"Doing, Not Just Saying"
Matthew 21:28-32
I used to be a fan of Dr. Phil. Not hardly anymore. But I remember a time when Dr. Phil was being interviewed. During the interview, Dr. Phil was asked, “If you could interview anyone in the world, past or present, who would it be?”
Dr. Phil said in response to the question, “Jesus Christ. I would really like to interview Jesus Christ. I would like to have a conversation with him about the meaning of life.”
I sat there and thought, “Are you sure, Dr. Phil? Are you sure you want to sit down across from Jesus and treat him like a guest on your show? How long do you think it would take before you were the guest, and he were the interviewer?”
That’s kind of what happens with people who try to strike up a conversation with Jesus. He turns things inside out. He turns relationships upside down. He makes people’s assumptions look silly. Jesus has a way of confusing the lines of our questions.
I sat there and wondered what Dr. Phil would do if Jesus turned his world upside down, like he did to the rich, young ruler. Remember that? The rich, young man came to Jesus and asked him what he needed to do to get eternal life. Jesus told that young gun to go sell everything he owned and give the money to the poor. That’s a lot different, and asking a lot more, than Dr. Phil does (or his benefactor, Oprah used to do) by giving away all these gifts on a couple of shows each year. It’s a lot different when you have to sell everything of your own rather than just giving away a bunch of products.
That’s what I sat there wondering. I don’t think Dr. Phil wants to really interview Jesus. I’d watch it. Oh, yeah, I’d watch it.
See, that’s the thing. You never know what Jesus is thinking while he’s talking to you. Especially if you are a religious person. Or think you are a religious person. You have to watch out because the world is rarely the same when you get done talking with Jesus. And if you think you know it all, like the religious leaders did who were talking with Jesus, and heard his parable about the two sons for the very first time--well, you have to be on your toes. Because a new perspective is going to be aimed right between your assumptions. If you think you are getting to just “interview” Jesus, what will happen is that Jesus will help you see the world differently, and call you to live in that new world differently.
The opposite may be going on inside Jesus’ mind as he’s speaking his parables. He must constantly be asking himself, “Are these people getting it? Do they understand what I’m offering them? Are they toying with the challenge I’m presenting them? Are they feeling the two-by-four I just smacked them up the side of the head with?”
If you’re trying to communicate something important, something you’ve been thinking about for some time, something personal, most of the while you are also trying to gauge the response from the other person. How are they taking it? Do they care about what you are saying? Do they care about you? Should you press harder or back off? Mainly: Am I making connection?
Those of you who teach probably wonder if you are getting anything across to your students. You have to have a way of evaluating how well you are getting your material across to the kids. That’s what tests are. They aren’t for students as much as they are for the teacher to see if she is communicating her material effectively.
Government leaders, especially lately, certainly must wonder if their plans (translate the word plans as “bickering”) to revive the economy and joblessness are making connection with voters.
Salespeople are always wondering if they are explaining the ins and outs of their particular product well enough to a potential buyer so as to make the product appealing.
Preachers are always wondering if their messages are having any effect on their congregation. There was one young minister who moved to a new community and church. He preached a fine sermon on his first Sunday. The next Sunday he preached the same sermon. And for five Sundays after that he did the same. Finally, some elders gathered around him and said, “Pastor, that’s a fine sermon you preached your first Sunday here. We hope you have more than that one sermon, because you keep repeating it. When do we get to hear something new?”
“As soon as you act on what I said in my first sermon,” replied the young preacher.
That’s kind of what happens here. The good old religious people came to Jesus with a question. They always came at Jesus with questions. Whenever you get to ask the questions, you hold the power. You determine the course of the conversation with your questioning. You are the one who demands the answer. You, as the questioner, are on the offensive. The person who answers is on the defensive. That’s how questioners like to have things--like to have the control.
But Jesus, after telling the parable, becomes the questioner. The questioners suddenly have the tables switched. They become the ones who must answer. They are on the defensive. They are probably wondering in their heads, How did this happen?
It happened with a parable. A story about two sons. They could be anyone’s sons. They could have been your sons. It could have been about a son and a daughter. Or two daughters. It doesn’t matter. If you’re a parent, you’ve heard this story before. You’ve lived it with your children.
You ask your son or daughter to do something. Mow the lawn maybe. “Yeah, sure,” they reply with their eyes glued to Facebook on the computer screen. Or they have their smartphone in their hands catapulting angry birds at pigs in stick buildings. “Yeah, OK,” they say again to your follow-up prodding. But they don’t move. An hour or two later they are still writing on the wall of their BFF on Facebook, or have just breached level five on Angry Birds. And the grass is still shaggy.
So you go to one of your other children with the same request. “No, way,” they say. They mowed the lawn last time. It’s someone else’s turn. They remain glued to the couch watching some cheesy sci fi movie on the scy fy channel. You throw up your hands in despair and go off to the garage to sulk, trying to decide if you will just end up mowing the lawn yourself.
But then a half hour later, you hear the lawnmower fire up. Low and behold, your scy fy movie watcher chose to mow the lawn rather than watch some mutant shark do battle with a mutant octopus. You smile to yourself, sitting there in the garage, shaking your head in wonder at the mystery of life in a family.
That’s the parable. Or a modern version of it. We all know the parable. We’ve all lived it. By Jesus telling it over 2000 years ago, we quickly realize things haven’t changed very much.
The stinger of the parable is not the story itself, but the question that Jesus asked at the end of the parable. I’ve already said you have to watch out if you come at Jesus with questions. He ends up asking the question--usually all it takes is one question--and everything changes. The question Jesus asks is, “Which of these kids did what the father asked?”
But it’s kind of a trick question. The answer given to Jesus is the one who mowed the lawn (or worked in the vineyard, depending on whose spin of the story you’re going with). And that sounds like the right answer.
In reality, neither of the kids did what the father asked. At least initially. Both sons in the parable are flawed. One is an Eddie Haskell type, who says all the right words. But those platitudes really hide the fact that he’s only a poser. A manipulator. A fraud. Bankrupt of any kind of depth of character.
The other son is a different kind of poser. He puts up a tough facade. He thinks his only power is in saying “no” to everything without thinking. In the end, according to the atheist philosopher Nietzsche, our only power is the ability to say no. We can always so no to whatever comes our way in life, whether it be good or bad. We can always say no. That’s the kind of power the second son seems to subscribe to. No, no, no, it’s always, no.
