The Word is Love, First Congregational UCC, Rock Springs, WY, by Rev Steven R Mitchell

The Word is Love
By Rev Steven R Mitchell
First Congregational UCC, Rock Springs, WY 9/4/2011
Based on Matthew 18:15-20 and Romans 14:8-14


Last week I closed the message with these following statements and questions:”As people who say we are followers of Christ, we need to look at our actions … and compare them to what Christ teaches and how Christ acted toward those who tried to do harm to him. “How do we not repay evil with evil? How do we reconcile, not taking revenge when wronged? How do we truly ‘bless’ those who persecute us?
The quest for the Christian is to define their life by the standards that Christ laid out within his ministry. The road to peace is far more difficult than the road to revenge. We are called to live in genuine love, to hate what is evil but to not address evil with evil. Finally, we are a people called to rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, and persevere in prayer.” From sermon titled: Defining Your Life, by Rev Steven R Mitchell
This week’s lectionary text continues this discussion of “How do we act when wronged?” Matthew brings this point down to conflict within the church when it occurs between two individuals. It states, “15-16"If a fellow believer hurts you, go and tell him—work it out between the two of you. If he listens, you've made a friend.” Matthew then says if that person doesn’t respond, then you are suppose to again approach this person but this time with several other members of the church, so they can verify everything that is being said. This way, you have witnesses and you don’t get into a public fight with the “He says, I say” arguments. Again, if the perpetrator isn’t mending their way, then you are to bring this church member before the whole body and if the offender still refuses to listen, then we are told: ” if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”
I don’t know how this particular section of Matthew strikes you when you read it, but this last Monday when I was starting my preparation for today, terror struck my heart. Every church has struggled with members who seem to be willful in their actions, meaning that they feel that they are above the rest of the assembly. If it isn’t hard enough to try to deal with situations such as this, then it is compounded with that little caveat, “if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.” In truth, this is the part of Matthew that I found very difficult to deal with. Many churches, if they practice church discipline take this section and use it as a club to try and beat into submission the person that is accused.
What I see in this reading is the potential abuse on the part of the larger church body. Many churches have read the segment that says, “To treat them like pagans or tax collectors” to mean, excommunicate this person who isn’t changing their behavior. When this direction from Matthew is taken, the church has created an adversarial environment which often can escalate into an explosive situation and more than the original two people find themselves entangled, creating many more victims from the original “wrong.” The truth of the matter is: any disciplinary action by the church should be redemptive, not punitive, in intent. Feasting on the Word, Mitchell G. Reddish
Excommunication and/or exclusion type of behavior is punitive action, not redemptive or an act of reconciliation.
If we take this same line of scripture and listen to how Eugene Peterson understands it in his translation of The Message, we read a differing approach: If he won't listen to the church, you'll have to start over from scratch, confront him with the need for repentance, and offer again God's forgiving love. In other words, we are to continually be in fellowship with this type of person, showing a love and forgiveness that Jesus himself showed those who mistreated him. In Romans, Paul says it this way: “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”
Among the many things that Paul tells us which can rule our physical bodies, hate and need for revenge, are two of the most powerful feelings that we deal with as humans. We are just a week away from the 10th Anniversary when 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four passenger jets and brought down both towers of the World Trade Center, penetrated a section of the Pentagon and the fourth planed crashed in a field not reaching its objective because of the actions of the passengers. There has been a tremendous amount of programming on Television this past week on the topic. Some programs being aired focus in such a way as to promote a continuation of being a victim of these actions, and in essence allowing ourselves to be held hostage by the Al Qaeda. Other programs are presenting topics that focus on constructive actions that provide healing from this violence and the ability to move beyond being a victim toward providing space that allows for healing and hopes for a future that will promote peace. One of these ways is with the building of two fountains, one at the base of the North Tower, the other at the base of the South Tower, in a park setting, with the names of every person who lost their life that day.
