When Christians Clash

When Christians Clash

Matthew 18:15-22

April 28, 2019 • Mount Pleasant UMC

It was the right hook that took him down. It was unexpected, but then nothing about that Sunday morning at Emmanuel Church had gone as planned. This quiet community on the outskirts of Boston was ill-prepared for what turned out to be a genuine church fight. And though what I’m about to share sounds like a reality show, it is in fact a true story. The trouble had started a few years back when the founding pastor had retired. He had been there for twenty-five years and was well-loved in the community. Emmanuel Church was congregational, so they put together a “pulpit committee” which spent five months selecting their new pastor. Anticipation was high as Donald Waite began his ministry, but soon people began to notice that he dealt with people in very unhealthy ways. He seemed to always get his way at business meetings, and he used what he learned about people against them. Four months into Waite’s ministry, some at Emmanuel Church decided they needed a change in leadership.

That’s when the battle lines began to be drawn. Some wanted a change and others supported the pastor. The choir was split on the issue, and the organist sided with the pastor. Soon, messages began showing up in the offering plates. Some envelopes said, “Waite No Longer,” while others said, “Support the Pastor.” One offering envelope said, “The organ is too loud.” A meeting was scheduled to discuss the matter, but the pastor refused to announce it. Finally, one Sunday morning, after a month of waiting, Frank Fowler had enough and stood up to make the announcement himself. He was cut off by the organist, who began to play loudly enough to drown him out, so Frank reached over and pulled the plug on the organ.

In that moment of silence, you could feel the tension in the congregation. Ray Bryson stood up and approached the pastor, but once we got fact to face with Pastor Waite, he wasn’t sure what to do. When he turned to go back to his seat, his feet got tangled in the microphone cord and he fell. People in the pews thought the pastor had pushed him, and soon most everyone was up, defending their side, their champion—even the choir jumped over the communion rail and got involved. While the organist played, “Blest Be the Tie That Binds,” Ray Bryson landed the right hook that took the pastor down. Pastor Waite landed right in front of the communion table, under the words, “This Do In Remembrance of Me.”

The fight ended when the police arrived. The following Wednesday, the church leaders and Pastor Waite all received a summons to appear in court. Judge David Goldstein looked at all of them. “I know some of you from the softball league,” he said. “Your Jesus Christ may allow this sort of thing in his followers, but the Commonwealth of Massachusetts will not permit fistfights as a regular order of church service.” Before he dismissed the case, the judge said, “There must be some way you can settle your dispute among yourselves” (Colson, The Body, pgs. 91-97).

All of us end up in the midst of conflict from time to time. If you get two people together, they are bound to disagree from time to time, sometimes more severely than others. Fights are a part of life; it’s not if we will disagree, but when and how. But even though that’s true, it doesn’t mean our disagreements have to get out of control, nor do disagreements have to mean the end of a friendship or relationship. Today, we get so easily offended that if you disagree with me, I’m as likely to call you names as to try to make things right. I’m as likely to unfriend you or block you or go out of my way to avoid you as I am to work things out. We’ve forgotten the art of disagreement, and not just in the world, but in the church as well. How do we deal with people who make us angry? How do we fight in a way that honors Jesus? That’s the question we’re going to deal with today and next week, beginning this week with a focus on the church, our brothers and sisters in Christ.

There is a song we used to sing at church camp and in my home church (you probably sang it here) that says, “They’ll know we are Christians by our love.” That song comes clearly out of Scripture. Jesus said, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35). On his final night on earth, Jesus prayed for his followers throughout history, “that all of them may be one” (John 17:21). The psalmist says, “How good and how pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!” (Psalm 133:1). Yet the history of the church is not one of unity and very often not one of love. The fact that there are thousands of different denominations in the United States and hundreds of different churches in Terre Haute alone testifies to our lack of love and unity, our refusal to follow Jesus’ command. We’re more often known by our differences than our commonalities, more known by what we are against than what we are for, and that’s true not only on a global scale, but in local churches as well. The story of Emmanuel Church is an extreme case, but in every church there are seeds of that kind of destructive behavior—even here. Why, in this place where we come to celebrate God’s forgiveness and love and grace, do we so often fail to show that same grace to others? Why do we often feel justified in holding grudges against brothers and sisters in the faith, grudges that we wouldn’t and don’t hold anywhere else?