But, unlike his brother, no gives way to contemplation. The other brother said “yes,” but that “yes”--which was really a no--was never going to give way to contemplation. The brother who says no, thinks about it. As the parable says, “Later on he thought better of it…” There is no indication that the other brother had such thoughts. It’s the only thing that sets the brothers apart. Both are posers. Both are less than admirable. But only one has second thoughts. Because he is willing to have second thoughts, his life changes.
In our parable of the two sons and their response, we also need to remember who Jesus is talking to. In the preceding verses, Jesus is talking to the religious leaders in the temple. This parable of the two sons is an extension of that conversation. Jesus is talking to good religious folk, who thought they knew it all. Who thought they had belief and religion all figured out. Standing there in the temple, the place of religion, talking to religious people in their place of safety, Jesus tells them a story. A story about saying yes or no. Saying yes or no about going out and working in the vineyard. Told to religious people stuck in the temple.
Are you getting the connection? There were no vineyards in the Temple. In Jesus’ parable the vineyard usually stands for the world. Out there. Out beyond the walls of the religion centers. Jesus told a story about a father who asks two sons to go to work “out there.” A story told to religious people who were fine as long as people came into the temple. But they certainly weren’t going out to the “vineyard.” As long as they could carry on their religion work just in the temple they were fine.
So Jesus’ question, “Which of the two sons did what the father asked?” is what turned the religious people’s world upside down. And don’t forget the disciples are standing around listening to all this. Certainly this parable and it’s transforming question is for them as well. And since we are also disciples, that question reaches through the pages, through 2000 years of time and grabs us by the throat as well.
As I mentioned, the religious people’s answer to Jesus’ question isn’t completely the right answer. They said the one who eventually went to work in the vineyard is the one who did as the father asked. But both sons were posers, and neither of their initial answers was the right one. Fortunately, for Jesus it is seldom about getting the right answer. Rather, it is about calling those who are listening to him to be transformed. Yes, it is partially about doing, not just saying. But in doing, it is because you have thought about it, and in that thinking you allow yourself to see different; to be transformed. It is doing because a transformation has happened. Your world has been changed, and that change makes you into a doer.
The religious people, in the temple, didn’t want to be transformed. They wanted to stay the same. They wanted to continue to say “yes,” but really mean no. They wanted to continue with their knee-jerk “no” to everything. They wanted to stay in the temple and not go out into the vineyard. They didn’t want to be transformed with the thought that God, and God’s work was really out in the vineyard, not in the temple.
So be careful when you’re talking to Jesus. Be careful when you ask your questions about the meaning of life. He will probably have a question for you, and the answer to that question will carry the possibility of turning your world upside down.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Monday, September 19, 2011
How Many Times!?
"How Many Times!?"
Matthew 18:21-35
Peter’s question about being forgiving is a human one: “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” What Peter is really asking is not how many times does he have to forgive someone. Peter’s question is really, how many times do I have to forgive someone, so that then I don’t have to forgive them anymore? What’s the limit? And once I reach the limit, can I be done with the person? No more Mr. Nice Guy.
Last week we looked at the the conversation Jesus had with the disciples about the times someone “sins against you.” Jesus suggested a threefold plan to handle the times when a fellow believer does harm to you. Go to them personally. If that doesn’t work, take a couple of other believers with you as objective listeners. If that doesn’t work, take it before the congregation.
Then Peter takes Jesus aside and basically asks, “How many times do I have to go through this process with my fellow believer?” My guess is Peter had someone specific in mind. Peter wasn’t a hypothetical kind of person. Peter dealt with reality. Peter was down-to-earth. Peter liked the particular, not the general. So when he asked Jesus his question, Peter must have had a fellow believer who was constantly sticking thorns in his craw. How much is he going to have to put up with that, Peter wants to know.
We worked through some of this in last week’s message. People can be really difficult to get along with. Some of those people are our brothers and sisters in Christ. How are we supposed to deal with that, the disciples want to know. It’s the issue that’s at the very center of any group, organization, or congregation. How can we get along? How do we deal with the people who have made, or are making life difficult? How do we hold together our sense of community and fellowship when there’s these people who are constantly annoying and hurtful?
Peter homes in on where Jesus is going with this. Peter narrows the issue down. Peter asks about forgiveness. Jesus hadn’t said anything, in the previous conversation, about forgiving the person who has hurt you. Jesus just outlined the three step process of trying to make things right between you and a fellow believer who had hurt you. It’s Peter who perceptively takes things a step further in asking about forgiveness: How many times must I forgive someone?
By throwing out the number seven, Peter is well within the limits of acceptability. Seven is a holy number. So it’s a good number in that respect. It doesn’t sound like too many, and it doesn’t sound like too few. It’s also the number of times the Rabbi’s had decided a person should forgive another. So it seems Peter has picked a goodly number for the amount of times a person should be forgiving to another. I’m sure he must have expected Jesus would reply with something like, “Yeah, that sounds like a good number of times to be forgiving to any certain person who keeps hurting you.”
But Jesus doesn’t do that. Instead Jesus shocks Peter with the statement that he should be forgiving not seven times, but 77 times, or seventy times seven. It’s not clear in the Greek which it really is. But it doesn’t matter, does it, whether it’s 77 times or 490 times. It’s a lot. Basically, what Jesus is telling Peter is that forgiveness is a forever and always thing. You don’t forgive 7 times. You forgive all the time, every time. If you are going to build any kind of relationship, fellowship, or community, forgiveness has to be a constant.
Brooke and Adam had to deal with this this past week. A Mini-Cooper peddle car that belonged to Gracie was stolen out of their yard. I’m sure Brooke and Adam know the world is not a nice or safe place. They know things get stolen. They know there are stupid people. Even though they and we know that, it still really hurts to have it happen to you. To your little daughter. All of a sudden, Gracie, who is an open and welcoming and trusting child, found out that not everyone is like her. Not everyone does nice things. Her sense of faith and trust in community has taken a blow because someone chose to be a stupid thief.
