September 4, 2011 | 8:00 a.m.

This Could Get Awkward . . .

Matthew J. Helms
Pastoral Resident, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 119:33–40
Romans 13:8–13
Matthew 18:15–20

I want, of course, peace, grace, and beauty.
How do you do that? You work for it. . . .
I want people to talk to one another no matter
what their difference of opinion might be.

Studs Terkel

My first thought on reading this morning’s passage from Matthew came from one of John Vest’s sermons: “Community would be great, if it weren’t for all the people.” It’s the best kind of joke because there is absolutely truth to it. God is certainly among two or three people who gather in God’s name, but so is conflict. In fact, it seems to be that the smaller the community is, the more potential there is for conflict to bubble up. I’d imagine nearly all of us have experienced conflict with our immediate family—minor squabbles, for sure, but more than likely something contentious and hurtful. Conflict pops up in the workplace, whether it’s competition for positions, gossip, fractions, etc. etc. One of the most surefire ways to get into conflict is to live with someone else. Since there is a chance my wife will catch word of this sermon if I mention her, I’ll instead refer to my roommates from my sophomore year of college. After sharing a cramped dorm room with a guy who partied nonstop my freshman year, I thought I could make it through any living situation. So I agreed to room with a few friends and one of their cousins—four guys total—in a one-bedroom apartment. In retrospect, there is absolutely no way that this could have turned out well, but since I was a broke college student, there was an appeal to paying $200 a month for rent. To those who heard the number 200 and started thinking about it, let me say definitively: it is not worth it.

Our bedroom consisted of a bunk bed and two mattresses on the floor, one closet that was shared by three people, and one small dresser for the other. Even with clean roommates, this was not destined to work. However, all three of my roommates would leave dishes, clothes, and food all over the apartment. My blood would absolutely boil every time I got home from class and work and had to tiptoe over strewn-about clothing in the living room. In short, the whole situation ranks on my top-ten worst ideas list.

So if conflict really does pop up whenever more than two or three gather, how are we supposed to deal with it when it rears its head in church, a place where the MO (modus operandi) tends more towards a simplistic understanding of “turn the other cheek” and “forgive not seven times, but seventy-seven times”? I think oftentimes we would prefer to pretend that conflict doesn’t sneak into the church; if it does, well, anyone wronging someone else should be dismissed quickly so as to diffuse it. But is this really a healthy practice, or does it allow conflict to simmer beneath the surface? Charles Campbell, professor of Homiletics at Duke Divinity School, suggests that quickly forgiving isn’t the focus of either “turn the other cheek” or forgiving seventy-seven times. Instead, Campbell argues, the number seventy-seven demonstrates the lengthy and ongoing nature of forgiveness. Anyone who has been seriously wronged knows that forgiveness is neither simple nor quick; perhaps it takes serious effort such as forgiving someone seventy-seven times in order to restore a relationship. This mindset helps us to understand both the effort and maintenance that a healthy relationship requires.

Our Matthew passage this morning also challenges simplistic dismissals of wrongs as the proper way to handle any sort of communal conflicts. Instead, the passage has Jesus offering up a series of steps in which members of the early church would have resolved inner church conflict. These are rules that are designed to encourage communal harmony. In that respect, there is a very strong connection to the other lectionary passages that we read this morning, as both Psalm 119 and Romans 13 are primarily concerned with God’s commandments and the ways in which we treat one another. Treating one another with respect and love is the absolute basis of all our relationships as members of any community, and the church is no different. Paul stresses this when he says that love is the fulfilling of the law. When Jesus is asked about which is the greatest of the commandments, he responds by saying “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself.” And so it is with this understanding that all people should implicitly be guaranteed love and respect that we begin with this Matthew passage—and it is with this understanding that we can assess the ways in which we have either wronged or been wronged by others.

For most of us, identifying where we have been wronged by others is fairly easy. We intuitively know when someone has wronged us as people, and we take offense and issue with it. Identifying where we have been the ones who have wronged others is certainly tougher, since often those wrongs are unintentional, but we still have a fairly good idea about things we would do differently if we could revisit a situation.

Yet even though identifying wrongs is easy, resolving them is not. In fact, the difficult and hard work involved in resolving conflicts may be the reason that people use quick forgiveness as means of avoiding dealing with the conflict all together. As someone who has a very hard time with conflict, I can attest that it is incredibly difficult to breach the conversation about how someone’s behavior wronged you. Rather than express to my sophomore year roommates how they all needed to pick up after themselves and do some chores, I instead spent more time outside the apartment over at other friends’ places and avoided talking to my roommates altogether. I was passive-aggressive by picking up their clothes and putting them on their beds in the hopes that they’d get the hint that they needed to pick up after themselves. It should come as no surprise that things, in fact, did not change. It only served to make me more upset because things didn’t change, and probably made them more upset too because I didn’t say anything.

