The Upload
Posted on Sep 05, 2014 by
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
I pray you had a blessed week.
In our Gospel text for this Sunday (Matthew 18:15-20), Jesus offers his followers a way of dealing with conflict in the church community. It is a formula that many of us don’t like because, if truth be told, most of us would prefer to ignore conflict, and if we have to deal with it, we would rather deal with it behind people’s backs. When we have issues with a person, most of us would rather not confront that person directly, as Jesus instructs, but most of us are very willing to talk about that person with others. Dealing with conflict is difficult, and in our culture today, most of the time when there is conflict, the answer is to kick people out of the group or to shun them. In the church, most that follow such practices will quote this very text to say, see, if someone is different from us and they are causing problems, Jesus says we should kick them out.
But the truth is, expelling someone from a faith community because they are causing trouble or because they believe or act differently from us is to be the absolute last resort. In fact, in Judaism, there is an old story of a student who was studying to be a rabbi, and one day that student went to the lead rabbi who he was studying under to tell him about all the bad things his fellow students were doing, and the student demanded that they be expelled. The senior rabbi refused and said, “That is not what we need to do.” The student was appalled, and he said, “How can you tolerate evil like this?” To which the senior rabbi said, “Isn’t your father a carpenter?” The student said, “Yes. Why?” “Well,” the rabbi said, “I need your help. See that table by the window? It has a scratch across the surface and one leg is wobbly. Chop it up into firewood for me, won’t you?” The student was appalled and said, “Are you crazy? That table is made of a very fine oak! And I recognize the design. It was made by one of the most famous furniture makers in all of Europe. There is no need to throw it away. The scratch is minor and I can fix the leg.” “Ah,” replied the rabbi, “just as that is true, God is the master craftsman of our souls, and God is unwilling that any should be discarded because of a few scratches and imperfections. What we do here in this community of faith and learning is make repairs and improvements.”
The instructions Jesus gives us in this story are instructions as to how to build healthy relationships based on honesty and openness. Our Gospel lesson is not about how to throw someone out so the church will be pure and perfect. No, this story is about how to love our neighbor, even when that neighbor is not acting in the best of ways. This story is about reaching out to people, even as they push us away, and it’s about refusing to give up on anybody.
Loving our neighbors when they act badly is difficult, but Jesus says, for his sake, love them anyway.
Have a blessed week!
Shalom,
Pastor Dave