I’ve though a lot about that question over the years, and I’ve concluded it’s because we deal with matters of faith, matters of ultimate importance at church. And it’s easy for us to get ultimate things mixed up with temporary things. We transfer the strength of our convictions about God onto our convictions about less important matters. We let petty things become divisive issues. It’s human nature, so the question is not, “Will there be conflict in the church?” The question is, “How do we handle conflict when it shows up at church?” Jesus knew that would happen, so in Matthew 18, he gives us very clear guidelines about how to handle those times when Christians clash.

Jesus says, “If your brother or sister sins” (18:15)—and some texts add “against you” at that point; that’s the meaning of the original language. Notice that Jesus is talking about serious things here; he doesn’t use the word “sin” lightly. Sin is what breaks God’s heart, but we get upset over much smaller things. I’ve had far more people upset about the color of the carpet than I’ve had over real sin. I had a woman tell me she was going to leave the church because of the color we painted the worship center, but I don’t remember a single time anyone got that worked up over someone’s soul. Our focus is off, and Jesus is refocusing us. The things we get upset over are, very often, not that important. In the eternal scheme of things, the times someone hurts our feelings or doesn’t respond to us in the “correct” way are not worth the emotional energy we spend on them. Jesus focus here is on those times when a broken relationship takes place between two members of God’s family because sin has entered in.

Sin breaks relationships. That’s what it does. Usually we think of sin as those things that stand between us and God, but we can also sin against each other. We do things that break relationship between ourselves and a brother or sister in Christ. Now why is that important enough for Jesus to talk about? It’s because the church is not a mere collection of individuals. The church is first and foremost a community, bound together by the Spirit of God (Boring, “The Gospel of Matthew,” New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. VIII, pg. 379), and not only those of us who are a part of this particular local church. We’re bound by the Spirit of God to everyone who claims the name “Christian”—Methodist, Baptist, Catholic, Nazarene, Presbyterian, and so on—whether we like it or not. The Bible knows nothing of individual faith; faith is found in the community. That’s why, in the Lord’s Prayer, we don’t pray, “My Father who art in heaven.” We pray, “Our Father.” One author puts it this way: “Without community, one is effectively dead. One has no network, no support, no hope” (Pilch, Cultural World of Jesus, Cycle A, pg. 135). A sin between members of the community—a broken relationship—therefore affects the entire community, so Jesus gives us guidelines on how to handle it. (And, just to add a quick aside here, this process Jesus outlines for the church can work in any relationship and is really meant for a larger section of humanity than just those in these four walls.)

Jesus says our first step is this: “Go and point out their fault, just between the two of you” (18:15). The first step is one-on-one: go to the other person alone and open a dialogue. According to the writings of the rabbis and the Dead Sea Scrolls, this was standard Jewish practice in the first century. To shame someone publicly was considered a sin itself, so conflict was handled privately first (Keener, Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, pg. 94). Jesus doesn’t say to build your case with others first. He doesn’t say go tell a bunch of other people. He doesn’t say to post it on Facebook or Instagram. He doesn’t even say to determine if you’re right or not first (though of course we are always right). Jesus says if there is a break in the relationship, go to the other person privately. It’s not about proving who is right and who is not. It’s about restoring community, healing relationships among brothers and sisters in the faith. So go to the other person and talk it out, just the two of you.