Their response? Cry. You have to cry. It hurts. But then they gathered in a circle in their yard and prayed for forgiveness for the person who did this stupid act. Certainly, Gracie, like Peter, is probably wondering how many times she is going to have to make that prayer for the people who disrupted her life. How many times, Lord, do I have to be forgiving? Seven enough?
This forgiveness stuff is tough. We all know about forgiveness. We all know we ought to do it. We all know forgiveness and forgiving others is a sound principle. Some of our better principles don’t quite make it into practice, though. Forgiveness is especially hard on this 10th anniversary of 9/11. Knowing we need to be forgiving, and then actually forgiving those who planned and perpetrated the atrocities of 9/11 may be two different things. Can or should Christian Americans forgive al-Qaeda? That will be one of our discussion questions in our Sunday School class after worship.
So we may wonder if perpetual, seventy-times-seven, forgiveness is even a sound principle. Does constantly forgiving someone really end up just being enabling? Does time-after-time forgiveness really build up the health of a relationship or community? If we are constantly forgiving, are we just letting people off without calling them to personal responsibility?
And what about abusive situations? Certainly experiencing ongoing abuse of any kind, and answering that abuse with a simple, “I forgive you,” doesn’t really solve anything. What about repentance? Shouldn’t forgiveness be a follow-up when someone said they were sorry, and repented? Are we to constantly forgive someone who isn’t sorry? Of course, forgiveness doesn’t mean you keep putting yourself in harms way, at the hands of some abusive person, whether they are sorry or not. Jesus doesn’t seem to answer those questions. Jesus just says to make forgiveness a constant, a part of who we are at the very core, both individually and as a community.
I’m convinced Jesus is right. Humor me for a moment. I want you to close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Relax your shoulders. I want you to slowly picture someone in your mind. I want you to see the face of someone you have not forgiven, or have had a hard time coming to forgiveness about. Maybe you don’t have anyone like that in your life right now. If not, just continue relaxing and meditating on the power of the practice of being a forgiving person.
For the rest of you, you have a face looking at you in your minds eye, a face you would rather not look at. Imagine you two standing, a short distance apart, facing each other, looking into each others eyes. You might feel your blood pressure rising. Your heart quickening. Your anger beginning to boil. Sense what you are feeling for a moment.
Now another person approaches the two of you. You know it’s Jesus. How do you react? How does your body react? Jesus turns to this other person and says something. What do you imagine Jesus saying? And then Jesus turns to you. He tells you something. What does he say to you? You take a deep breath, and smile at Jesus. He smiles back. Then you look into the face of the one who has been hard to forgive. You know what you need to do.
Let the image fade. Take a couple of deep breaths and come back to the sanctuary. Open your eyes when you are ready.
Fellow Presbyterian pastor and author Marjorie Thompson wrote in a recent article:
To forgive is to make a conscious choice to release the person who has wounded us from the sentence of our judgment, however justified that judgment may be...Forgiveness represents a choice to leave behind our resentment and desire for retribution however fair such punishment may seem...Forgiveness means the power of the original wound to hold us trapped is broken.
I hope that is part of what you heard from Christ in the little guided imagery. To make a choice to release judgment, leave behind resentment, and break the trap open that being unforgiving becomes. Being unforgiving is a trap. Two army buddies, who had been prisoners of war together, were talking, now that they were civilians. One said to the other, “Have you forgiven our captors yet?”
“I will never do that,” the second one answered.
“Then they still have you in prison, don’t they?” the first one replied.
That’s how being unforgiving is a trap. It holds YOU in an emotional and spiritual prison, not the one who hurt you. As an individual, the more we are unforgiving, the stronger that prison becomes. Until it can become our own death sentence.
We need to remember the conversation Jesus had just before this private conversation with Peter. It was about the health of the community of believers. How to keep the health of that community strong, when two people are at odds. So really, what we see to be true for individuals who are unforgiving is operative in communities as well. In groups of people, like congregations or nations, where an unforgiving spirit resides, there is also a prison. They also need to hear a word from the Lord.
Let me tell you about the Leoti Presbyterian Church where I was at before I came here. A number of years ago, it was a good sized congregation. But it had a string of awful, destructive, charismatic pastors. One of those pastors eventually split the congregation, convincing a majority of the members to follow him in making a new congregation in town. Which is what they did.
One of the members of the Session at that time was a lawyer in town. He was part of the split off group. Somehow, he got into the church’s saving account and stole somewhere between $40-50,000, and transferred it over to the new, split off congregation. It was the seed money they used to build the new church, that allied itself with the Evangelical Presbyterian denomination.
A large part of the membership was gone. Hugely hurt feelings all around. A savings account liquidated in a nearly criminal way. Hurt and unforgiveness abounded in the small number of members who remained in the original Presbyterian church. Bitterness and unforgiveness were what bound the remaining member together.
But, by the time I got there, forgiveness had set them free. Even to the point that the members who have remained strong in the original congregation feel like they are the better for it, are so glad to be free of all the contention that existed for so many years, and are proud for they way they have become a forgiving and faithful people. They were a tremendously fun congregation of folks to be a part of. And I am convinced it is because they decided to live their forgiveness.
One final story--a story told by Rabbi Harold Kushner in his book, Letting Go of the Role of Victim.
A woman in my congregation comes to see me. She is a single mother, divorced, working to support herself and three young children. She says to me, “Since my husband walked out on us, every month is a struggle to pay our bills. I have to tell my kids we have no money to go to the movies, while he’s living it up with his new wife in another state. How can you tell me to forgive him?”
I answer her, “I’m not asking you to forgive him because what he did was acceptable. It wasn’t; it was mean and selfish. I’m asking you to forgive because he doesn’t deserve the power to live in your head and turn you into a bitter, angry woman. I’d like to see him out of your life emotionally as completely as he is out of it physically. But you keep holding on to him. You’re not hurting him by holding on to that resentment, but you are hurting yourself.”
Maybe you’ve been like Peter. You want to know what the upper limit of your forgiving has to be, so you know when you get to stop. You may think that when you stop forgiving that somehow that will be more freeing. Thinking like that is a subtle trap.
Or maybe you’ve been like this woman in Rabbi Kushner’s office. You don’t want to stop being unforgiving. It feels too good. It feels like if you do forgive, then you won’t be you any more. You’ll have to be someone else. You have come to define yourself by your unforgiveness. To let go of that is too scary.
