Making Up Is Hard to Do

A sermon by Dr. Jim Somerville
Pastor, Richmond’s First Baptist Church
Richmond, Virginia
September 7, 2008
The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

Matthew 18:15-20 

If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’[i] If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector. “I tell you the truth, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them (Matthew 18:15-20, NIV). 

          Last week I got a call from an old friend who wanted to know how things were going at my new church.  I had to tell him the truth.  “They couldn’t be any better,” I said.  “These are some of the most gracious, generous, thoughtful, humble, hardworking, warmhearted, Christlike and compassionate people I have ever met.”  I mean that.  You really are.  And it’s not just that I haven’t gotten to know you yet.  Even people who have known you for years say this about you.  Which makes it a little awkward to talk about today’s Gospel reading.  In the New Revised Standard Version (the one I use as my study Bible) it says, “If another member of the church sins against you go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.”  And that is what’s awkward: I just can’t imagine one member of this church sinning against another, can you?  I’m sure it happens in other churches, but not here!  Not at Richmond’s First Baptist Church!  So, I’m not really sure what to do with this passage.  I suppose I could go ahead and preach it and let you file it in the “interesting but irrelevant” category.  Or I could preach it and let you file it for future reference, just in case it ever happened, which may be what Jesus has in mind.  I notice that he says, “If another member of the church sins against you,” not “when.”  He may have meant this as a kind of emergency preparedness plan, like “How to get ready for a hurricane,” or “How to survive an earthquake.”  If that’s the case then let me go ahead and preach it, and let me encourage you to take good notes on “What to do if another member of the church sins against you,” because it’s possible that even in a place like this…

…it could happen.

It happens in other churches, doesn’t it?  Some of you have come from churches like that, where one member sins against another.  I’ve seen it myself.  In fact, at one of my churches I had to have a heart-to-heart talk with the congregation.  I said, “We don’t seem to trust each other very much, and I think it’s because so many of us have been hurt by people in the church, and I think that happens because we tolerate a lot of bad behavior.  We think it’s the Christian thing to do, you know?  To be tolerant and accepting, to say, ‘Well, that’s just how that person is.’  But that’s not what Jesus says.  He says if another member of he church sins against you go to that person and tell him his fault.  Do it when the two of you are alone, so he won’t be embarrassed.  Do it when he can apologize and promise to do better.  But do it.  Tell him his fault.  Otherwise you will start to avoid him, and carry a grudge against him, and lose him as a brother.”

I can speak from personal experience on that one, too.  At one of my churches a woman stopped speaking to me.  I would see her coming into church, and I would say hello, and she would turn her head.  I would see her in the hallway when it was just the two of us, and I would speak, but she wouldn’t.  I knew I must have said something or done something that hurt her, but she wouldn’t tell me what it was.  So I called her home telephone number and left voicemail: “Have I offended you in some way?”  When I didn’t hear back I sent her an e-mail message: “Have I done something to hurt you?”  And when I didn’t hear back I wrote a personal note: “Have I said something I need to apologize for?”  But she never responded, and in the end she left and joined another church.  In thinking about it later I realized that she had denied me the privilege of an apology, and I wondered how many times I have done that to other people.

If you don’t go to the one who has sinned against you and tell him his fault, if you don’t give him a chance to apologize, it is as if you are saying, “You really don’t matter that much to me.  I really don’t care if you are in my circle of friends or not.”  And I think that’s what concerned Jesus most.  He uses the word brother here.  He says if you go to the one who has sinned against you, and tell him his fault, and he listens to you, then you have won your brother back.  He uses the language of family to talk about the church and sometimes we use it, too.  We talk about being part of the “family of faith” in this place.  We welcome new members into our “church family.”  Sometimes we call each other “brother” and “sister.”  But the thing about being family is there’s nowhere to hide.  When I was a boy, and one of my brothers sinned against me, I couldn’t leave and join another family.  We had to work things out.  Sometimes it took days or even weeks, but eventually the silence between us became unbearable and somebody would say, “I’m sorry.”  Jesus is hoping that we will be even more committed to the family we were baptized into than the family we were born into, and that if a brother or sister sins against us we will go to them quickly, tell them their fault, and give them the privilege of apology.   Otherwise we stop speaking to each other, we start holding grudges, and trust disintegrates.

When I had that heart-to-heart talk with a previous congregation I told them we didn’t trust each other because so many of us had been hurt, and I said we had been hurt because we had tolerated bad behavior, and I told them it was the bad behavior that had to stop.  But how do you stop it?  By doing what Jesus says.  “If your brother sins against you,” he says, “go to him when the two of you are alone and tell him his fault.”  And that’s the hard part, isn’t it?  It is so much easier, if your brother sins against you, to go and tell someone else.  It’s not only easier; it’s more satisfying, isn’t it?  Every time someone is shocked by what that other person did you feel a little more vindicated, and you begin to imagine that if you tell enough people you will feel completely vindicated.  So you make your way through the church, saying, “You won’t believe what so-and-so did to me!”  And they don’t.  The shock shows on their faces.  And you smile and go off to tell someone else (I mean you would do that if you were that kind of people, but you’re not, so never mind).