However, if a one-on-one dialogue doesn’t bring resolution, Jesus says, “take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses’” (18:16). Now, this doesn’t happen just because you don’t get your way. The goal is not winning an argument. The goal is not forcing your viewpoint on the other person. The goal is healing, reconciliation. If a one-on-one doesn’t bring that about, it may be time to involve a few others. Jesus’ instructions here seem to be based on Moses’ instruction in Deuteronomy (19:15) where he told Israel that charges against another person could only be sustained if two or three witnesses agreed. If only one person made an accusation, it would not be considered. Here, in Matthew, we’re told to take a couple of trusted people along, not to gang up on the other person, but to try to help. Often, when we’re in the midst of a conflict, we don’t hear the other person very well. We want our way and it’s hard to hear another way. So Jesus calls us to bring along others who have an investment in the community, others who can help us hear each other. Michael Green tells of a time when a Christian business he was involved in discovered clear evidence of theft. Money had been taken from the company, and he was able to trace it to one person, so he went to that person but the man denied any wrongdoing. So a few people sat down with the man to try to talk it over, to let him know that he was loved enough to be challenged. In the presence of witnesses, he confessed. He lost his job, but his church was able to surround him with love and acceptance, even to help him find a new job when the time was right (Green, Matthew for Today, pg. 174). The presence of witnesses reminds us that a break in relationship affects the whole community.

Sometimes, though, even a small group will not be able to bring about healing, so Jesus gives us direction for one more try: “Tell it to the church” (18:17). This is a frightening thing to contemplate, because immediately we get visions of public shaming. That’s why Jesus doesn’t start with this step. This is a final step, a last resort. But why is it necessary at all? Because conflict within the body of Christ must be dealt with, not ignored. It is a cancer that eats away at the connective tissue of relationships. And, like any cancer, unchecked it will destroy a church. It’s better to do early surgery and deal with the disease, but sometimes it takes radical chemotherapy to put an end to the illness. That’s what this step is. “Tell it to the church:” bring the dispute before the local congregation (cf. Boring 378).

I’m fairly certain that, when Matthew uses the word “church” to describe this final group, he didn’t have in mind a church of 400 like ours. In the first century, in Matthew’s world, the church met in homes and would have been more the equivalent of what we call LifeGroups than the modern, American conception of a large gathering of people. For Matthew, “church” meant what we call a small group, and honestly, in a church our size, that’s really where you get cared for and loved. It’s in the small group, not in the large gathered congregation. I don’t think bringing someone in front of our weekly worship gathering is what is envisioned in this passage; I believe it’s gathering the “small church” that you are a part of, what John Wesley would have called bands and what we call LifeGroups. As another aside, that’s part of why small groups are so important. We need people who will love us, care for us and even confront us. That was and still is the genius of the Methodist movement, from Wesley’s day until our own.

So, this is something a group must always enter into with love, with the expectation that healing will take place. It’s also something the group must surround with prayer. That’s the point Jesus is making in verses 18-20. We often take those verses out of context and use them to back up our prayer requests, but the context here is conflict in the church. Jesus is reminding his disciples that what we do here has eternal implications. “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (18:18). If conflict isn’t handled with grace, you may lose someone for eternity. In verse 19, Jesus says, “If two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.” Jesus is not guaranteeing we’ll get what we ask for in prayer; rather, he’s calling us to pray as a community as we lovingly confront the divisive issues in our life together.

Nowhere in this passage does Jesus say we’re always going to agree with one another. That’s not the goal. After all, you may be wrong and the other person may be right. They may be wrong, and you may be right. More likely, you both have part of the truth; you may not have all the facts straight when you approach the other person. There could be misunderstandings on both sides. The goal is not necessarily agreement or ending up with the same opinions. Unity doesn’t mean complete agreement. Unity means being able to live and work and serve together in Christ. That means each side honestly and openly weighs what is being said, listens to it as if it concerned someone else (Green 175). It means each side considers that the other person may be right and comes ready to forgive and be forgiven. Usually, we go in “guns blazing,” convinced we are right; Jesus calls us to listen to the other and listen to the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit’s job to convict us of sin (John 16:8), so if we’re both listening to the Holy Spirit, he will help us come to a place where we can stop sinning against each other, stop hurting each other and continue to live together in the community, even if we don’t end up agreeing completely with the other person. The goal is reconciliation and healing in the community because that’s where God’s blessing is found. Unity is a gift from God. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, put it this way in one of his sermons: “Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion? Without all doubt, we may” (“Catholic Spirit” in Jackson, ed., The Works of John Wesley, Vol. V, pg. 493).