The first step that Jesus offers to resolving conflicts is to begin the conversation one-on-one. However, this is done not in an accusatory way but rather in a manner that respects and affirms the validity of each person’s position. As Dale Andrews, the professor of homiletics at Boston University’s School of Theology, puts it, this passage “redefines the goals of confrontation in seeking to offer care and forgive in a spirit of humility.” So under this model of resolving conflict, if we are feeling wronged, we are responsible for bringing that concern to the person who wronged us. There certainly can be dynamics in play that make this more difficult than simply speaking your mind—for example, you aren’t going to tell your boss about the ways in which he or she has wronged you—but oftentimes we make excuses to ourselves about why we can’t speak directly to someone about conflict. Unfortunately, this indirect approach often leads to things like gossip and complaining to those who may not even be connected to the situation, as well as passive-aggressive approaches like the one I just shared about moving my roommates’ clothes onto their beds. In the end, complaining to others and passive-aggressiveness ultimately amplify the conflict, since we never have to hear a position other than our own. Rather than acting in a manner that says that all people implicitly deserve love and respect, we privilege our own views and claim the moral high ground for ourselves.

So how do we limit our complaining and griping? For some people, it is just natural, and they have grown up in families or in situations that routinely go through conflict and are comfortable bringing up wrongs. For others, it takes very conscious decisions to avoid complaining about another and instead being willing to go beyond their comfort level and have that one-to-one talk that Jesus advocates for in this Matthew passage. But calling the meeting is just one step of the resolution process. The other is actually taking the time to listen to the other person. It is notable that in this short passage, the word listen is used four times in the first three verses. Listening is at the heart of repairing the relationship, in that listening to someone else speak takes us outside of our own assumptions about how that person will respond. Have you ever dreaded having a conversation with someone because you thought they would react and act one way, only to discover that they did quite the opposite? By casting aside our assumptions, we can fulfill Paul’s exhortation to the Romans to love one another by just listening.

Perhaps this approach was best represented by the Chicago journalist Samuel “Studs” Terkel, who passed away in 2008. Terkel was famous for his focus on oral history, winning a Pulitzer Prize for his compilation of WWII veterans speaking about the war. For Terkel, there was an inherent dignity and importance to being a listening ear to someone describing their experiences and their side of the story. In his mind, the key to solving conflicts was for everyone to stop spending so much time assuming that they were right and to instead begin listening to one another. His words on our bulletin cover—“I want, of course, peace, grace, and beauty. How do you do that? You work for it. . . . I want people to talk to one another no matter what their difference of opinion might be”—are a powerful hope to a world that too often becomes simplistically dichotomized. From political divides to religious divides to personal divides, we must not allow ourselves to get too wrapped up in our own narratives that we fail to listen to the narratives of others.

Our Matthew passage ends with a clear support of group thinking over that of individuals. The famous end passage—“For where two or three of you are gathered in my name, I am there among them”—has been cited countless times at small Bible studies and church gatherings, but its connection to the previous part of the passage is that through listening we are taken out of our views so that we don’t confuse our own views with those of God. This idea is the root of our Presbyterian denomination: we have ruling elders and teaching/preaching elders in order to ensure that no one person can claim to understand God’s will. That is only done through careful group discernment.

Listening and working with different perspectives isn’t easy, but it is vital when we think about conflict resolution within the church as well as in other areas of our lives. It will take each of us being willing not just to acknowledge that we’ve been wronged, but to approach the one who wronged us and speak directly to them. Honestly? This could get awkward. In a culture that has emphasized individuality and uniqueness like few others in history, you may have conversations where the one you are speaking to becomes defensive and you make little progress. Perhaps this is why Jesus tells us to forgive not seven times, but seventy-seven. Being in right relationships with communities is hard work and oftentimes it may not seem worth it to participate in that relationship-building. But then we remember God’s presence wherever two or three are gathered, and we realize that it is within those communities that we see God most clearly. It is within the sacraments—baptism, where we join a church family, and communion, where we gather for a family meal—that God’s presence is most clearly made known to us. It may be easier to leave conflicts behind, but that is not what we are called to do. We are called to love and listen to our neighbors, and we are called to expect love and a listening ear in return. Amen.