Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity
Listen to audio version:
Readings: Romans 13: 8-end and Matthew 18: 15-20
As Christians, should we behave in a different way from anybody or everybody else? I think there is a general expectation that this should be so. Church disputes or rows between church members, or the failings of churchgoers, are favourite targets for press coverage and social media. The inference is that we ‘should know better.’
From the New Testament there is an imperative for us to practice the highest levels of behaviour. That is not to say that everyone else is permitted to behave badly, but that we should constantly act out our lives as people who know they have been redeemed. Both St. Paul, in our Romans readings of recent weeks, and Jesus, constantly reiterate the need for good Christian behaviour. In one place, speaking to hundreds of people, Jesus said, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” That was in the Sermon on the Mount, where he was overturning the old mantra of ‘eye for eye and tooth for tooth.’ There, Jesus was speaking to hundreds of ordinary people.
This week’s passage from St. Matthew’s gospel seems to be addressed especially to the church community, or perhaps to the church’s leaders. As David Adam writes, it is a difficult reading in that it does not sound like Jesus; it is more like statements from a committee. Jesus could not have said it in its present form because the Church did not yet exist, and the passage assumes an organized Church. So scholars wonder whether these verses might have been written after the time of Jesus, or amended then from something he said, when the young Church was growing up, and when that community of believers was needing rules and guidance.
As with any group of people with a common interest, be they members of a Church, a Residents’ Association or a Golf Club – or a family – there will be differences of opinion. We shouldn’t be surprised or necessarily alarmed by that, because that is the way life is. The press like to make the most of upsets within a community: that helps to sell papers or win subscribers. But the question in any conflict situation is how to resolve the difficulty. As a church leader I have always found that upsets within a church community, and I have known a few, seem to generate an intensity which can be very destructive. And do I – the leader – take the advice of Jesus and confront the one who appears to be in the wrong? You will probably have observed over six years that I am not a confrontational sort of person, and find the handling of conflict quite stressful and against my nature. I have seldom confronted people head-on over a difficult issue, but on two occasions in my parishes in Kent when I had to challenge some people, both couples took exception and left the church community. I’m sure other clergy will agree with me when I say that one feels very uncomfortable when anybody leaves a church because of you!
Sometimes a minister or preacher will be reluctant to challenge an individual within the church because they know they are not immune from sins themselves. Some of the best Christian priests who acted or act now as confessors – those who hear people’s sins and proclaim forgiveness in Christ’s name – some of the best of those are most conscious of all that is wrong in their own lives. We’re not so hasty to criticize wrongs in other people’s lives if we recognize the failings in our own. And, let us not forget Jesus’ words in the incident over the woman caught in the act of adultery. To the baying crowd who were ready to stone her, he said, “Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone.” And one by one they all went away.
But, of course, on occasions action does have to taken by the leader of a church, or golf club, if the offender’s behaviour or actions are infecting the life of the community. The procedure apparently recommended by Jesus for conflict resolution in the Church in today’s verses seems very direct. There isn’t much about love, but there is about reconciliation. One writer says, “Jesus was establishing little cells loyal to himself. The striking rule by which they were to live was that of forgiveness and reconciliation. But it is always a hard-won reconciliation. Appropriate confrontation, this writer suggests, is the necessary prelude. Reconciliation does not come by sweeping things under the carpet, or by pretending that nothing is really wrong.
It is heartening when a dispute or upset or personality clash within a church suddenly seems to be defused. It often happens, I think, when one or both parties come to a realization that they should try to love one another in a responsible way. Often the first step is just to try not to make matters any worse by hasty actions or rash words. Notice that in the scenario painted in the gospel today, the process of challenging the bad behaviour, or whatever it is, starts in private. It is far easier to acknowledge fault when it’s done before only one or two people, thus avoiding public humiliation. Wisdom comes in honouring the position of the other person, if a view or argument is genuinely held, and avoiding gossiping and point scoring. Then, if finally you have to acknowledge a broken relationship, you can do so knowing that you have done your best for reconciliation.
In the sixth-century, St. Benedict wrote a rule for monks, incorporating Jesus’ approach to conflict resolution. Benedict was at pains to avoid ‘murmuratio’ – or grumbling, which can undermine any community. The Reverend Paul Kennedy, a Benedictine oblate himself, says “Grumbling grows viral like a flash-mob as people can gossip and plot over coffee and in cliques.” I know from previous churches how damaging that can be.
If Jesus’ message appears a bit cold and formal, St. Paul gives very positive advice. “Owe no one anything, except to love one another. Love does no wrong to a neighbour…Love your neighbour as yourself…Let us live honourably, not in quarreling and jealousy. Indeed, put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” We don’t know the exact circumstances of the Church in Rome to which Paul was writing. Very often, if he is emphasizing Christian teaching, it is because he perceives something needs correcting in the community addressed. Here, perhaps, he is reminding people that embracing Christianity is not an excuse for refusing our obligations to our neighbours; it is a reason for fulfilling them to the utmost. He says that if anybody seeks to discharge the debt of love, they will automatically keep the commandments. For example, they will not kill, for love never seeks to destroy, but always to build up. They will never steal, for love is always more concerned with giving than getting.
And then, ‘put on the Lord Jesus Christ’ – perhaps a reference to the white robe with which people were clothed when they came up from the water after baptism. But that is not a bad image with which to close. Supposing each day when we get up we consciously think that we are putting on the Lord Jesus Christ – clothed with him all day like the shirt or overcoat we wear. How would that change our behaviour, our outlook, our actions, our words?