So we seek the preserve and protect the unity of the church, and any time there is something threatening the community, we should seek to bring healing. The challenge is to approach such things in a loving manner, seeking information rather than passing judgment. We also need to consider the possible end of the process. Jesus is very clear that if the other person refuses to listen to the church, “treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector” (18:17). Everyone hearing Jesus that day knew what he meant. Gentiles and tax collectors were excluded from the community of faith (Keener 94). To treat someone as a Gentile or a tax collector meant that they are no longer allowed to be part of the community. So one way to evaluate an issue is this: is this serious enough to permanently break fellowship over? Is it serious enough to call the church to exclude the other person? Because that’s the end result, according to Jesus. He says that sometimes, a formal separation might be necessary. The life of the community might require it.

But I also want you to remember how Jesus was described by his opponents? “Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Matthew 11:19). Even when fellowship is broken, even when the other person is closed to healing, it's not over. Remember what Jesus did with tax collectors and sinners? He loved them and still called them to repentance. Matthew had good reason to know that, because he had been a tax collector (Green 175). Jesus had welcomed him, brought him into the community even when others would have given up on him. The goal is always reconciliation. The church never loses its responsibility for the other person’s soul. Jesus never writes someone off and neither can we.

This is a hard teaching. And I kind of picture Peter standing off to the side, trying to take it all in. Finally, he thinks he has it figured out. Forgiveness is key, obviously, so he approaches Jesus with this question: “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” (18:21). That was very generous of Peter. The rabbis taught that you only had to forgive another person three times at most (Keener 95). But Jesus just smiles and says, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times” (18:22). Some translations says, “Seventy times seven,” but the math is irrelevant here. Jesus is saying that if you’re counting, you haven’t really forgiven (cf. Boring 380). The number of times isn’t important; restoring community is.

The Sunday morning fistfight was only the beginning of the end for Emmanuel Church. The following Sunday, Pastor Waite issued a call for allegiance, and less than half the congregation chose to follow him. The following months found the deacons and the pastor constantly engaged in conflict. Finally, Pastor Waite resigned, but it was too late for the church. It took two decades for the building to close, but the witness of the church in the community was never the same. From that on Sunday morning on, they were known as the church that fought (Colson 99).

Every church, including ours, has its share of conflict. When Jesus begins, “Where two or three gather in my name,” I almost expect him to end with, “there will be conflict.” But that’s not how he ends that statement, of course. “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them” (18:20). Where Christian people are gathered in community, Christ himself is there as a healing presence. That alone should be enough to change the tone of our disagreements, whether they happen in the church, in our workplaces, or in our homes. Remembering Jesus is there should be enough to cause us to act like Christians rather than “Gentiles and tax collectors.” We are, after all, resurrection people, people who find hope even in the worst of circumstances. The times when Christians clash are hard, but as we allow Christ himself to fill us with love, as we spend time with him, and as we seek to put our egos aside and bring reconciliation within the community, conflict does not need to bring disaster. Conflict does not need to bring death. In fact, conflict can bring new life, healing and hope.

We’re going to talk more about this next week, but for this moment, I want to bring this home, where we live. I want to invite you to take a moment and close your eyes. Is there someone, perhaps in this congregation or perhaps in another church or in your family who has done something to you that has broken your relationship with them? Or maybe it’s someone you have wounded and broken a relationship with. Get their name, their face in your mind and heart. What have they done? Have they sinned against you? Have you sinned against them? Think honestly about that question. If so, what have you done about it? Don’t blame them. What have you done about it? And more importantly, how will you apply these words of Jesus to that situation? What is Christ the healer calling you—just you, don’t worry about anyone else—to do? Let’s pray.