Reconciling

• Romans 13:8-14

  Love for One Another

  8 Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; you shall not murder; you shall not steal; you shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

  An Urgent Appeal

  11 Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is already the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; 12 the night is far gone; the day is near. Let us then throw off[a] the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; 13 let us walk decently as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in illicit sex and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. 14 Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

• Matthew 18:15-20

  Reproving Another Who Sins

  15 “If your brother or sister sins against you,[a] go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If you are listened to, you have regained that one. 16 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. 17 If that person 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. 18 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. 19 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. 20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

There are some passages in scripture—many passages in scripture—that don’t seem very nice. The whole Bible isn’t words as simple and beautiful as “love is patient and kind,” or “love your neighbour as yourself.” Sometimes, we are faced with passages such as this one from Matthew’s gospel, that has Jesus teaching the disciples when to shut people out of the community. It starts out kind of nice, with instructions regarding how to handle personal conflicts. The instructions make sense: if someone has done something to you, go to them one on one and let them know what they have done. Then you can take the next steps to work through the conflict and come back together, to reconcile. It even includes what to do if the person who wronged you is obstinate and doesn’t want to admit that they did anything wrong. Of course, the reasonable thing to do is to bring witnesses who can corroborate your story, so that there can be no doubt about who is right and who is wrong. To me, that starts to seem like you’re ganging up on someone, and like that method could easily get out of hand if you could find two or three people with a grudge against the alleged wrong-doer. But maybe I’m just jaded.

The final step is where things get more difficult, in my opinion. Matthew quotes Jesus as saying that if these first two methods of reconciliation fail, if the alleged perpetrator still refuses accountability and reconciliation, then you air out your conflict for the whole church, the whole gathered community. All bets are off. If you try to handle things discretely and that doesn’t work, that’s it. Let everybody know about your business. And if that still doesn’t work, the disciples are instructed to “treat them as you would a Gentile and tax collector.” Interpretations of this part of the passage run the gamut, from the most generous reading that Gentiles and tax collectors are simply people who are still in need of evangelization, to the harshest reading that sees this instruction as a form of excommunication. Either way, this would have us see those who fail to reconcile, first with individuals and then with the Church, as the “other.” If you fail to come back into the fold, that’s it. You’re no longer one of us. There’s no trial, no debate, no chance for the alleged offender to state their case or argue back. What happened to the Jesus who protected the woman caught in adultery and challenged those without sin to throw the first stones? I know that’s the Jesus of John’s gospel, but still. Where’s the mercy? 

Perhaps there are a couple ways to read the mercy out of this text. First, this passage fully confronts the fact that there will be conflict within the community. If the community of Jesus-followers was never supposed to engage in conflict, Jesus would have said “just don’t.” Instead, the humanity of this community is acknowledged. In that humanity, there is bound to be disagreement. There is bound to be hurt. There are bound to be those who say hurtful things, or who don’t communicate well, or who have different ideas about how the disciples ought to divide up the assets, or who dare to think differently about God or the nature of the Church. But, in those moments of conflict, the instruction is not to ignore the differences, ignore the hurt, or ignore the underlying issues. The instruction is not to settle disputes with violence or by shouting louder than one another. The instruction isn’t to start by walking away, by leaving without a word, or by pushing people out. Talk to one another, Jesus says. Let each other know when it hurts. Maybe the way he lays out each step of conflict isn’t ideal. But the spirit is that when there’s pain, there must be honesty about where that pain is coming from. To own that pain, to say where it’s coming from, and to make that real by speaking it to another person requires a level of trust. There is mercy in a community that is honest in its conflict.

There is mercy, too, in a community that does not force anyone to be a part of it. When harm is being done, the preference of this gospel passage is to come back together, for the transgressor to see the error of their ways and do what they have to to restore a broken relationship. That is the call of the individual and the community in this passage—to work for the restoration of broken relationships. But, when offenders refuse to acknowledge that they have caused harm, when reconciliation is not going to happen, the community settles on the side of the person who has been harmed. There is no pressuring the injured to stay in an unsafe situation, for the so-called good of the family or the community. Too often, the response of churches to domestic violence is to urge survivors to remain in violent situations, in order to not disturb the family, the church, or the village. But this passage extends grace through this option to loose our bonds on earth. There is mercy in a way of living that says that we don’t have to remain in situations that cause us pain, and in a way of being in community that protects those who are being harmed. There is mercy in a call to be a community that takes a side, and that sides with the vulnerable, with the survivor, with the beaten, and with the oppressed—and that demands that their transgressors and oppressors be held accountable.

But, what about when this system is misused. What about when the Church loses sight of who the transgressor is, and this authority turns mercy into violence and grace into oppression? For over fifty years, from the early seventies to just 2024, the United Methodist Church had some kind of statement that denounced queer people. For most of that time, there were restrictions on same-sex marriages within the church, and those in same-sex relationships were barred from being ordained as clergy. The practice of homosexuality was declared “incompatible with Christian teaching,” and labelled as sinful. Members of the LGBTQ+ community, then, were the “sinners” in the broader church community. They were the ones who needed to change, to reconcile with the teachings of the church. In many communities, this is still the understanding. Some churches, like this one here, turned that narrative around, though. The movement of churches claiming the mantle of “Reconciling” saw the church, not its queer members, as the transgressor. These churches saw themselves as needing to do the work of coming back into the Body of Christ, not the other way around. And that remains the work of these churches, and indeed of every church. Even when we have gotten it wrong, and the church has gotten a lot wrong, there is mercy in reframing our image of ourselves. There is mercy, for us and for others, in working to reconcile ourselves with the Body of Christ that we treated as Gentiles and tax collectors, as those who needed to hear the Good News—when we were the ones who needed to hear it all along.

There is mercy in this call to reconciliation. For those who have transgressed, there is opportunity for coming back together, even when our transgressions mean that the relationship might not go right back to how it was before. For those who have been harmed, there is mercy in knowing that the community is called to stand with those who have been harmed. For the church, there is mercy in knowing that even when we get it wrong, that is not the end. Even when we do harm, even when we don’t do good, even when we fall short of what God has called us to, still it is our task to move onward towards perfection, towards the Beloved Community. May we hear the voices of those with whom we need to seek reconciliation—the ignored, the poor, the queer, the vulnerable, and the survivors. May we reconcile not just in word, but in deed. May we find grace in the call to trust, to own our hurts, and to walk as a community into the Kin-dom of God. Amen.