Still, in some churches it happens.  People don’t talk to each other, they talk about each other, and instead of winning their brothers and sisters back they lose one after another.  The family falls apart.  People go off and join other churches rather than confront the one who has sinned against them.  On this children’s Sunday I’m thinking about those seven years my wife, Christy, worked as a pre-K teacher.  She probably couldn’t count all the times a child came to her and said, “Johnny hit me.”  But when they did she would say, patiently, ‘Have you talked to Johnny about that?”  And if they hadn’t she would make them go do it.  The child would say, “We need to talk,” and then the rule was that Johnny had to stop what he was doing, make eye contact, and listen.  The one who had been hit was supposed to say, “I don’t like it when you hit me,” to which Johnny might reply, “Well, I don’t like it when you color on my picture,” and then the two of them would have to talk it through.  Eventually it would come out to something like this: “I won’t color on your picture if you won’t hit me.”  And they would both agree.  And then they were supposed to apologize.  And then they were supposed to do one more thing: to shake hands or hug as a gesture of reconciliation.  Not only were they supposed to, in Ms. Somerville’s class they did: they learned to resolve conflict.

Now it seems to me that if four-year-olds can do it anybody can do it, even church members.  Making up is hard to do, but it isn’t impossible.  “If another member of the church sins against you,” Jesus says, “go to that one when the two of you are alone and tell him his fault.  If he listens to you you’ve won your brother back, but if he won’t listen then take one or two others with you ‘so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses,’ just as it says in the Book of Deuteronomy. If he won’t listen to them take it to the church, and if he won’t listen even to the church then let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”  That sounds a little harsh coming from Jesus, but in the synagogue of his day Gentiles and tax collectors weren’t welcome.  He seems to be saying that if there is someone in the church who keeps on hurting people, sinning against people, then let him be in the church what Gentiles and tax collectors were in the synagogue: unwelcome.  The family of faith is too fragile to let some unrepentant sinner run amuck, wounding everyone with his words and deeds.  Better to throw that one out.

We don’t do this much anymore in Baptist life but we used to.  We used to call people up on matters of church discipline and if they wouldn’t repent we put them out of the church.  We’ve stopped doing that.  It doesn’t seem very Christian.  But what we do instead is even less Christian: we sit back and watch while one member hurts another (not in this church, of course, but in others).  Jesus says it doesn’t have to be that way.  Back in chapter 16 he gave Peter the keys of the kingdom and told him whatever he bound on earth would be bound in heaven and whatever he loosed on earth would be loosed in heaven.  Our Catholic brothers and sisters make much of that verse, pointing to the primacy of Peter as the head of the church.  But Baptists can point to chapter 18, where Jesus introduces a congregational form of government.  “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven,” he says, meaning that if the church decides a troublemaker needs to be thrown out they have the authority to do it.  They don’t need to ask Peter; they don’t need to appeal to the Pope.  “Again, truly I tell you,” Jesus says, “if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my father in heaven.”

We often misunderstand that verse.  We think that Jesus is telling us that if we can only find someone else to agree with us then God will have to do whatever we ask.  Surely we know better than that; God doesn’t have to do anything.  No, in context this verse means that if two or three of us agree that someone is a threat to the church we can do something about it and God will honor it.  And that other verse we so often quote, the one that says “wherever two or three are gathered in my name there I am in the midst of them,” doesn’t only mean Jesus is present even when have a small crowd for prayer meeting; it means that we don’t have to appeal to the authority of any other body in our ecclesiastical decision-making.  When we make decisions in the spirit of Christ we can claim the authority of Christ, as if he were right there with us.  That sounds truly Baptist to me—risky, but Baptist.  As long as we understand the risk, and don’t rush into decisions without praying over them, without seeking the mind of Christ, we should be all right.  And again, I can’t imagine this church making a decision that would dishonor him.

Which brings me back to the beginning.  I’ve never met a group of people who were any more gentle, caring, or Christlike than the people of this church.  I don’t know why I’ve been going on and on about church conflict.  Maybe you can do what I suggested earlier, which is to file this sermon away for future reference as a sort of emergency preparedness plan, so that if it ever does happen you will be ready for it.  And maybe you can do one other thing:  in the early church, just after the sermon and before communion, people used to pass the peace of Christ to one another.  They did it “to visibly demonstrate that all who were present were one in the faith, and that no sin stood in the way of their unity.”[ii]  Sometimes they would seek out someone who had hurt their feelings in the week before, shake hands or hug, and say, “The peace of the Lord be with you.”  It was a gesture of reconciliation.  It was a way of saying to that person, “I’m not going to let a few unkind words or deeds rip the fabric of this family apart.  The church matters too much to me, and so do you.”

Before we gather at the Lord’s Table take a moment to turn to those around you, to shake hands, hug, or simply say, “The peace of Christ be with you,” to which they may reply, “and also with you.”

—Jim Somerville ©2008