Sermon - September 10, 2023 - The Rev. Jack Alvey

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts

be acceptable in your sight,

O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.

Amen.

One of the greatest myths about churches is that we are a community of people who are free from conflict.

The Mount Myth sounds something like,

We've accepted Jesus as our Savior, we have peace in our hearts, we can sin no more,

and we are perfect no matter what they say.

Obviously any of you who have served on any kind of church committee knows that this is far from the truth.

Conflict is alive and well in the church as it is everywhere else.

But a sign of a faithful church isn't the one who pedals the illusion of perfection.

Rather, the sign of a faithful church is a church who admits that it is not perfect.

The sign of a faithful church is the one who confesses, repents, and strives to live in love and charity with our neighbors.

And that's partly what we're doing when we say the general confession here in just a few minutes.

We're not only confessing our individual sins,

but we're confessing that we as a church, as a people who are supposed to proclaim the truth of God, sometimes fall short of that.

So while churches are not immune to conflict,

churches do have the tools to manage conflict and life-giving in even healthy ways.

Primarily we have Jesus. We have Jesus as our teacher and our Savior.

And most of the time, Jesus is pretty vague on how to live a faithful life.

He gives parables, he talks in code, it seems.

But today he's pretty clear on how we are to handle conflict.

In a nutshell, Jesus offers a very relational, grace-filled way of dealing with conflict with our brother or sister.

Before publicly shaming someone for their sin, before casting them into the outer darkness,

he says, go to the source of the problem. Talk with the person directly. Have a conversation.

What a novel idea, right?

Conflict resolution is so much easier when we can handle it one-on-one.

But when the conflict level is relatively low, it's so much easier that way, isn't it?

But we humans don't like easy. We like complicated.

We are prone to deal with conflict in ways that make the problem even worse.

One biblical commentator lays out five ways that we tend to deal with conflict.

First of all, we are tempted to avoid it altogether.

In reality, we're just postponing it. You can't avoid the problem. It's going to catch up sooner or later.

Secondly, we are tempted to gossip. We are tempted to talk about it with everyone else, except the one we need to be talking about it with.

Third, we are tempted to gang up on the other, to bully the other, basically.

Fourth, we're tempted to air out our concerns and our issues in echo chambers with like-minded people,

with people who won't tell us an alternative perspective.

Finally, we regard our opponents as the enemy and we'll do whatever we can to squash them like a boat.

In theory, churches should be communities that help inform and inspire how we deal with conflict,

inform and model how we deal with conflict in our homes, in our communities, in our workplaces, in our politics.

But as I said earlier, sometimes we fall short of that.

I think one of the reasons we fall short of that is because we think we have to be perfect.

And so we will do everything we can to create that illusion of perfection.

But as we tell our children, the lie is always worse than the action.

The cover-up is always worse than the actual sin.

Again, churches aren't supposed to show us how to avoid conflict.

That's just another part of the problem. Rather, the church is supposed to model conflict

in a way that gives witness to the hope of the gospel.

Dealing with conflict is actually evangelism.

It's actually a way to show that our hope is firmly rooted in God's desire to reconcile us to God and each other

to proclaim the good news through conflict resolution.

I know that sounds really exciting.

There's the two lessons that are book-ended today's lesson, the parable of the lost sheep,

leave the 99 to find the one, and then the unforgiving servant, the forgive 77 times 7 times.

So those two lessons bracket today's lesson.

So keeping that in mind, God's reconciliation project, God's conflict resolution project

includes a heavy dose of grace and mercy.

With the cross of Christ being the ultimate boast of God's mercy.

To show us how far God will go to reconcile us to each other.

And to see in today's lesson, God's reconciliation project is full of grace and mercy.

God's mercy and grace makes plenty of room, ample room, for the transgressor to confess,

repent, and return to seek amendment of life.

For starters, if it's something serious enough to bother you for any length of time,

go directly to the source.

Don't let it fester until you blow up in an inopportune time.

No one wins in that situation.

Secondly, before posting on social media how terrible so-and-so is,

approach the person who offended you first.

It might have been a simple miscommunication or misunderstanding.

Don't escalate the conflict if you don't have to.

You can't take back, right?

You can't take back what you put on the internet.

While the Scripture says we should do this first step alone, one-on-one,

I do advise there are some situations that's probably not a good idea,

especially if abuse might be involved.

Take someone else with you.

