Sermon at The Church of
the Holy Apostles, New York City
September 7, 2008, The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A
The Reverend Elizabeth G. Maxwell
Exodus 12:1-14
Psalm 149
Romans 13:8-14
Matthew 14:13-21
In the name of God, in whom we live and
move and have our being, Amen.
One of the pleasures of the Holy Apostles
street fair, which, as you may recall, is held every August,
is discovering how one person=s
discarded trash is another person=s
treasure. And I=m
sure it says something about the nature of this congregation
that one of those trash/ treasures that is the most abundant
is always books.
About half way through this year=s
street fair, Shirley Swardenski unearthed from some box of
books a slim volume entitled Surviving Difficult Church
Members. All of us who were there laughed immediately
just as you did because we could imagine- not on the basis of
this church, of course, but perhaps some other church that we
are familiar with- just who those difficult parishioners might
be.
Actually, as Shirley read the types of
difficult parishioners detailed on the back of the book, many
of us said AYep,
that sounds like me,@
or AYep,
that one too!@
I understand she=s
thinking of leading a workshop on this subject and I=m
really looking forward to it.
I don=t
know if this morning=s
gospel reading is included in the book as part of the
suggestions for how to deal with difficult parishioners, but
it might well be. Its very important theme, which is shared
with Paul=s
letter to the Romans, and even to a certain extent with the
reading from Exodus this morning, is the theme of how we live
together in community. And it acknowledges the reality of
conflict and hurt and anger, of offending and being offended
in the Christian church, just like in any other gathering of
human beings
B and with that reality, the opportunity given to learn
how to be more fully human and more truly followers of Jesus.
This passage from Matthew has both a lot
of wisdom and some real dangers in it; it=s
easy to imagine how it could be abused. When we talked about
it at bible study, those present were able to name experiences
in which this passage was viewed as a rigid set of rules in
which the tyranny of one particular point of view of what sin
is took hold and was used to browbeat people and even
ostracize them. It certainly gives those looking for it a way
to exclude out gay people, or uppity women, or people with the
wrong theology or politics, or just the habit of being
outspoken and difficult.But, we also need ways in this community,
as in any community, to make concrete Paul=s
wonderful counsel in Romans:
AOwe
no one anything except to love one another.@
How do we love well when our relationships are damaged? How
do we restore what is broken? How do we live together, given
all our flaws, our infinitely varied capacities to be
difficult? How do we do that with integrity and good will and
responsibility and genuine care for each other?
This text suggests some ways forward.
I would first note that our translation,
from the New Revised Standard, no doubt made in the service of
inclusive language, says,
AIf
another member of the church sins against you.@
This is accurate, but the original reads,
AIf
you brother,@
(and we might say
Aor
sister@)
sins against you, and the distinction is important in that the
language of Abrother@
and Asister@
takes us so much deeper into an awareness of real
relationship. And this text only works when you have a stake
in a real relationship.
AWhen
that brother or sister sins against you,@
says the passage,
Ago to
him or her.@
The first thing that I notice is that the
responsibility for making things right lies with the one who
feels injured. This is in some ways counterintuitive. It
doesn=t
seem just or fair, but the reality is that if you wait for the
other to come to you seeking forgiveness, you may wait a very
long time because she or he may be completely clueless.
Meanwhile, in the immortal words of Anne LaMott,
Arefusing
to forgive someone is like drinking rat poison and waiting for
the rat to die.@
It does you a lot more harm that the person you are refusing
to forgive!
But, I think this really is the simplest
and potentially most difficult step
B
going directly to someone who has hurt or offended you; not
going to everyone else, not talking endlessly about how
terrible that person is. It actually reminds me of one Lent
when I decided to give up gossip; it was both a fruitful and a
difficult season. Surely this encounter with the one who has
hurt you is meant to be about listening as well as talking.
It is meant to be about seeking reconciliation, trying to
understand what happened, trying to get to a deeper place of
communion. If it works, says Matthew, you have gained your
brother or sister.
But, if the one-on-one attempt fails, the
gospel goes on, take one or two others with you. This is of
course partly related to the legal system of Jewish law,
having one or two witnesses to see what has been done. But I
would imagine that in this process of seeking reconciliation,
the idea is to hear all sides, to make sure that your own bias doesn=t
get in the way of being able to communicate with someone.
Have I misunderstood? Am I overreacting? Is there something
in my behavior that contributed to this situation?
If that doesn=t
work, says Matthew, tell it to the church. Now this stepYthis
step assumes a huge trust, a huge amount of goodwill, and
assumes that the church really is meeting, as the passage says
later, Ain
the name of Jesus.@
That is, not just citing the name, but in the presence of
Jesus, the spirit of Jesus, seeking the mind and heart of
Jesus. I think the text is absolutely right that in that
setting, there is the possibility of amazing, even miraculous
outcomes. There are, of course, other possibilities. The
majority is not always right, and the church is not always in
that blessed space of Christ- likeness and Christ- openness.
I can imagine
Atelling it to the church@
leading to a horrific inquisition, to the persecution of a
lone dissenter. All of us can imagine those things.
