Lent 1A
2017 – Conflict at St. John’s and Matthew 18
Genesis
2-3; Psalm 32; Matthew 4:1-11
Rev.
Adam T. Trambley
March 5,
2017, St. John’s Sharon
This morning is the first Sunday of Lent. Lent is a time to refocus on the things that
matter. Sometimes giving something up is
helpful to us in refocusing our attention on what is important. Sometimes taking on a good habit or
discipline is helpful. Additionally,
Lent can be a good time to take a look at places where our responses and
actions are not congruent with the kind of love we want to show, and change how
we react in those situations. During
this Lent, what I plan to talk about in our sermons are aspects of some of
those areas in our parish life.
Specifically, we are going to look at how we can do a better job of
loving one another when difficulties or conflicts arise.
I want to look at loving relationships in the
midst of conflict because this issue arose as a primary factor inhibiting St.
John’s health and growth in the Natural Church Development survey that we took
last year. The NCD team or I can give
you more details if you are interested, but after surveying core members,
looking at the results ourselves, and doing a focus group, we realized that as
a church we need to do a better job of handling conflict. That we need to handle conflict better
shouldn’t be a surprise given both our parish history and the surrounding
culture.
Saying that we need to handle conflict in a
healthier way doesn’t mean that everything will always be perfect for
everyone. Sometimes it won’t. Sometimes people will still find they need to
be somewhere else because St. John’s and its life and mission aren’t the right
fit for them, and that’s OK. But the
deeper our relationships are with one another and the more we are able to
handle disagreements with love and concern, the more we will be able to be like
Christ for others. We will also be better
able to help each other when other aspects of life become overwhelming, since
often church conflicts, like other conflicts, ignite when people are under
significant stress. We also hope to be able
to listen more to each other, and do the hard work to forgive one another and
to ask one another for forgiveness. We will never be perfect, and we will never
be all things to all people, but we can hopefully deepen our love of one
another such that we can hold onto our relationships more tightly while also
putting less strain on them in the way we handle disagreements.
In terms of our parish history, we have some
interesting experiences regarding conflict.
The first clergyman to serve here, William Stone Hayward, had his tenure
end after only seven months. Our records
read that, “’On account of the disunity among those who considered themselves
to be of the household of faith, and of the vile and malicious slanders upon
his character,’ Mr. Hayward ‘offered a letter to bring the vestry to a better
state of mind which, being slighted,” he resigned. So, we see things don’t quite get off on quite
the right foot.
A few years later, in 1886, the longest serving
rector to date, Reverend Wood, had been here about twelve years. He had a disagreement with the choir over
what canticle they would sing at the service on Easter evening. When he heard the choir practicing the one he
did not want right before the service, he walked into the church and announced
that he didn’t feel well and that the service was canceled. Over the next few months, a quarter of the
church refused to speak to him and refused to contribute, so in response he
wrote an eighteen-page pamphlet explaining why parishioners ought to listen to
the rector. Surprisingly, no one seemed
to be convinced and he left later that year.
In more recent years, we know many left the
parish in the aftermath of Gene Robinson’s ordination in 2003. I also had an experience of dealing with a
significant conflict even before I was installed as rector seven years
ago. At that time, there was a
significant split in the parish about who should be teaching confirmation class
and how it should be structured. People
on both sides were threatening to keep their children out of confirmation class
if things didn’t happen the way they thought was best. The grace, however, was
that in the midst of that conflict, which had well-meaning people with a real
love for the parish’s young people on both sides, people were willing and able
to have some hard conversations and do some difficult things. In the end, we came up with a way that
everyone could move forward. It wasn’t
easy or fun, but it was right, and I think that working through the conflict
helped the church as a whole grow stronger at that point.
Part of what these events tell us is that conflict
is not bad, in and of itself. Conflict
is part of life, and necessary for growth and development. When there are no disagreements, usually
nobody cares what is happening. What
makes a huge difference, however, is how we deal with conflict. Dealing with our disagreements well allows us
to grow stronger and to knit ourselves together in new ways. Dealing with disputes badly can pull us apart
and leave wounds and resentments.
As a church, we need to focus on dealing well
with conflict not only so that St. John’s can thrive, but also so that our
wider community can thrive. We live in a
time and place that is not dealing well with differences. The past few year or so of our national
discourse have for the most part been a primer in how to deal with disagreements
in the worst ways possible, complete with blaming, shaming, assigning motives
to others, name calling, and dealing with the speck in the neighbor’s eye
instead of the log in our own. We also
live in a community that has been largely dominated by a mill culture that was
not particularly interested in resolving conflict in a holistic way. The people in charge told the working folks
what to do and they did it, at least until something got bad enough that it
caused a strike or other labor issues.