If the person still doesn't listen, take two or three people as witnesses

to help moderate the discussion.

Don't take 10 or 15 to intimidate or bully.

That's just going to make the offender more defensive and create more problems.

Jesus also advises going against going to your physical or virtual echo chambers,

our social and traditional media outlets,

instead bringing the issue before a group of diverse people

who can help you talk through the problem with as little bias as possible.

Now, finally, it sounds like Jesus says after all this,

excommunicate the person.

Well, it's not that easy, right?

There are situations where someone should be removed from the community

for practical reasons, for their own sake, for the community's sake.

But Jesus doesn't completely shut the door.

He says those who don't listen should be treated like Gentiles and tax collectors.

At first blush, that sounds kind of mean.

But what, as we know, Gentiles and tax collectors are not outside of God's saving embrace.

As the story of Jesus unfolds all the way to the cross and beyond,

we see that the outsiders are actually included

and the leaders of Jesus' ministry in his community.

German, I can't preach on this passage without quoting Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

He wrote in his book, Life Together,

Nothing is more cruel than the leniency which abandons another to their sin.

Nothing can be more compassionate than the reprimand

which calls another back to the community, back from their sin.

In other words, we all need to be held accountable for our actions.

We all need to be held accountable in ways that also make space for growth and new life.

That's how we grow is through our mistakes.

Our mistakes can be our greatest teachers if we allow them to, if we let grace inform us.

Today's gospel lesson articulates both not only the need to understand the consequences,

but also to have mercy as an avenue for a new start.

Now, I know I don't have to tell you that we live in a polarized world, this amplified by media.

If we want to, we can spend most of our time in our little echo chambers

being affirmed again and again with what we already believe.

There are infinite ways to surround ourselves by people who think and act just like we do.

And as long as we stay in those chambers, we're never wrong. We're always right.

But that's just one way that we as humans self-justify,

that we justify our own actions and thoughts and behaviors.

But the gospel tells us there's only one who can justify us or make us right with each other and God.

There's only one who holds the truth that will set us free to live in peace and charity with the other.

There's only one who can reconcile us to God and each other, and that one is Jesus Christ,

the one whose property is always to have mercy.

At the end of the day, the church is called to be faithful to Jesus Christ and the truth he proclaims.

A truth that is ultimately about reconciling the world to God and each other.

As Jesus himself says elsewhere, being faithful to the gospel might actually cause conflict.

The conflict usually arises when we extend grace and mercy to the other.

The good news, however, is that faithfully engaging with conflict, as I said earlier,

is actually a form of evangelization.

When we use Jesus as our moderator and guide, our churches will grow.

Our individual faith will grow.

We will be able to reflect the truth that the world is desperate to hear and see.

A truth that says God can reconcile even the most broken of relationships.

So I hope and pray that our churches and her people don't get pulled down into the outer darkness

where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth.

I hope and pray that our churches and people don't get lulled into thinking

that completely avoiding these conversations that matter is the way to go either.

We don't need any more echo chambers.

The church doesn't need to be an echo chamber.

We need more communities who are brave enough to address important issues

in constructive ways for the welfare of the community,

especially those keeping mindful of those without a voice.

That there is any community that is primed to model constructive dialogue.

It's the church community.

Even more, we as Episcopalians have been uniquely formed to be able to do this,

to have these conversations because we are born from the Church of England.

And the Church of England was sought comprehension for the sake of truth.

They were reconciling the Catholics and Protestants.

Now I feel myself going on a church history tangent.

So I'll stop.

Y'all have been victim to too many of those.

I'll stop and say this.

The good news of Jesus and his kingdom is that ours is a God who does in fact

want us to live in peace and charity with our neighbors.

And sometimes that conflict is a result of that.

On our best days, we do reflect that truth,

a truth that will be established in the fullness of time for Jesus Christ.

But in the meantime, God and Christ is making room,

ample space through His grace and mercy for His people and His church

to live in peace and charity with all.

And when we do manage to reflect that gospel truth,

we inspire hope in a world that seems destined to fall in on itself.

Now if fighting to proclaim that truth,

that truth of a reconciled world through Jesus Christ isn't worth it,

then I don't know what is.

Thanks be to God that ours is a Savior and a Lord who will never stop fighting for us.

Never stop fighting for all of us to make sure that each and every one of us

have a place in His Father's kingdom.

Amen.

Now we proclaim our faith with the words of the Nicene Creed,

I believe in one God, the Father.