Whichever of these has been your experience, Jesus says, “Seventy times seven.” I don’t know what Jesus said to the other person you imaged. I don’t know what Jesus said to you in that imagery. But I think you do know what you need to do. It’s time. It’s time. That’s what Jesus said. It’s time.
Matthew 18:21-35
Peter’s question about being forgiving is a human one: “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” What Peter is really asking is not how many times does he have to forgive someone. Peter’s question is really, how many times do I have to forgive someone, so that then I don’t have to forgive them anymore? What’s the limit? And once I reach the limit, can I be done with the person? No more Mr. Nice Guy.
Last week we looked at the the conversation Jesus had with the disciples about the times someone “sins against you.” Jesus suggested a threefold plan to handle the times when a fellow believer does harm to you. Go to them personally. If that doesn’t work, take a couple of other believers with you as objective listeners. If that doesn’t work, take it before the congregation.
Then Peter takes Jesus aside and basically asks, “How many times do I have to go through this process with my fellow believer?” My guess is Peter had someone specific in mind. Peter wasn’t a hypothetical kind of person. Peter dealt with reality. Peter was down-to-earth. Peter liked the particular, not the general. So when he asked Jesus his question, Peter must have had a fellow believer who was constantly sticking thorns in his craw. How much is he going to have to put up with that, Peter wants to know.
We worked through some of this in last week’s message. People can be really difficult to get along with. Some of those people are our brothers and sisters in Christ. How are we supposed to deal with that, the disciples want to know. It’s the issue that’s at the very center of any group, organization, or congregation. How can we get along? How do we deal with the people who have made, or are making life difficult? How do we hold together our sense of community and fellowship when there’s these people who are constantly annoying and hurtful?
Peter homes in on where Jesus is going with this. Peter narrows the issue down. Peter asks about forgiveness. Jesus hadn’t said anything, in the previous conversation, about forgiving the person who has hurt you. Jesus just outlined the three step process of trying to make things right between you and a fellow believer who had hurt you. It’s Peter who perceptively takes things a step further in asking about forgiveness: How many times must I forgive someone?
By throwing out the number seven, Peter is well within the limits of acceptability. Seven is a holy number. So it’s a good number in that respect. It doesn’t sound like too many, and it doesn’t sound like too few. It’s also the number of times the Rabbi’s had decided a person should forgive another. So it seems Peter has picked a goodly number for the amount of times a person should be forgiving to another. I’m sure he must have expected Jesus would reply with something like, “Yeah, that sounds like a good number of times to be forgiving to any certain person who keeps hurting you.”
But Jesus doesn’t do that. Instead Jesus shocks Peter with the statement that he should be forgiving not seven times, but 77 times, or seventy times seven. It’s not clear in the Greek which it really is. But it doesn’t matter, does it, whether it’s 77 times or 490 times. It’s a lot. Basically, what Jesus is telling Peter is that forgiveness is a forever and always thing. You don’t forgive 7 times. You forgive all the time, every time. If you are going to build any kind of relationship, fellowship, or community, forgiveness has to be a constant.
Brooke and Adam had to deal with this this past week. A Mini-Cooper peddle car that belonged to Gracie was stolen out of their yard. I’m sure Brooke and Adam know the world is not a nice or safe place. They know things get stolen. They know there are stupid people. Even though they and we know that, it still really hurts to have it happen to you. To your little daughter. All of a sudden, Gracie, who is an open and welcoming and trusting child, found out that not everyone is like her. Not everyone does nice things. Her sense of faith and trust in community has taken a blow because someone chose to be a stupid thief.
Their response? Cry. You have to cry. It hurts. But then they gathered in a circle in their yard and prayed for forgiveness for the person who did this stupid act. Certainly, Gracie, like Peter, is probably wondering how many times she is going to have to make that prayer for the people who disrupted her life. How many times, Lord, do I have to be forgiving? Seven enough?
This forgiveness stuff is tough. We all know about forgiveness. We all know we ought to do it. We all know forgiveness and forgiving others is a sound principle. Some of our better principles don’t quite make it into practice, though. Forgiveness is especially hard on this 10th anniversary of 9/11. Knowing we need to be forgiving, and then actually forgiving those who planned and perpetrated the atrocities of 9/11 may be two different things. Can or should Christian Americans forgive al-Qaeda? That will be one of our discussion questions in our Sunday School class after worship.
So we may wonder if perpetual, seventy-times-seven, forgiveness is even a sound principle. Does constantly forgiving someone really end up just being enabling? Does time-after-time forgiveness really build up the health of a relationship or community? If we are constantly forgiving, are we just letting people off without calling them to personal responsibility?
And what about abusive situations? Certainly experiencing ongoing abuse of any kind, and answering that abuse with a simple, “I forgive you,” doesn’t really solve anything. What about repentance? Shouldn’t forgiveness be a follow-up when someone said they were sorry, and repented? Are we to constantly forgive someone who isn’t sorry? Of course, forgiveness doesn’t mean you keep putting yourself in harms way, at the hands of some abusive person, whether they are sorry or not. Jesus doesn’t seem to answer those questions. Jesus just says to make forgiveness a constant, a part of who we are at the very core, both individually and as a community.
I’m convinced Jesus is right. Humor me for a moment. I want you to close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Relax your shoulders. I want you to slowly picture someone in your mind. I want you to see the face of someone you have not forgiven, or have had a hard time coming to forgiveness about. Maybe you don’t have anyone like that in your life right now. If not, just continue relaxing and meditating on the power of the practice of being a forgiving person.
For the rest of you, you have a face looking at you in your minds eye, a face you would rather not look at. Imagine you two standing, a short distance apart, facing each other, looking into each others eyes. You might feel your blood pressure rising. Your heart quickening. Your anger beginning to boil. Sense what you are feeling for a moment.
Now another person approaches the two of you. You know it’s Jesus. How do you react? How does your body react? Jesus turns to this other person and says something. What do you imagine Jesus saying? And then Jesus turns to you. He tells you something. What does he say to you? You take a deep breath, and smile at Jesus. He smiles back. Then you look into the face of the one who has been hard to forgive. You know what you need to do.
Let the image fade. Take a couple of deep breaths and come back to the sanctuary. Open your eyes when you are ready.
