A Sermon for the Fifeenth Sunday after Pentecost
The Rev. Patricia A. Gillespie
Ezekiel 33:1-11
Psalm 119:33-40
Romans 12:9-21
Matthew 18:15-20
This week we've had a couple of house guests. Friends of my husband staying with us while they tore out our wall. No, not the church wall, but our walls at home to install new windows and doors. But the chaos and mess has been worth it, not only because of the new improved doors and windows, but because these guys can cook. You'd never expect it to look at Larkin and "the General," but they do amazing things in the kitchen. They put together ingredients that most people would never have in the same kitchen, much less in the same pan. It sets my stepdaughter Christie into a panic, trying to hide things from them or snatch away the chocolate before they dump it into the spaghetti sauce. These guys don't play by the rules, at least not the ones in the cookbooks.
The ingredients by all traditional standards seem to be in conflict:
peanut butter goes with the garlic and onions into the sauce for the lamb,
or peaches and yogurt and nutmeg go into pancakes.
And then either of them might then be seasoned with tobasco sauce.
I worry that Christie might punch the General,
if not take the words of today's epistle, literally and "heap burning coals on his head."
This is a dangerous conflict of ingredients and cooks.
In today's gospel reading, Matthew is offering us a recipe for dealing with church conflict, if not kitchen conflict. And we ourselves are the ingredients.
Last week's reading from Romans reminded us that each of us has a special ability as part of the church. We're all different, with different talents and abilities. And, in the Episcopal church at least, we may also have different theological perspectives and varied interpretations of the Bible. As often as not, those differences clash. Matthew reminds us that differences, and even outright conflicts, are not new to the church. Like the early followers of Jesus that Matthew writes about, we disagree about all kinds of things, and we hurt each other.
And it's true in our other relationships too. In our families and at work we disagree, we hurt each other. There is conflict, and, like those ingredients that the guys try to cook with, it doesn't look like we belong together. You just don't put tobasco sauce onto those peach pancakes.
But they did. These guys put the oddest things together. And it was all very good.. Good not because the ingredients blended nicely together into a unified single flavor. But good because of the differences of the ingredients. This is not the bland unity of melting pot cooking, but the spicy, fresh diversity of a mixed salad bowl.
It's neither unity nor chaos; it's more like harmony. Not boring sameness, but like music where the differences enhance one another.
Harmony. That's what makes for good relationships And in today's gospel reading, Matthew has given us a three-step recipe for restoring harmony to our relationships.
Step 1 – Go to the offender in private. Notice that it is the one who has been hurt who takes the initiative. How often when we are hurt do we instead sit and sulk and wait for the offender to recognize the error of their ways and apologize, when they may not even realize how much we have been hurt? And notice that Jesus tells us to go directly to the offender with our hurt and differences. How much harder that is than complaining to like-minded, sympathetic friends; but that kind of complaining or "triangling" works against healing the relationship. Jesus asks us to go directly to the one who has hurt us and to ask them to listen. (And if they listen, it wouldn't hurt for us to listen in return.)
If that doesn't work. If the one we feel has hurt us doesn't listen, then try Step 2 – Ask a couple of community members to mediate, to help both parties listen. Again listening goes both ways and with others each person's words can be considered and confirmed and even ‘translated' to help the other hear.
Sometimes even this isn't enough to restore harmony to the relationship, then it's time for Step 3 –Take it to the whole community, to the church. If two or three together can't work it out, the problem belongs to the whole community. This doesn't mean to take it on one of those television shows and tell the world about your hurt. It means taking it to all who are in relationship with those who are hurt or in disagreement. The harmony of the whole community is out of balance; and the harmony of the whole community is a basic biblical concern.
In our first reading, we see that our God does not love punishment and vengeance, but rather hopes that we will turn from our hurtful ways and live. Punishment, even well-deserved punishment, separates and destroys community. Too often we project our culture's legal system of right and wrong and justice as punishment onto the biblical picture. But the bible is not so much concerned with punishment as with restoring community.
Likewise, Matthew's gospel, after "Step 3," is not asking us to throw out or excommunicate those who won't listen to the church. Rather, it is suggesting that when they themselves choose, by not listening to the gathered community, not to be part of the church, that we treat them as we would outsiders.
And how are we supposed to treat outsiders? Throughout the Gospel, we see Jesus reaching out to them: he listens to and welcomes them; Jesus forgives and heals outsiders. It's not about punishment. It's about restoring harmony to the community.
Harmony is not about "agreement"or about converting everyone to one way of thinking or doing. We're talking about harmony, as in music. There's no harmony if everyone plays the same note. You play your note on your instrument, and I'll play mine; but let's try to play them in harmony instead of trying to drown one another out.
So how do we do that? If Matthew offers us the instructions, our reading from Roman's offers us some tools for restoring harmony in our relationships.
It's a long list, like commandments, and we seldom have them all. But the bottom line is there: "Let love be genuine." These are the tools for genuine love. These are the ways to harmony: "Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer" Some tools for dealing with conflict: "Bless those who persecute you....Do not repay anyone evil for evil." And finally, "Overcome evil with good."
This is what it means to "Live in harmony with one another." Harmony is how "shalom" – God's peace – looks. It's a time to let go of ourselves, of our need to prove that we are right and they must be like us. It's a time to reach out to who hurt us. A time to let go of ideas of punishment and to work to restore the harmony of our relationships.
We, the ingredients, may look pretty odd, but we've been given a recipe for harmony, shown the cooking tools, and we have a Master Chef already preparing a meal.