I see some of you crinkling your eyebrows, looking at me like this is news to you, and, well, you may well be surprised to hear it, because the reality is that most Christian churches that I know of don t tend to follow it too well, and to be honest, it may be even less adhered to in the Lutheran church. Yes, it s true, we who are of stoic Scandinavian and German descent or who happen to live here in the upper Midwest, we seem to prize being nice above all other virtues, so we have an alternative flow chart for resolving conflict. It goes something like this: When another believer upsets you, offends you, mistreats you, misunderstands you, annoys you, it s a simple thing. Simply look the other way. You can raise your eyebrow at your neighbor, but try and overlook their bad behavior. Be the bigger person. Forgive them quietly. After all, there shouldn t be any in-fighting between Christians, right? Next, if the offender is somehow too thick-headed to notice that you ve been avoiding them and walking around them with your arms crossed, pointedly NOT looking at them, if they still don t get it, and are still bothering you, then of course, vent to someone, go ahead, tell a few people if you need to, but do not, under any circumstances, tell them! Lastly, if, after all this, the rumor still hasn t reached them of how incredibly insensitive they have been or if they choose to ignore it then you will just have to let it stew and smolder until those feeling of frustration, hurt and anger get so pent up, you can t take it anymore and it you haul off and let them have it, at the right time, of course, when there s a few people around who can back you up, you just cut em off with a zinger that leaves them speechless with their mouth hangin open as you turn on your heel and walk away. Boy, that ll show em. Now I m partly jesting with you, and I m partly being very serious, because I have seen versions of this among good Christian folks like you and me more times than I can count. Let me share with you an experience I had in another church. I was meeting with a couple of women on a committee one time, and one of them was saying that she would be at the church serving for a funeral reception the next day. The other woman said, Oh, well I won t be there. I don t serve luncheons. Why? I innocently asked. Well, let me tell you! she says. When I first joined this church, I volunteered to serve for a funeral luncheon. And even though I was working full time and had little kids to take care of, I made a cake, and left work to come and serve. A lot of good it did. Everything I did was wrong. The funeral reception coordinator went behind me and changed out every single spoon I had put in the salads and hot dishes, she told me I was cutting the pieces of cake too big, and you know what, she didn t even use the cake I

brought. She gave it back to me and said, oh, we had a few extra pans, so you can take this home to your family. Well I know where I m not wanted. So I have never set foot in the kitchen since then. Now I happened to know she had joined the church 19 years ago. I was surprised, because she was a very nice woman, who served the church in many ways. So while I could understand her frustration, I just couldn t imagine her hanging on to this grudge for all those years. So I asked her, So, what about the funeral reception coordinator, how is your relationship with her now? Oh, she says, She s still at it. I just avoid her. Some people never change. Some people never change. It is a common expression. But it seems to me, that when we buy into that philosophy, writing people off like that, that cynical attitude keeps us from changing, keeps us from opening our hearts and examining the darkness inside, keeps us from reaching out to others as brothers and sisters in Christ. If God believed that we couldn t change, couldn t be healed, couldn t have our relationship with him and others restored, than God never would have sent Jesus to us to teach us and model love to us and die for us and rise for us. What would be the point? But in fact, he died for us while we were in our sin, mired in it. He lifted us out of the muck and mud and washed us clean in the waters of baptism, and he did it here again today, as we confessed our sin at the font. We are reconciled. Amen? And when we get this, when we understand our own need of grace, when we catch even a glimpse of the amazing gift that has been given to us, it does change us, not once but repeatedly, every time we grasp that we are forgiven of all our selfishness, and shortcomings this knowledge gives us generous hearts, and open minds, and a desire to be truly honest with one another for the sake of genuine relationship. In other words, it makes us new. As St. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17-20: If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. Did you hear that? We are Christ s ambassadors. God has entrusted this mission to us! Jesus is sending us out to tell people that they can really and truly be forgiven, freed, and reconciled to God, no matter what their past. That is our message, and delivering it, that s our job in this life as Christians. But how can we do this job if we can t be real with each other about sin, about brokenness in our relationships, about the ways we have been hurt? We can t help others be reconciled to God if we won t be reconciled to them. It just doesn t work. And here s a hard truth we all need to be reminded of stuffing your hurt and angry feelings isn t really nice. It is dishonest. It does not honor the relationship or the other person. It does not allow God to do God s thing, bringing healing, transformation, and reconciliation.