Fellow Presbyterian pastor and author Marjorie Thompson wrote in a recent article:
To forgive is to make a conscious choice to release the person who has wounded us from the sentence of our judgment, however justified that judgment may be...Forgiveness represents a choice to leave behind our resentment and desire for retribution however fair such punishment may seem...Forgiveness means the power of the original wound to hold us trapped is broken.
I hope that is part of what you heard from Christ in the little guided imagery. To make a choice to release judgment, leave behind resentment, and break the trap open that being unforgiving becomes. Being unforgiving is a trap. Two army buddies, who had been prisoners of war together, were talking, now that they were civilians. One said to the other, “Have you forgiven our captors yet?”
“I will never do that,” the second one answered.
“Then they still have you in prison, don’t they?” the first one replied.
That’s how being unforgiving is a trap. It holds YOU in an emotional and spiritual prison, not the one who hurt you. As an individual, the more we are unforgiving, the stronger that prison becomes. Until it can become our own death sentence.
We need to remember the conversation Jesus had just before this private conversation with Peter. It was about the health of the community of believers. How to keep the health of that community strong, when two people are at odds. So really, what we see to be true for individuals who are unforgiving is operative in communities as well. In groups of people, like congregations or nations, where an unforgiving spirit resides, there is also a prison. They also need to hear a word from the Lord.
Let me tell you about the Leoti Presbyterian Church where I was at before I came here. A number of years ago, it was a good sized congregation. But it had a string of awful, destructive, charismatic pastors. One of those pastors eventually split the congregation, convincing a majority of the members to follow him in making a new congregation in town. Which is what they did.
One of the members of the Session at that time was a lawyer in town. He was part of the split off group. Somehow, he got into the church’s saving account and stole somewhere between $40-50,000, and transferred it over to the new, split off congregation. It was the seed money they used to build the new church, that allied itself with the Evangelical Presbyterian denomination.
A large part of the membership was gone. Hugely hurt feelings all around. A savings account liquidated in a nearly criminal way. Hurt and unforgiveness abounded in the small number of members who remained in the original Presbyterian church. Bitterness and unforgiveness were what bound the remaining member together.
But, by the time I got there, forgiveness had set them free. Even to the point that the members who have remained strong in the original congregation feel like they are the better for it, are so glad to be free of all the contention that existed for so many years, and are proud for they way they have become a forgiving and faithful people. They were a tremendously fun congregation of folks to be a part of. And I am convinced it is because they decided to live their forgiveness.
One final story--a story told by Rabbi Harold Kushner in his book, Letting Go of the Role of Victim.
A woman in my congregation comes to see me. She is a single mother, divorced, working to support herself and three young children. She says to me, “Since my husband walked out on us, every month is a struggle to pay our bills. I have to tell my kids we have no money to go to the movies, while he’s living it up with his new wife in another state. How can you tell me to forgive him?”
I answer her, “I’m not asking you to forgive him because what he did was acceptable. It wasn’t; it was mean and selfish. I’m asking you to forgive because he doesn’t deserve the power to live in your head and turn you into a bitter, angry woman. I’d like to see him out of your life emotionally as completely as he is out of it physically. But you keep holding on to him. You’re not hurting him by holding on to that resentment, but you are hurting yourself.”
Maybe you’ve been like Peter. You want to know what the upper limit of your forgiving has to be, so you know when you get to stop. You may think that when you stop forgiving that somehow that will be more freeing. Thinking like that is a subtle trap.
Or maybe you’ve been like this woman in Rabbi Kushner’s office. You don’t want to stop being unforgiving. It feels too good. It feels like if you do forgive, then you won’t be you any more. You’ll have to be someone else. You have come to define yourself by your unforgiveness. To let go of that is too scary.
Whichever of these has been your experience, Jesus says, “Seventy times seven.” I don’t know what Jesus said to the other person you imaged. I don’t know what Jesus said to you in that imagery. But I think you do know what you need to do. It’s time. It’s time. That’s what Jesus said. It’s time.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Getting Along
"Getting Along"
Matthew 18:15-20
Probably my all time favorite cartoon is Calvin and Hobbes. One of Calvin’s main antagonists is the bully Moe.
Frame 1: Calvin is swinging on the playground swing; Moe comes up to him and says, “Get off the swing, Twinky;”
Calvin replies, “Forget it, Moe. Wait your turn.”
Frame 2: Moe punches Calvin clear off the swing, and out of his shoes.
Frame 3: Calvin is laying in a dazed heap, and says to himself, “It’s hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightening.”
It is hard to get along with some people, isn’t it. It seems conflict and fractured relationships are the norm. Isn’t it interesting that Jesus assumes that people, including fellow believers, will hurt each other. And Jesus assumes that the road back towards friendship between those who hurt each other may not be easy. He assumes that even wave upon wave of attempts still may not bring healing to the broken relationship.
Jesus knows us so well. He knows we are divisive, over-sensitive, bickering, petty, angry, contentious, broken people who act way below our God given humanity. But by giving a way to reconcile and move toward friendship he also knows we have such a great potential to be healers, empathetic and sympathetic, forgiving, grace-full and understanding people who can act according to our God given humanity. What makes us Christian is not whether or not we fight, disagree, or wound each other, but how we go about addressing and resolving that hurt.
The famous pop artist Andy Warhol decided to spend most of his time watching TV instead of developing relationships. He equated relationships with pain, so he reasoned that if he had very few relationships, he’d have little pain. “You can only be hurt if you care a lot,” he said.
So, in Jesus’ words, “If a fellow believer (brother, RSV) hurts you...” assumes that the reason you are hurting is because you care a lot about that person. We don’t get hurt, as Andy Warhol discovered, as deeply by those we don’t care about. If the used car salesman lies to you about the engine of the car you bought, you may get angry but you’re not likely to be personally hurt. But if your wife comes home at 3 a.m. and lies to you about where she’s been and what she’s been up to, that’s another matter.
In Jesus’ statement the other person is a fellow follower of Christ. Do we make the assumption in the church that other believers won’t hurt us? Are we shocked more when another Christian does us harm? Yet, by saying this, what does Jesus assume will happen in Christian communities? Jesus doesn’t assume we’ll all magically (or in a Christ-like way) get along in the church. We’re people, and whenever people get together, Christian or not, there is the possibility that feelings will get hurt.
