A Sermon for the 6th Sunday after the Epiphany (RCL A) 2-13-2011
Offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry
Texts: Deuter. 30:15-20; Psalm 119:1-8; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37
Title: Leave your gift there and go!
Our Lord Jesus Christ, the one who redeemed the world by his incarnation and self-offering on the cross, and who redeemed us and made us his holy people through his own blood. This Lord Jesus, our Teacher, the one who guides all people in finding the good life, this Lord Jesus loves confrontation.
Yes! You heard me right. Jesus loves confrontation!
Ah, you may be asking, but what does the word confrontation actually mean? Do we have any Latin scholars with us here today? Confront comes from the Latin words “com” and “frontem”. It means foreheads together, in the original Latin. The basic idea of confronting someone is to address them face-to-face, forehead-to-forehead. Head on, direct, clear, unambiguous.
And so I say it again: Jesus loves confrontation, because he loves it when people take the initiative to engage in face-to-face, direct, clear, unambiguous communication.
The Lord understands that conflict and tension are normal and regular parts of life. And the Lord understands that conflict avoidance is a pattern of behavior that leads to more suffering, more bitterness, more violence.
If you look in a medical dictionary, you will see a definition of confrontation which is something like this:
“a therapeutic technique constituting the act of facing or being made to face one's own attitudes and shortcomings, the way one is perceived, and the consequences of one's behavior, or of causing another to face these things.”
Being made to face one’s own attitudes and shortcomings. This, I believe, is what Jesus has in mind for us.
Listen again to these words from his best remembered teaching session, his seminar on the hillside, as we might call it today.
Here in Matthew’s Gospel, he is talking to real-life people about the conflicts that they have in their everyday lives, and he asks his listeners – and us, of course – to look deeper than the surface level. Of course, murder is wrong, but that deadly act is simply the direct product of a heart that is filled with anger and bitterness. So what are we to do? What can we do to move away from the anger that leads to violence? What does he say?
“So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against us, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift” (Matthew 5:23).
My friends, stop and consider what kind of action it is that Jesus is calling forth.
Of course, he is speaking of temple ritual, when the Hebrew people entered the temple in Jerusalem to offer gifts to the priests and to make sacrificial offerings to God to redeem their sin.
But think about the implications. He does not call us to seek reconciliation BEFORE we offer our worship to God, and not AFTER. Rather, he calls us to interrupt our worship of God right in the middle! The Lord says that reconciling with another is far more important than completing our ritual act! When you are in the process of worshipping God, if you remember this conflict in your life, then leave and go immediately! Reconcile, and then return and complete your act of worship.
Can you appreciate how radical this is? We tend to prefer orderliness and neat, clearly defined rituals, but how would our worship be different if we here actually and honestly took this teaching to heart?
To be honest, I’m not sure how this would work. But recently, I heard about a congregation out in Minneapolis who sometimes practice a different way to receiving Communion which seeks to respect this teaching from Christ.
In this community, when communion is ready, a number of stations are set up around the meeting space where the bread and wine are available. At each station, there are candles and flowers and an icon. Everyone is asked to examine their hearts for a few minutes in silence. Then, when each is ready, they are invited to go and to commune themselves. Sometimes families go and give communion to one another.
But if anyone in the congregation knows that they are at odds with someone else who is present, that person is asked to take the bread and wine to the one with whom they are in conflict. Take communion to someone else as a way of showing your commitment to reconciliation.
Maybe that person has already received communion? So what? There’s no rule against receiving twice. Maybe it’s embarrassing to be seen as the one who is carrying the bread and chalice to another in the congregation? So what? Humility and vulnerability are essential if we are to grow in God’s grace.
Can you see it? Can you imagine the potential for disorder and confusion which this kind of communion practice might create? But what does Christ consider to be more important: the beauty and orderliness of our ritual practice, or the possibility of reconciling with another?
True reconciliation is what Jesus is after. Now, let’s be clear about the fact that reconciliation is not easy. Sometimes you can work your hardest to reconcile with someone, but they are not open to it. Sometimes they refuse to reciprocate.
We have a neighbor on our street where we live in Moorestown who absolutely hates me. Everyone on the street calls him Uncle David. As far as I can tell, he has no family around, so I have no idea how he came by that unusual designation. He lives all alone just four houses down from us.
One summer night a few years ago, soon after we moved into our house, Erin and I were frantically trying to get the kids to the table to eat dinner together. Do you know how hard it is sometimes to get everyone together at the same time to eat when the food is hot, but the kids are all running around playing with friends? Angus, our son, was down the street at the house next to Uncle David’s. After yelling at him over and over again to come home for dinner, I marched down there in exasperation to drag him home. Erin and the girls were already sitting at the table waiting for us. But just after we turned to come back home, I heard a sharp whistle behind me. I turned around to see Uncle David in his front yard looking at me and going like this (gesturing for me to come over to him!).
So I thought, “What! Are you kidding me? Am I some kind of dog that you whistle for and to whom you bark out your commands? Forget it! We’re going home to eat dinner! If Uncle David has something important to say to me, he knows where I live!” I was thinking all of this while all I did was wave to him and march Angus back home.
Little did I know that I had sealed my fate! My refusal to obey his whistle and finger command was all he needed to write me off forever. He has never forgiven me for that. Uncle David walks his dogs by our house twice a day, but even though we always say “good morning” and “hello” to him, he always ignores us completely. Doesn’t even respond! But once, two years later, he shocked me completely by stopping in front of my house and saying to me, “You didn’t have the time to talk to me, that’s why I hate you!” I was quite flabbergasted and so I responded and said, “OK. Whatever.” Frankly, I don’t really want to be friends with him. I think he might be, like, the next Unibomber, sitting in his house all by himself every night. He’s kinda scary!
But we still say hello to Uncle David every time we see him. We give him invitations to come over to our Kentucky Derby Parties. He never even acknowledges that we exist. I think that we have tried to reconcile with him, but he refuses to even consider it.
One of the elders living out in the Egyptian desert in the 3rd century was asked to define humility and he said this: “if you forgive a brother who has injured you before he himself asks [for] pardon” (
The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers, Thomas Merton, p.53).
It’s not easy to reconcile with some people. The Lord knows that. But the point is that we – we who share in the resurrection life of Jesus which is always new, always fresh – we are the ones who are always seeking to reconcile, always making the first move, always taking the initiative to reach out to confront another, not with anger and violence, but rather with genuine concern and with love.
Perhaps someone here will need to leave right now, because you know in your heart that you need to reach out to someone and offer to reconcile with them. Please do it. Listen to the Holy Spirit who speaks in your heart. Don’t worry about what the people around you might think. Wouldn’t all of our lives be so much better if we all instead worried much more about what God thinks? May it be so. Amen.