This past Monday I attended a seminary/retreat in Colorado, which focused on how to diminish the destructive nature of “Them vs. Us”, specifically between the Muslim and Christian world, but this can be applied to any situation where we find ourselves in an adversarial situation, just like what Matthew is speaking to this morning. The key speaker was Dr Mirslov Volf, Professor of Theology at Yale’s School of Theology. Dr. Volf is one of our leading Theologians of the twenty-first century. Mirslov comes from a most interesting background. He is a Croatian, raised by a father who was a Pentecostal minister, in Serbia, had a Serbian nanny, all under the old Communist USSR. He spent most of his years during military service being interrogated because of his father’s profession, being seen as a potential enemy of the state.
Mirslov is a strong voice directed to the church, calling us to conduct ourselves as Christ has taught us in how to live. He spent much time discussing his involvement over the past decade in finding common ground within Christianity and Islam. He spoke about how the same miss-information about Christians is being feed to the Muslim world as we hear miss-information about Muslims in our country. I would also like to point out that, on Sept 11, 2001, Mirslov had just finished his concluding statements to a group of people in one of the conference rooms in the North Tower, when the first plane flew into the Trade Center. So when this man is talking about how anti-Muslim propaganda goes against our call by Christ to seek out peace, he is not just a professor who lives behind the doors in an Ivy tower, but was at ground zero that morning of the attacks, and what he shares with the wider Christian community should be listened to with much respect and reflection.
Coming back then to how I struggled with our lesson in Matthew, that of applying Matthews formula as solutions for discord within the community of faith, I already have shared that we are not suppose to approach these situations with censure and punitive intent. We are in fact told by Matthew to keep plugging away in love in relating to those who seem to create ill feelings. This of course can only truly be practiced when we, as Paul has put it, have put on the Lord Jesus Christ!
So the first step, as suggested by Mirslov, is to make ourselves open in order to provide the atmosphere that is needed for reconciliation. In Mirslov’s book, Exclusion and Embrace, he explains this concept with a simple illustration. 1) We must be able to embrace the other person. So the first act is that of “self-opening” our self, so that we are creating an invitation, an invitation that has created space for union. 2) There is waiting. We have created the invitation, but we must wait for the other person to respond to this invitation, by opening up our arms, there by becoming vulnerable and having the ability to embrace. Our hope is that they too will create space for this union, which means that they too also must open their arms in order to embrace each other. By forcing an embrace you have actually excluded that person, because you have not allowed that person to be their self. You might be hugging them but you are not embracing them. You have “assimilated” this person into your being, but by not allowing them to be their self, you have not “embraced” that person. 3) Once this person has chosen to enter into this “embrace” then we have the closing of the arms. It is affirming their presence as the other person also affirms being there. 4) Once we have had this embrace, we must open back up the arms to let the other person go back to being who they are. This allows for individuality to continue for both persons.
“Exclusion” is by nature the creative act that allows for individualism. It is the boundaries that I set up for myself, that allows me to be who I am and to exist within my space. This is the proper aspect of exclusion, of boundaries. However, we can create excluding acts when we violate a person’s boundaries. We can exclude a person when we assimilate them into our reality.
This is how I think we have to look at what Matthew is trying to teach us, in approaching conflict within the church body. We want to be able to create the space for union. We do not try to assimilate, because that is violating that person and there is no true union.. As Jesus told his disciples in last week’s text, “for what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world but loses his life?” What happens to our soul is far more important than what happens to our bodies. As Paul tells us, “All the commandments, are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”
“How do we not repay evil with evil? How do we reconcile, not taking revenge when wronged? How do we truly ‘bless’ those who persecute us?” By loving our neighbor as Christ has loved us. As we stand at the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ, we have to come to realize and then embrace the truth that Christ died for every sin that has been committed, he died for every sin that will be committed in the future. The sin of those 19 men, of 10 years ago has already been forgiven by God. Those sins that each of us do to one another, has been forgiven by God. Sin separates us from one another, so if that sin has been forgiven by God, then we as followers of Christ must create the invitation for reconciliation between one another. It means making no provisions for the flesh to gratify its desires (that of revenge or hate). The word is Love. Amen