The reason I included the verses about the lost sheep, is because I think they help create the context of what Jesus is telling us. That context is about a broken community. The middle eastern interpretation of the parable of the lost sheep, and why the shepherd goes after the one leaving the 99 is different from ours. We concentrate on the worth and value of the individual. The middle eastern people look at this parable and see the importance of keeping the 100 whole and together. When one breaks away, for whatever reason, all suffer a lack of wholeness, until that lost one is restored to the whole.
So it is with the fellow believer who hurts you. It’s not just about you and the other person. The whole community of believers is affected. To restore relationship and friendship of the hurt individuals is to restore the relationship of all. Conflict between two people in a congregation not only affects the individuals involved but infects the entire community. If we are the body of Christ, as Paul taught, any disunity between a few, in reality, is the disunity of all.
Often, it comes down to a matter of deciding what’s more important: winning and being right; or, the health of the relationship. And just as often, that may be a process not of looking out and pointing the finger at someone else, but looking inside yourself.
Eugene Peterson, translator of The Message Bible, has written a number of books. One of those is Under The Unpredictable Plant. In that book he writes about Jonah, and how the book of Jonah is descriptive of our times and our lives. Do you remember the place at the end of the Jonah story where Jonah is sitting on the hillside waiting for God to incinerate Ninevah (just like Calvin waited for Moe to get incinerated). But it doesn’t happen because God showed mercy. This is what Peterson says about Jonah, who went ballistic at God:
What anger fails to do, though, is tell us whether the wrong is outside us or inside us. We usually begin by assuming that the wrong is outside us--our spouse, or our child, or our neighbor, or our God has done something wrong and we are angry...But when we track the anger carefully, we often find it leads to a wrong within us--wrong information, inadequate understanding, underdeveloped heart. (page 157)
If Peterson is right, maybe our major, and most important work is not resolving the conflict and tension with someone else, but resolving all the conflict within ourselves.
For example, Henri Nouwen, another of my favorite Christian spiritual writers talks a lot about loneliness and how it is at the heart of a lot of our broken relationships. His sense is that we all have this inner loneliness, and we carry with that loneliness an expectation that some other person is supposed to make us happy and take that loneliness away. That expectation puts too much weight on the relationship, especially when the other doesn’t fully take our loneliness away. Or worse, makes us feel more lonely than before. We then spin off all kinds of anxiety, creating fractures in our relationships, and the problem isn’t other people. It’s our own inner loneliness and the expectations it creates that is driving our anxiety and the divisions that anxiety creates. Ironically, the very thing we desire--closeness and an end to loneliness--gets tragically broken and pushed away.
So, let’s look at Jesus’ way of handling those times when relationships get fractured and how he suggests we handle it.
First, he says go one on one. I think it’s interesting that Jesus says that the one who is hurt, not the one who did the hurting, should make the first move. We, if we are hurt, are more comfortable just sitting and sulking, letting our hurt simmer. Letting it stew. Maybe that’s the very reason Jesus said that the one hurt should make the first move. So they don’t let their wounds grow bigger than they really are.
“If he listens...” Jesus says. What is he listening to? Your hurt. Your pain. How you are feeling. Your sense of what happened. The main objective is not blaming, but listening. It’s not about forming your next rebuttal while the other is talking. The offending one is the one who is supposed to listen. It is the offended one who is the one who gets to talk. The main goal, in Jesus’ words, of this listening is “making a friend” (“gained your brother,” RSV).
For Jesus, mending brokenness, becoming friends, is a deep part of the Christian spiritual life. Remember when he said, in the “Sermon on the Mount,” if you are at the altar, ready to offer your gift, and you realize that someone has something against you, what are you supposed to do? You’re supposed to leave your gift there, go make things right with that person, then come back and offer your gift. For Jesus, mending broken relationships is just as important (maybe more important) than worship. Or that mending broken relationships is part of your act of worship. Because how can you worship fully with anxiety and hurt in your heart? How can you approach worship with a heart loaded down with bitterness?
So, a primary step in creating depth and health in one’s soul, and life in worship, is measured by our willingness and ability to approach someone we are at odds with, one-on-one, and create friendship.
This is not an easy thing to do. I was reading an article on the Psychology Today website recently. The name of the article was, “Words That Wound.” The article outlined some of the ingredients necessary when you are talking to someone else about your sense of being hurt, and coming to understanding and friendship.
The first ingredient in working towards understanding is how accurately you interpret what the other person is saying. Emphasis is on the word interpret. It’s not about what you say, but about how closely you interpret what the other means when they are talking. Often it isn’t what the other person is saying that gets our knickers in a twist, but our interpretation of what they are saying. What we think they are meaning. In order for there to be understanding, we need to check out our interpretations with the other person. “Is this what you mean when you say that?”
Secondly, understanding grows when each person has the ability to be able to predict the impact of your own words. Again, it’s not about what you say, but knowing as accurately as possible how what YOU say will impact the listener. How well are you tracking with THEIR feelings, and how much do you care about their feelings?
The final ingredient in communicating with someone after being hurt is called “interpersonal cognitive complexity.” That’s a mouthful. What that is about is your ability to be able to express your feelings while at the same time having the ability to be able to process social cues (body language, tone, etc.) accurately. If I’m talking to (someone in the congregation) and while talking to her, I touch her shoulder, she has to interpret my touch accurately. She has to decide, “Is Steve being caring or is he coming on to me?” Some people don’t interpret those kinds of social cues well, and it causes fractures in their relationships.
But when you look at those three ingredients, they are very complex pieces of how healing can happen and relationships restored to a level of friendship. That’s why the one-on-one piece of Jesus’ advice is so difficult and probably why he suggested the next strategy: “If he won’t listen, take one or two others...keep things honest and try again.”
Jesus understands if you just put two people in a room and think they can reconcile their hurt, may be unrealistic for every case. Too often we are either unwilling or unable to heal our situations. Thus all the “judge” shows on TV these days. Isn’t it weird that we have turned our broken friendship pain into entertainment?
At this point, things have either hit an impasse, or they have escalated. There is no detail given by Jesus about what these others, who are dragged into the conflict are supposed to do. Maybe there were some traditionally Jewish rules of being a go-between amongst people in conflict. But nothing like that is detailed here by Jesus.