When we have work cultures that don’t promote loving conflict resolution
and we live in an increasingly polarized environment, we as church have a duty
to learn how to deal with conflict in a healthy way and then practice those
skills in our other networks.
Over the next few weeks, we will look at
conflict and relationships stresses from a few different perspectives. To start with this week, I want to look at
the basic instructions given in Matthew chapter 18 for dealing with situations
when someone in the church hurts another person. Matthew 18:15-17 says:
15 “If another member
of the church sins against you, go and point out
the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have
regained that one. 16 But if you are not
listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be
confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If the member
refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses
to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax
collector.
Not all conflicts are the result of someone
sinning against you, but the basic principles given here apply in other
circumstances. We should also keep in
mind that just because we think that someone has sinned against us, they may
not have. We’ll look more at those
situations in future weeks, but we should always be listening to each other and
seeking forgiveness for what we may have contributed to a situation.
Four steps are listed in Matthew 18 to resolve
conflict. 1. Talk to the person directly
and privately. 2. If talking to someone
directly doesn’t work, take one or two people with you to help facilitate a
conversation. 3. If that doesn’t work, take it to the church, which in our case
probably means either the priest or the vestry.
Then finally, 4. If there is still no resolution, treat them like a
Gentile or a tax collector.
The first step is talking to the person
involved directly and privately. This
step is key, and almost every situation can be resolved by simply doing
this. In general, people in the church
don’t want to hurt each other. Most
issues are based on misunderstandings or miscommunication or unmet expectations
or some other simple issue. For most of
us, when we find out we hurt someone, we apologize and try to make sure it
doesn’t happen again. In the rare
instances that doesn’t happen, usually when we hear their side, we understand
why they did what they did and can be OK ourselves. The goal here is reconciliation and
forgiveness, and those can only happen if we engage each other directly.
When we don’t take this step, things can get
difficult. Notice that Jesus doesn’t say
to talk to all your friends first, or to get a bunch of people on your side, or
even to pretend that nothing happened until you get REALLY upset and
explode. Until we talk to people
directly, whatever else we do might just cause more damage we need to undo
later.
Also, going to the person who sinned against us
is necessary for them. If they are doing something wrong and we don’t let them
know, they don’t have an opportunity to repent and change. They may also not even know they are doing
something wrong. Unless we have the
conversation, we can’t expect things to get better.
The second instruction in Matthew 18 is that if
that direct conversation goes badly, or if there are reasons why I can’t manage
a direct conversation one-on-one myself, I can ask one or two others to come
with me to have a conversation. The idea
here is not to pick the seconds you want should things come to a duel, but to
take wise people who can help you resolve the issues. I can be that person, or members of the
vestry, or others. Hopefully, bringing
in a neutral party will help both sides hear what they need to hear allow them
to move forward.
If that conversation with an arbiter doesn’t
work, then Jesus says to take it to the church.
In our polity, that would probably mean talking to me to look at the
situation or to the Senior Warden to have vestry take up the issue, if that seems
the appropriate place to handle it. The
goal here, again, is to resolve the issue and make sure no one is continuing to
harm anyone else. This step is a
significant one and involves the hard work of honesty and accountability to
each other as a church. Jesus says nothing
here about anonymous complaints or passing along things that “people are
saying.” Another assumption is that both
sides will heed the decisions of the church.
If for some reason they don’t
listen to the church, then Jesus says to treat them like a tax collector or a
Gentile. Treating someone in those ways
means that we love them and we pray for them, but we don’t give them
responsibility or put them in situations where they can continue to do damage
to others in the church. They can always
repent and return. But when they do,
they have to realize that they have caused harm to people, and that they are
going to have to take responsibility for that harm before they can become a
full and trusted member of the community again.
Of course, almost no conflicts should get to
levels 3 or 4 if we consistently do the work of living into levels 1 and
2. Most conflicts in the parish and in
other parts of our life could actually be dealt with if we were willing to pray
for those we feel at the moment are our enemies in a situation, trust that
people are doing their best and really don’t want to hurt us, and then talk to
people directly about how we feel and how we are experiencing their actions and
where we have been hurt. This parish is
made up of great people who really do love each other. We are capable of dealing with conflict in
ways that make us stronger and increase our love for each other. Let’s focus on trusting that love and talking
directly to each other whenever disagreements arise. In the coming weeks, we’ll look at some other
skills for dealing with conflict, as well.
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