By the Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Ph.D. '13
Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church
Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in the Faculty of Divinity
(The following is a transcript of the service audio, Sept. 10, 2023)
In the name of God, our one, holy and undivided Trinity. Amen. Our gospel lesson this morning from the Gospel of Matthew is about resolving disputes, about conflict management. And as a father of three children, I know something about resolving disputes and conflict management. What I know mostly is that I know very little about conflict management and resolving disputes. I thought I knew something once when the kids were a little bit smaller. What would usually happen is people would be fighting and yelling and then I'd start fighting and yelling with them and we just had more people fighting and yelling. And so I tried something new one time, which is... I can't even... The first time I did it, I think the disputants were Cammy and Sammy, but I invited them to hug it out. I pulled them in for a hug and I made them hug each other and it worked. They started laughing and I started laughing and we were able to get past that initial barrier to resolution, and it worked out.
And I thought to myself, and I remember telling Colette, "I have it. I have the answer. No more funding in the house. It's all solved." And it worked a few times, but I think it started to fall apart. There was one time when I pulled everybody in and one of the kids accidentally stepped upon another kid's toe, accidentally maybe. We're not really sure what the... Right. And then the tinderbox was set a light and we gave up on hugging it out. Jesus gives us some answers today, or at least seems to, that teaching today is refreshingly practical. "Here are the steps," Jesus says, "Here is how you do it when there has been a wrong and a conflict needs to be managed." And this is unlike a lot of Jesus's other teachings, maybe especially in this Gospel of Matthew when Jesus teaches very idealistic and vague things like love your enemy, pray for those who persecute you, be perfect as God is perfect. Those commandments, so idealistic and impossible, they're easy to massage.
There are no direct instructions, and so we can make up our own and ignore those teachings. But here, Jesus is very clear and direct. "If someone wrongs you, go to that person. If that doesn't work, get one or two others and go to them again. If that doesn't work, get the whole church, go to them again. And if that doesn't work, let that one be to you as a gentile or a tax collector." Three strikes and you're out. This is the strategy, this is the plan. This is our manual for conflict management. And so it sounds like practical advice, but is it good practical advice? I mean, there are more sides to every story, right? That person who is approached first by one and then by three and then by the whole church, I have a feeling that person's going to feel ganged up on pretty quickly.
And I'm not sure how quickly that's going to resolve any conflict. And I was just doing the math yesterday, this fall, I will have been a priest for 15 years. And I imagine if you show up with the whole church to somebody, there's a pretty good chance a lot of people in the church are going to take the other side. And in fact, probably two or three more sides will emerge and you'll have more conflict than you started with. I don't think this is a conflict resolution manual. In fact, I think Jesus is doing what He so often does. He's not giving you step-by-step instructions that are meant to apply in every situation. Jesus here is articulating basic values, basic principles of what it means to love your neighbor, what it means to love your enemy. So there are some clues in this teaching as to why I think this isn't a conflict resolution manual apart from the practical problems. First, Jesus says, "Three strikes and you're out. Let that one be to you as a gentile or a tax collector." How does Jesus treat gentiles and tax collectors?
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In this Gospel of Matthew, only three chapters before this, Jesus goes into gentile territory and a Canaanite woman comes to Him and asks her to heal her daughter. And Jesus heals her daughter and marvels at her faith. And again, this is the Gospel of Matthew and who was Matthew, but the tax collector whom Jesus called and among whose tax collecting friends, Jesus ate and drank and spent time? So if we're to treat this one as a gentile or a tax collector, we have to infer that what Jesus means is you have to keep going. Keep trying, because that's how Jesus treats gentiles and tax collectors. So another clue that there might be something else going on here is the way in which Jesus concludes this passage when Jesus says, "Whenever two or three are gathered, I will be there in the midst of them." One of my former colleagues and teachers at the Divinity School, Mark Jordan, he said, "That was actually the upper ceiling. Two or three is the limit. Once you get beyond that, then you have problems."
And often we abstract that line. When I go visit someone in the hospital, when I pray, I often say this, "Wherever two are gathered, Jesus is with them." And I like that I can take that line out of this context, but let's keep it in this context. Jesus says it in this passage. That means what Jesus is saying is that when you go to the other who has wronged you, there are two gathered and I am with you. Jesus is there in that first encounter, in the next encounter, and Jesus is there because Jesus loves the one who has wronged you. Now, to be clear, I don't think this means therefore that the person who has been wronged must be silenced. On the contrary, Jesus says again and again, "They must listen to you. If you've been wronged, you deserve to be heard and they must hear you." But to gather even with enemies, even with those who have wronged us, is to recognize the presence of Christ, in and with us and in and with them. So again, it's getting more abstract and idealistic. The third clue we have in this passage is listen to what Jesus says, "When you go to this other who has wronged you, what they're expected to do," it says, "if they listen to you, if they listen to you, you have regained that one."
The word regained here is the Greek word for gain. "kerdainō," It means gain, but there's also a secondary meaning, which can mean to avoid loss. What happens if we rethink this line or retranslate this line? If that one listens to you, you have avoided losing them. It changes the idea of an already complete community, which could get another one added back on to a community which has become incomplete and does not want to lose, does not want to lose the other, and so we have to bring the other back in. And this is made more stark by the passage before this passage. Jesus has in fact just told the parable of the lost sheep, the parable that He has just told them before He gives this very practical teaching. He says, "Imagine there are a hundred sheep and one wanders off. What does the good shepherd do? The good shepherd goes and gets that one because the good shepherd will not lose that one."
And then Jesus goes into this teaching. If the other listens to you, you can avoid losing them. This teaching is not an instruction in disciplinary hearings or a manual in conflict management. This is a rescue mission. This is about bringing the one that we have lost back to us. And of course it is. Of course that's what this is, because this is what Jesus has done to and for us, to the Canaanite woman, to the tax collector. But in coming from God to us humans, to us, to each of us, Jesus' mission to us is not a mission of punishment or discipline. It's not a mission of reprimand, but of rescue. We are the lost sheep and we are the ones to whom Jesus has come. If we listen to Him. If we listen to Him. I'd like to stop there because this is a comforting message and Jesus offers us comfort. We are the ones who are lost and Jesus has come to rescue us, but we have to listen to Him.
And here's what else I heard in this lesson, that odd line, "Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." What it sounds like is that our own judgments are divinized, that who we decide is in and out and who we decide belongs and doesn't belong, those judgments carry not just within this earthly realm, but beyond it into the heavens. And indeed, much of church discipline and much of church argument throughout 20 centuries of church life has been based upon this idea that our pronouncements have the weight and the authority of heaven and of God. But I actually think it's the opposite. It's not that our judgments matter up there. It's that God cares what we are doing down here. Jesus came to us. Jesus is with us. Jesus is with those whom we condemn and whom we judge. And the stakes of those judgments go beyond the present, but reach into the sacred and the heavenly. Who we condemn and how we condemn, because they are children of God, those judgments, heaven cares about those judgments.
If Christ is present to those whom we have judged and ostracized, then we had better listen. There are nearly 2 million people incarcerated in this country. In this country, we have an incarceration rate that is five times greater than the next closest country. And because we're bigger, that means we have millions and millions and millions of more incarcerated human beings in this country than anybody else. We constitute less than a 20th of the world's population and we hold 20% of the world's prisoners. Whatever you bind will be bound in heaven. Whatever you lose will be lost in heaven. These are our judgments and they're bound to us like millstones around our necks, and we will not set those judgments loose until we rescue those whom Christ came to rescue to.