There’s a certain wisdom about NOT putting yourself in the middle of other people’s conflicts. You have to watch out not to get triangled with you at one point, and the other parties at the other points of the triangle. The one in the middle always gets squashed by the other two sides. If you find yourself in the middle, trying to be a go-between, it’s best to promote straight line communication. No bank shot communication off of someone but directed towards someone else. That only creates more layers of misinterpretations and misguided meanings.
Get the two conflicting sides together, rather than relay ping pong messages back and forth. It’s important that they be together and talk to each other. The go-between doesn’t take sides, but instead uses the tools I mentioned in the one-on-one strategy to help create understanding that can lead to friendship. As Jesus said, keep things honest and keep trying rather than throwing your hands up and giving up.
Lastly, Jesus says, if listening still doesn’t happen, “tell the church.” Bring the whole community in on it. By “the church” Jesus means the congregation. It’s interesting, and telling to me, that in speaking about moving two people from hostility to friendship, Jesus didn’t go any further than the local congregation. It tells me that Jesus trusted the more immediate people involved, rather than taking the conflict to a group or a committee, or a level outside (above) the local congregation.
So, the question is, how would you feel about listening to and helping resolve a squabble between people as a congregation, if it came to that?
Jesus closes out his comments with an oft quoted statement: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” That comment of Jesus is usually quoted when talking about praying or worshipping. But do you see what he was really getting at in the context of his teaching about reconciling friends? “When two or three come together (that is come together out of hostility and back into friendship) I am there.” When people get together and resolve their issues, that’s an indication of the presence of the Lord.
Conflict resolution isn’t about a contest of wills or posturing. It should be about taking responsibility, making sure we are listening as well as we can, elevating the value of the relationship to a place of higher importance than winning or even pushing what we think is the truth. It isn’t about judging and disciplining. It’s about reconciliation. It’s about coming together, healing our broken relationships with ourselves and others, and then celebrating the presence of Christ when that happens.
Matthew 18:15-20
Probably my all time favorite cartoon is Calvin and Hobbes. One of Calvin’s main antagonists is the bully Moe.
Frame 1: Calvin is swinging on the playground swing; Moe comes up to him and says, “Get off the swing, Twinky;”
Calvin replies, “Forget it, Moe. Wait your turn.”
Frame 2: Moe punches Calvin clear off the swing, and out of his shoes.
Frame 3: Calvin is laying in a dazed heap, and says to himself, “It’s hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightening.”
It is hard to get along with some people, isn’t it. It seems conflict and fractured relationships are the norm. Isn’t it interesting that Jesus assumes that people, including fellow believers, will hurt each other. And Jesus assumes that the road back towards friendship between those who hurt each other may not be easy. He assumes that even wave upon wave of attempts still may not bring healing to the broken relationship.
Jesus knows us so well. He knows we are divisive, over-sensitive, bickering, petty, angry, contentious, broken people who act way below our God given humanity. But by giving a way to reconcile and move toward friendship he also knows we have such a great potential to be healers, empathetic and sympathetic, forgiving, grace-full and understanding people who can act according to our God given humanity. What makes us Christian is not whether or not we fight, disagree, or wound each other, but how we go about addressing and resolving that hurt.
The famous pop artist Andy Warhol decided to spend most of his time watching TV instead of developing relationships. He equated relationships with pain, so he reasoned that if he had very few relationships, he’d have little pain. “You can only be hurt if you care a lot,” he said.
So, in Jesus’ words, “If a fellow believer (brother, RSV) hurts you...” assumes that the reason you are hurting is because you care a lot about that person. We don’t get hurt, as Andy Warhol discovered, as deeply by those we don’t care about. If the used car salesman lies to you about the engine of the car you bought, you may get angry but you’re not likely to be personally hurt. But if your wife comes home at 3 a.m. and lies to you about where she’s been and what she’s been up to, that’s another matter.
In Jesus’ statement the other person is a fellow follower of Christ. Do we make the assumption in the church that other believers won’t hurt us? Are we shocked more when another Christian does us harm? Yet, by saying this, what does Jesus assume will happen in Christian communities? Jesus doesn’t assume we’ll all magically (or in a Christ-like way) get along in the church. We’re people, and whenever people get together, Christian or not, there is the possibility that feelings will get hurt.
The reason I included the verses about the lost sheep, is because I think they help create the context of what Jesus is telling us. That context is about a broken community. The middle eastern interpretation of the parable of the lost sheep, and why the shepherd goes after the one leaving the 99 is different from ours. We concentrate on the worth and value of the individual. The middle eastern people look at this parable and see the importance of keeping the 100 whole and together. When one breaks away, for whatever reason, all suffer a lack of wholeness, until that lost one is restored to the whole.
So it is with the fellow believer who hurts you. It’s not just about you and the other person. The whole community of believers is affected. To restore relationship and friendship of the hurt individuals is to restore the relationship of all. Conflict between two people in a congregation not only affects the individuals involved but infects the entire community. If we are the body of Christ, as Paul taught, any disunity between a few, in reality, is the disunity of all.
Often, it comes down to a matter of deciding what’s more important: winning and being right; or, the health of the relationship. And just as often, that may be a process not of looking out and pointing the finger at someone else, but looking inside yourself.
Eugene Peterson, translator of The Message Bible, has written a number of books. One of those is Under The Unpredictable Plant. In that book he writes about Jonah, and how the book of Jonah is descriptive of our times and our lives. Do you remember the place at the end of the Jonah story where Jonah is sitting on the hillside waiting for God to incinerate Ninevah (just like Calvin waited for Moe to get incinerated). But it doesn’t happen because God showed mercy. This is what Peterson says about Jonah, who went ballistic at God:
What anger fails to do, though, is tell us whether the wrong is outside us or inside us. We usually begin by assuming that the wrong is outside us--our spouse, or our child, or our neighbor, or our God has done something wrong and we are angry...But when we track the anger carefully, we often find it leads to a wrong within us--wrong information, inadequate understanding, underdeveloped heart. (page 157)
If Peterson is right, maybe our major, and most important work is not resolving the conflict and tension with someone else, but resolving all the conflict within ourselves.