So, as hard as it is, when we experience someone sinning, especially if it is injuring us, God calls us to speak up and do everything in our power to be truly reconciled. Am I talking to you today? I saw a lady in the office on Thursday morning after about this Wednesday night and she said, Ooh, you were talking to me. I m a stewer. Truth is, I bet most of us here today hearing this text can t help but get a picture in our heads of a person, a situation, can t help feeling again the sting of a thorn that s been under our flesh too long. I m right there with you. It festers! We need to deal with it. And I know this is a hard, hard assignment. It s scary confronting people who have hurt us! You worry about hurting their feelings, you worry about them getting angry, you worry you won t find the right words and you ll make the situation worse. It s hard! Especially for you Norwegians out there! I m Danish, I get it! But it can also be incredibly freeing and productive. I ve experienced that too. In my senior year of seminary, I had a class with one of my favorite professors. He was a tall guy, who could fill a room with his presence. Brilliant, funny, and incredibly confident. I loved how his sarcastic wit cut clear through the moronic lies of our media culture. At least that s how I had experienced him before going out on internship. But after working for a year with down-to-earth people who were scrambling to make a living and raise kids and hang onto faith in that culture he made fun of, I experienced his teaching very differently. His sarcasm felt cutting, and cruel, both to those people out there I had grown to love as well as to some students in the classroom who didn t answer questions the way he wanted them to. They became the butt of his jokes. It was never directed at me, but it bothered me. What once seemed like confidence now struck me as cockiness. I began to hate going to his class. In fact, it gave me migraines. If I am honest, I actually started to hate him. I was complaining about this one day to a classmate and she said, so have you talked to him about it? What, no! I said. He s not going to listen to me. How do you know? she said. He probably has no idea how he s coming off. You could be doing him a big favor. I thought about that a lot, and it felt like God was talking to me. I prayed about it, and after one more day of leaving class mad, I made an appointment. The day I stood outside his door my hands were sweaty, and I was literally shaking. I said a quick prayer and said, Ok, God, you re with me, right? and then I knocked on the door. I sat down across from him and I just started telling him how I had been experiencing in his class. I even told him about my headaches. And an amazing thing happened. This big, cocky, fidgety guy got very still and listened to me all the way through, and then he apologized, and said he would work on changing his tone. Before he left, he sincerely thanked me for coming to talk to him. As I walked home, I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I did not know how things would go after that, of course I worried about what he thought of me now, and I was a little concerned about how he would grade my work, but it was worth the risk. I

was so relieved to have it out, and all of the anger and bitterness I had been feeling toward him disappeared immediately. I went home singing, practically dancing, I felt so much lighter. And in the long term, it completely changed my experience of the class. He did change his tone, and I was able to learn from him again, and my headaches disappeared. Of course it doesn t always go this way. First of all, very few disagreements are one way, and when we have these kinds of conversations, we need to be prepared to hear their side of the story, and we need to be open to hearing ways we have contributed to the problem. Secondly, sometimes they simply won t listen or can t see it from your point of view. Then you might want to follow Jesus s advice and get another person involved, or even a few people. That s the whole idea behind an intervention, right? Sometimes that works. Sometimes, not even a whole community can break through to a person bent on destruction. Jesus says that then you should view that person as a tax collector or a Gentile, but what does that mean exactly? In Jesus time, Jews shunned tax collectors and Gentiles as sinners outside of God s law and love. But Jesus befriended them, healed them, loved them. In fact, the disciple Matthew, was a former disciple. So I guess you have to ask yourself what would Jesus do with this person? What does Jesus do with blatant sinners? He loves them as best he can. There s one last thing I want to point out here, and that is the part at the end, where Jesus says, where two or more are gathered in my name, I am in the midst of them. So often we think of that as two or more people gathered to pray, to worship, to do the work of the church. But in this context, it almost seems to me that Jesus is saying, when two or more of you come together to try to work out a problem, and you ask me to enter into that room and be a part of it, trust me, I ll be there. I ll be in that room, I ll help you find your nerve and your words, I will help you find calm and peace again. I will help you find me. C mon. Dare to be reconciled. Amen.