Resolve conflict with the end in mind.

Earlier this week, I heard noises above my head, on the roof. That seemed odd. So I went out to see what was causing the noise. I saw a squirrel. Then I saw three squirrels. I wondered what they were doing. They appeared to wonder what I was doing. I stood still long enough to watch as they scurried across the tile, checking under them, back and forth again and again.

It was a revelation. What do squirrels do but eat, drink, play a bit, build nests – none of which would be served by running around a tile roof. So I told them, “There’s no food up there. There’s no water. What are you doing?” They just looked at me, wondering, I’m sure, what I was doing. Their little brown eyes said, “There’s no sermon up here!” And I said, “Ahhh, but you’re wrong!”

As I watched the squirrels running back and forth across a tile roof that could not give them anything they needed, I thought about how people can also be up to all sorts of distraction from doing the things God has called us to do and, more importantly, from authentically being the people God calls us to be.  The British novelist and philosopher G.K Chesterton wrote in his book What’s Wrong with the World, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” (Chapter 5)   In other words, the Church doesn’t fail. People fail to be the Church.

It is with that in mind that we approach today’s Gospel. This is a memorable passage from Matthew 18 because Jesus lays out very specific instructions about how we are to deal with conflict, especially within the household of faith. I say household because this is couched as a family matter. Every church I’ve ever been a part of or consulted with – dozens of them – hold as their highest value that they are a family. So this is about tensions among brothers and sisters.

It’s so important that this is the only place in the Gospels where Jesus talks about the Church other than where he tells Peter he will build his Church, his community of faith, on the rock of his confession of Jesus as the Christ and Son of the Living God. He anticipates that the same sort of conflict we as individuals have internally will play out in this new community of faith.

Note that we are also talking about sin. You’ll recall that the Greek word for sin, hamartia, literally means missing the mark – the mark being our full reconciliation with the Father forever. It’s something more than perceived slights and irritations. If something inconsequential gets under our skin, that has more to do with our insecurities than anything else. And let’s also note that if we fail to follow Jesus’ instructions, then we are missing the mark, we are sinning. This is all an exercise in participating with God in the establishment of his kingdom among us but also within us.

In my experience, we have a hard time following Christ’s commands. I have lived through this in my home parish before going into ordained ministry. I’ve kept the peace in two congregations as rector, which involves a lot of soothing of offenses, some minor and some major. When I worked for the bishop, this was a major focus. At any given moment, on average, five to six churches are dealing with enough conflict to require intervention from the bishop’s office.

Most often, church conflict is rooted in people’s inability to grasp and follow this passage. There are a number of very good books and programs out there for dealing with church conflict. But, like anything, you can’t force attitudes to change. Sometimes, the conflict would persist even when I held it up to them. Sometimes it would persist even when the bishop himself held it up to them. And what does that tell us? The conflict isn’t actually about the presenting issues. It’s rooted in pride, position, ego; something in us.

Most often, we revert to our instincts which include keeping it to ourselves, burying it to keep the peace. Forbearance coupled with forgiveness may be in order, but if we are talking about a sin against God that also affected you, failing to confront the person and the issue can breed resentment which can poison the soul and the community.

Or, people may entrench in their position and gather allies, gather evidence, prepare arguments, all with an eye toward winning the issue. Oh how we love to win issues. And oh, how we struggle to forgive! (Tune in next week.) Oh how we struggle to admit our mistakes, our own sin, and apologize. We are supposed to be about winning our brother or sister over, which brings everyone closer to Christ. The stakes are the highest they could be. This is searching for the lost coin, searching for the lost sheep.

Even Jesus’ instructions about what to do if none of it works is full of grace. First, if we have done our level best, then we’ve gotten that much closer to God, which is great. And when Jesus says to treat them as a Gentile and a tax collector, let us not forget how Jesus treated Gentiles and tax collectors. The invitation continues, not on their terms or on our terms, but on his.

This is the very essence of loving your neighbor as yourself. Instead of coming at it as “You’ve done me wrong,” it’s, “We’ve got to sort this out, and in the right way, for your sake, for my sake and for the Kingdom’s sake.”

This is hard for us. Anything really worth doing is going to be hard. If we can keep our focus on Christ and his kingdom, then we can overcome our baser instincts. This lies at the root of Chesterton’s observation. When we fail to do as Christ commands, it is not a failure of the Church, it is us failing to be the Church, failing to represent Christ.

Otherwise, we are as squirrels running around the roof, consuming our time with fruitless distraction.

Do not discount or dismiss the transformative power of following Christ’s instructions. Commit to it in your own heart. Read it. Understand it. Apply it consistently to issues great and small. Teaching our children to work out their differences is a prototype, in effect getting them to play by the rules of the game, the rules of social behavior. But this is making sure we are playing the game by God’s rules, with winning as defined by him rather than our human limitations of pride and position.

Try it, test it, and you’ll find God’s grace flowing from it.

AMEN