But it is also possible to hope for a
community that has real maturity, that can help its members
work things through, that recognizes that somehow the whole
body has greater wisdom and richer resources than any one or
even five members do individually. It is possible to strive
for a deeper capacity to listen and ask questions together, a
deeper capacity to discern in community. Surely we can
imagine and try to live into life as a church in which there
is really deep love among brothers and sisters and a true
willingness to seek reconciliation, to care for one another in
this way.
AIf
the offender will not listen to the church, let that one be to
you as a Gentile and a tax collector.@
This word seems really harsh to me, but I
must acknowledge also that at a certain point it brings
relief; it=s
a way to have closure, a way to move on and avoid being held
hostage when reconciliation seems unable to happen.
Sometimes we need that. We need to stop
banging our heads against a door that is closed, and yetYand
yet, there is another opening beyond our closure. A little
whimsically we might ask ourselves how is it, really, that
Jesus treated tax collectors. Well, he spent so much time
hanging out with them and eating and drinking that he was
always being accused of being a friend of sinners. And there
is some irony that this passage about discipline in the church
is found only in the gospel of Matthew, who, tradition would
tell us, was a tax collector
B one
that Jesus called to leave his money bags and his ostracized
and despicable profession in order to follow Jesus. And the
very next verses after our passage have Peter asking Jesus,
AHow
many times do I have to forgive someone who sins against me?
As many as seven?@
ANo,@
says Jesus, Aseventy
times seven.@
We=re
hearing different voices in these texts, voices that reflect
both the struggles and needs of Matthew=s community and the radical teaching of
Jesus. We=re
also hearing the tension that exists in any community as it
seeks ways to make love concrete with integrity, in the midst
of all the messiness of human relationships and human
frailties. We=re
hearing the tension between the need for discipline and
boundaries, for ways of resolving conflict and moving forward,
ways of dealing with intransigence and the refusal to
engage, while all around and underneath and beyond our human
struggles the boundless love of God embraces us and calls us
to forgive as God has forgiven us. I don=t
know that there is a single rule; there are only themes and
struggles and the vision of a community that is mature.
In my musing about this text I did come across a story from
the sayings of the Desert Fathers which is recorded on a
wonderful website called The Painted Prayer Book. A
brother at the Abbey of Scetis committed a fault. A council
was called to confront him with his fault to which Abba Moses
was invited, but Abba Moses refused to go. Abba Moses was now
a saintly old man, but in his youth he had been a robber.
Someone was sent to him to say to him,
ACome
on, everyone=s
waiting for you.@
So he got up and went, and he took with him a leaking jug,
filled it with water, and carried it along behind him. The
others came out to meet him and said,
AWhat
are you doing, Abba Moses?@ and the old man said to them,
ALook,
my sins are running out behind me. I do not see them and I am
called to judge the errors of another.@
When they had heard that he had said this, they forgave the
brother who had sinned.
Our passage goes on with the remarkable words:
AWhatever you bind on Earth will be
bound in Heaven, and whatever you loose on Earth will be
loosed in Heaven.@
What can this possibly mean? What I don=t
think it means is,
AIf
I won=t
forgive you, God won=t
either.@
It also is a reference to a rabbinic tradition about the power
of ongoing interpretation and the authority of the rabbis to
keep on developing the tradition. But on a simple human
level, we might start with noticing the seriousness of the
impact we have on each other
B
how difficult it is to really get free, unbound, if someone
won=t
let you off the hook, won=t forgiveYhow
amazingly liberating it is to find that someone truly forgives
you from their heart.
I notice that it=s
not just Peter, but all of us who have this authority one with
another. We need each other=s
wisdom and experience as we=re challenged to take up our
responsibility for being the church, our responsibility for
praying and incarnating Christ in our very midst.
The other readings for today broaden the context of our
reflection on community. In Romans, Paul says
AWake
up, the night is far gone and the day is near,@
and in Exodus we hear,
AEat
the meal of liberation with your sandals on your feet and your
staff in your hand. Be ready to move out of slavery, however
comfortable and familiar it may be.@
In this challenge to be a community that seeks reconciliation
is also the challenge to minister to a world sorely in need of
this same integrity, and justice-seeking forgiveness, and
peace and healing.
These passages point us to a vital theme in this time of
asking who we are and who we are called to be as the Church of
the Holy Apostles. How will we take responsibility, each and
all of us, for the ways that we can be difficult, for our
conflicts and disagreements, for our capacities to wound and
our experiences off being wounded? How will we take the
responsibility for keeping the relationships in our community
healthy?
And equally, this a vital theme for this larger time on
our planet, when we so desperately need to build the capacity
for honest and loving confrontation and genuine reconciliation
in confronting the multiple crisis in the world around us.
As we think of the relationships that we live in at Holy
Apostles and beyond, both the grace-filled ones and the
difficult ones- which are sometimes the same ones- I would
like to close with a poem which I also discovered thanks to
the Painted Prayer Book; it is
AFor What Binds Us,@
and it is written by Jane Hirshfield. She says:
There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they=ve
been set down-
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.
And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There=s
a name for it on horses,
when it comes back, darker and raised: proud flesh,
as all flesh,
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest-
And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.
What are the ties that hold us together, the cords that we
create, both from wounds and from love? What are the bonds that
only we can loose? What kind of people, what kind of community
are we, and will we be?
Amen.
