May 15, 2005 Sermon

Go to Your Brother
Matthew 18:15-20

The Green Bay Packers were a legendary football team in the 1960’s. They played for a hall-of-fame coach, Vince Lombardi. They won the first two Super Bowls. The Packers of that era ran the sweep, a very simple play, to perfection. It made All-Pros out of three running backs: Paul Horning, Jim Taylor and Donnie Anderson. But none of these men could have received such fame had it not been for the men working in front of them, the linemen blocking and clearing the way.

Hoagy Carmichael wrote the song I Get Along Without You Very Well. Jane Russell sang it in the 1960 movie, The Las Vegas Story, supposedly to a boyfriend with whom she had just broken up. It has lines like “I get along without you very well . . . except to hear your name, or someone’s laugh that is the same.” It comes across in the movie as a sweet little moment of regret. But unless you know what caused the writing of the song you cannot understand it. Jane Brown Thompson wrote the lyrics as a poem in memory of her dead husband. In reality, its message is that nobody who grieves really does get along without their lost loved one very well.

Far too often we presume we understand things without understanding what went into them. We just read a passage from the Gospel of Matthew in which Jesus seemingly tells his followers to confront their fellow believers whenever they have given offense. But we cannot understand Jesus’ teaching without understanding what he said in front of it (or behind it, for that matter).

We read from the middle of Matthew 18. At the start of this chapter a disciple, a follower of Jesus who ought to have known better, asked him, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven ?” Jesus drew a little child to him and said, “Unless you turn and become like children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” Unless we become childlike we cannot enter the presence of God. Unless we have childlike faith and humility we cannot know God.

At the end of Matthew 18 Peter, who ought to have known better, asks Jesus how many times he has to forgive his brother (his fellow Christian). Jesus tells him seven times seventy. He does not literally mean 490 times; instead, he means that his followers must forgive endlessly. Taken together the start and end of Matthew 18 tell us that Jesus calls upon his followers to be humble, faithful and forgiving. Do not forget this as we return to our passage. Humble, faithful and forgiving. Humble, faithful and forgiving.

In Matthew 18:15-20 Jesus tells his followers how to handle sinful behavior that injures relationships. “If your brother sins against you go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone.” (Jesus clearly refers to sisters as well as brothers.) When a fellow Christian hurts you with sinful behavior first go to him or her and deal with it privately.

Sadly, going straight to the person who has hurt us is often the last thing we try. Usually, our first move is to talk about them behind their backs. In the first church I served I dreaded the weekly staff meetings. The four pastors and all the support staff would gather around a large conference table and gossip. I mean, we talked about everybody. I could tell you stories, but then I would be talking about these people behind their backs, too! I once decided to try to use the second hand on my watch to measure how much time we spent gossiping vs. doing actual staff work. I do not recall the result but my impression is it was about 50-50.

Go and deal privately with the brother or sister who has sinned against you. But what if it blows up in our faces? What if they get angry? What if it makes them talk about us even more—and with even worse things to say? Well, what of it? If we do not try to follow Jesus’ command nothing good will result. If we do try, and try with faith, humility and forgiveness, we have a chance of restoring the relationship. As Jesus put it, we “regain our brother”.

If the private approach fails, Jesus calls upon us to try taking along a couple of witnesses. We need to stop right there. Remember, the purpose is to forgive, not to defeat; to restore, not to destroy. I have seen churches try sending elders along on these personal visits. At times it has failed; at times, it has worked beautifully. Surely the difference must have come partly from the attitude of the visiting delegation. Was it humble, faithful and forgiving? One group in a church I previously served went with the former wife in a brand-new divorce to visit her ex-husband. They called ahead to let him know what they were up to. They negotiated carefully to set the ground rules for who would speak and how (lovingly or not at all). It worked. The couple did not remarry, but they did stop fighting through their children and the church.

Finally, Jesus tells us we can shun people who have resisted the first two attempts at healing. Frequently we skip ahead to this step. We make no attempt at all to restore broken relationships. Instead we stay at a safe distance and take pot shots at each other. It looks safer, but in reality this habit causes far more damage to us, to those with whom we used to walk together with Christ, and to whatever family we belonged to together. It destroys marriages, families and churches.

Whenever I preach on a topic like this somebody asks me if I know of conflict in the church. I always answer yes. Sure the church is in conflict. Every church has some conflict, all the time. But I preach this message today not to address a specific conflict in this church. I preach this message because Jesus preached it, and because we need to hear it again and again if we hope to continue to have a church worth having.

I have reached the point in my life where I no longer wish to waste time on any church unless it is making a serious effort to act like Jesus calls it to act. Life is too short. The spiritual life is too sweet to miss. We could do what so many families and churches do: pretend we have peace, keep it all up on the surface, be nice, take no risks, die slowly but content because, after all, we all worked so hard to keep all the groups and services and programs running. And silently agree to ignore the fact that we lost all our humility, faith and forgiveness somewhere along the way.

But I cannot accept this approach to living together in the Body of Christ. This congregation is only eight years old, a mere baby of a church. Until now we have done a fair job of trying to heal divisions. Our elders have only recently brought healing to a broken relationship within our fellowship. But we have also managed to ignore some trouble along the way. We have lost members because we have not responded with faith, humility and forgiveness when they have let us know they hurt because I and/or our church have hurt them.

Let’s put a stop to this. Let’s become very intentional, very proactive about restoring broken relationships. Let’s find our courage in prayer to go to our brothers and sisters and seek forgiveness—in both directions. Let’s put Jesus’ commands into action. When a brother or sister sins against you, have the courage and the integrity to go to him or her for healing. Go with humility, faith and forgiveness.

And when a brother or sister comes to you, confess your fault and seek to be forgiven.

Jesus puts radical, difficult, even impossible demands on us. This demand that we go to our brothers and sisters and deal directly with any hurt we have inflicted on each other is scary and hard. But it is worth it. The peace of Christ is always worth it—especially in the Body of Christ.