For example, Henri Nouwen, another of my favorite Christian spiritual writers talks a lot about loneliness and how it is at the heart of a lot of our broken relationships. His sense is that we all have this inner loneliness, and we carry with that loneliness an expectation that some other person is supposed to make us happy and take that loneliness away. That expectation puts too much weight on the relationship, especially when the other doesn’t fully take our loneliness away. Or worse, makes us feel more lonely than before. We then spin off all kinds of anxiety, creating fractures in our relationships, and the problem isn’t other people. It’s our own inner loneliness and the expectations it creates that is driving our anxiety and the divisions that anxiety creates. Ironically, the very thing we desire--closeness and an end to loneliness--gets tragically broken and pushed away.
So, let’s look at Jesus’ way of handling those times when relationships get fractured and how he suggests we handle it.
First, he says go one on one. I think it’s interesting that Jesus says that the one who is hurt, not the one who did the hurting, should make the first move. We, if we are hurt, are more comfortable just sitting and sulking, letting our hurt simmer. Letting it stew. Maybe that’s the very reason Jesus said that the one hurt should make the first move. So they don’t let their wounds grow bigger than they really are.
“If he listens...” Jesus says. What is he listening to? Your hurt. Your pain. How you are feeling. Your sense of what happened. The main objective is not blaming, but listening. It’s not about forming your next rebuttal while the other is talking. The offending one is the one who is supposed to listen. It is the offended one who is the one who gets to talk. The main goal, in Jesus’ words, of this listening is “making a friend” (“gained your brother,” RSV).
For Jesus, mending brokenness, becoming friends, is a deep part of the Christian spiritual life. Remember when he said, in the “Sermon on the Mount,” if you are at the altar, ready to offer your gift, and you realize that someone has something against you, what are you supposed to do? You’re supposed to leave your gift there, go make things right with that person, then come back and offer your gift. For Jesus, mending broken relationships is just as important (maybe more important) than worship. Or that mending broken relationships is part of your act of worship. Because how can you worship fully with anxiety and hurt in your heart? How can you approach worship with a heart loaded down with bitterness?
So, a primary step in creating depth and health in one’s soul, and life in worship, is measured by our willingness and ability to approach someone we are at odds with, one-on-one, and create friendship.
This is not an easy thing to do. I was reading an article on the Psychology Today website recently. The name of the article was, “Words That Wound.” The article outlined some of the ingredients necessary when you are talking to someone else about your sense of being hurt, and coming to understanding and friendship.
The first ingredient in working towards understanding is how accurately you interpret what the other person is saying. Emphasis is on the word interpret. It’s not about what you say, but about how closely you interpret what the other means when they are talking. Often it isn’t what the other person is saying that gets our knickers in a twist, but our interpretation of what they are saying. What we think they are meaning. In order for there to be understanding, we need to check out our interpretations with the other person. “Is this what you mean when you say that?”
Secondly, understanding grows when each person has the ability to be able to predict the impact of your own words. Again, it’s not about what you say, but knowing as accurately as possible how what YOU say will impact the listener. How well are you tracking with THEIR feelings, and how much do you care about their feelings?
The final ingredient in communicating with someone after being hurt is called “interpersonal cognitive complexity.” That’s a mouthful. What that is about is your ability to be able to express your feelings while at the same time having the ability to be able to process social cues (body language, tone, etc.) accurately. If I’m talking to (someone in the congregation) and while talking to her, I touch her shoulder, she has to interpret my touch accurately. She has to decide, “Is Steve being caring or is he coming on to me?” Some people don’t interpret those kinds of social cues well, and it causes fractures in their relationships.
But when you look at those three ingredients, they are very complex pieces of how healing can happen and relationships restored to a level of friendship. That’s why the one-on-one piece of Jesus’ advice is so difficult and probably why he suggested the next strategy: “If he won’t listen, take one or two others...keep things honest and try again.”
Jesus understands if you just put two people in a room and think they can reconcile their hurt, may be unrealistic for every case. Too often we are either unwilling or unable to heal our situations. Thus all the “judge” shows on TV these days. Isn’t it weird that we have turned our broken friendship pain into entertainment?
At this point, things have either hit an impasse, or they have escalated. There is no detail given by Jesus about what these others, who are dragged into the conflict are supposed to do. Maybe there were some traditionally Jewish rules of being a go-between amongst people in conflict. But nothing like that is detailed here by Jesus.
There’s a certain wisdom about NOT putting yourself in the middle of other people’s conflicts. You have to watch out not to get triangled with you at one point, and the other parties at the other points of the triangle. The one in the middle always gets squashed by the other two sides. If you find yourself in the middle, trying to be a go-between, it’s best to promote straight line communication. No bank shot communication off of someone but directed towards someone else. That only creates more layers of misinterpretations and misguided meanings.
Get the two conflicting sides together, rather than relay ping pong messages back and forth. It’s important that they be together and talk to each other. The go-between doesn’t take sides, but instead uses the tools I mentioned in the one-on-one strategy to help create understanding that can lead to friendship. As Jesus said, keep things honest and keep trying rather than throwing your hands up and giving up.
Lastly, Jesus says, if listening still doesn’t happen, “tell the church.” Bring the whole community in on it. By “the church” Jesus means the congregation. It’s interesting, and telling to me, that in speaking about moving two people from hostility to friendship, Jesus didn’t go any further than the local congregation. It tells me that Jesus trusted the more immediate people involved, rather than taking the conflict to a group or a committee, or a level outside (above) the local congregation.
So, the question is, how would you feel about listening to and helping resolve a squabble between people as a congregation, if it came to that?
Jesus closes out his comments with an oft quoted statement: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” That comment of Jesus is usually quoted when talking about praying or worshipping. But do you see what he was really getting at in the context of his teaching about reconciling friends? “When two or three come together (that is come together out of hostility and back into friendship) I am there.” When people get together and resolve their issues, that’s an indication of the presence of the Lord.
Conflict resolution isn’t about a contest of wills or posturing. It should be about taking responsibility, making sure we are listening as well as we can, elevating the value of the relationship to a place of higher importance than winning or even pushing what we think is the truth. It isn’t about judging and disciplining. It’s about reconciliation. It’s about coming together, healing our broken relationships with ourselves and others, and then celebrating the presence of Christ when that happens.
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