Down to the Hard Work of Reconciliation – Part 3

Regardless of the precise meaning of Jesus’ instructions on how to progressively confront the unrepentant sinner in the body of believers, we are still left with the tax-collector-gentile conundrum: what on earth does Jesus mean when he says to treat the unrepentant one as a tax collector or Gentile?
The traditional interpretation over the centuries is that Jesus is instructing his followers to shun, to have nothing to do with, the one who will not repent.  

Is this what Jesus means?

Consider earlier in Matthew, as in Matthew 11.19, where Jesus is reproached, accused of being a drunk and a glutton who was a “friend to tax collectors and sinners” and in Matthew 9.10, where it is noted that “many tax collectors and sinners” came and ate with Jesus and his followers.  The Pharisees objected and Jesus replied, “those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.”

Maybe treating the unrepentant has nothing to do with shunning. 

It seems to have to do with expecting more rather than less from fellow believers (as we do with family).

But to treat the unrepentant as ‘tax collectors and Gentiles’ might well mean to treat them more gently rather than less. . . especially if we consider Jesus’ earlier statement that they are to be viewed as the ‘sick’ – as those with additional need for care, as those who require the help of a physician rather than the condemnation of a judge.

In practical terms, it might mean that you don’t put that person in a leadership position simply because they’re not up to the job.  But at the same time, you do continue to care for them. . . for as long as it takes – just like we do with the one who suffers a serious illness.

In 12-step programs, members learn a helpful slogan: I’m not a bad person trying to get good; I’m a sick person trying to get well.  Maybe Jesus is talking about going the distance with someone in great need of him – someone whose need is so great they cannot see it for themselves.

And maybe there does come a time when someone must be ejected from the fellowship with the hope that such an extreme measure will bring them to their senses, turn them around.

But I keep coming back to the witness of the desert fathers and mothers – early Christians who went into the desert and away from the cities in order to pursue more closely the life Jesus had called them to live.  Their stories are stories of extreme living, extreme sacrifice, extreme love – extreme Jesus.

Consider the time when a brother who had sinned was turned out of the church by the priest.  Abba Bessarion got up and went out with him, saying, "I, too, am a sinner."

In one monastery, if any committed a fault, many of the other brothers would seek the offending brother’s permission to take the matter to the abbot and to accept both the responsibility and the punishment.  When the abbot found out that his disciples did this, he inflicted easier punishments, in the knowledge that the one punished was actually innocent.  And he made no effort to discover the real culprit.

One brother leaves with the sinner, knowing himself to be a sinner too.  Others take on the punishment for the offender – like brothers and sisters do for each other all the time.

Maybe the tax collector-Gentiles among us are not the ones kicked out, but rather the ones held all the more tightly to, the ones we walk with because we recognize ourselves in them.

Maybe they’re the ones we make room for at the table for we are them.

Maybe as Jesus sees us, so we are to see them.  

Down to the Hard Work of Reconciliation - Part 2

In his sermon, Resentment and Forgiveness, Orthodox Priest Hieromonk Damascene says, “The Holy Fathers tell us that, in order to be reconciled to someone with whom we are at odds, the first thing we are to do is to accuse ourselves, not the other person. If we do not accuse ourselves, we will never find rest, and we will never make true and lasting peace with our neighbor. We will always be holding onto our pride.”

This is Jesus’ ‘step 1’ to reconciliation within the church body: if someone commits a wrong – against you or another*, go to them.  Speak privately.  Try to work it out between the two of you – and here’s the twist – beginning not with their wrong, but with your own.  In 12-step programs, that’s called looking at my part.

This is humility.  This is integrity.  And this is crucial to true reconciliation.

Only if that doesn’t work do you invoke the 1-2 other witnesses ‘clause’.  What do you suppose the point of the ‘witnesses’ is?  It certainly ups the ante to involve other people.

But it does something else as well that often gets overlooked: other people may have more objectivity.  They may actually see the other person’s point of view.  If there’s more to the story, the witnesses can bring that out.

Maybe both of you need to do some repenting.  Maybe not.  But having others present means this is no longer simply between the two of you and that has consequence for both parties.

What if even that does not work?  Well, then, you take it to the church – to the body as a whole.  Most interpret this to mean some sort of judicial process is initiated to excommunicate the offender – to kick them out of the body.

But is it?  Why else might we bring a matter to the attention of the entire body?

John Wesley sees Jesus’ method here as the means to avoid committing an offense in the first place: Wesley reasons that if we know this is the process and that it will occur regardless of our station in life, it operates as a disincentive for us to do wrong – much as knowing the fine for speeding and knowing that our local cop (yes, Duane, I mean you) always sits in that one certain place will prevent us from doing the speeding in the first place.

And maybe the invitation to take it to the body as a whole is driven by the body’s work of prayer – that is the very next thing Jesus mentions – recognizing that when the body prays, minds and hearts and lives are changed, truly changed.

Regardless of Jesus’ original intention, what both Wesley and the Genevan Reformers grasped that we seem to have forgotten is that the kingdom of heaven is not a courtroom drama.  Rather, it is a herculean effort by the God of All to reconcile humanity with God’s self – by avoiding human vengeance, by seeking to prevent sin before it has the chance to gain root.

And this God of loving restoration invites us to do likewise.


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*Some mss. say ‘against you’ while others simply say if a brother/sister ‘sins’

On Being Forgiven

To forgive ourselves is to step in to God’s reality . . . to relax in to God’s grace . . . to know ourselves to be forgiven by God Almighty and to accept that truth in every aspect of our lives.

That said, how do we forgive ourselves?  Or allow ourselves to be forgiven?

1. Take a good hard look at ourselves.  1 John 3.19-21 (The Message):  My dear children, let’s not just talk about love; let’s practice real love. This is the only way we’ll know we’re living truly, living in God’s reality. It’s also the way to shut down debilitating self-criticism, even when there is something to it. For God is greater than our worried hearts and knows more about us than we do ourselves.  And friends, once that’s taken care of and we’re no longer accusing or condemning ourselves, we’re bold and free before God!  If we’re carrying guilt, we need to take the time to face head on where the guilt is coming from – is it because we haven’t taken care of something we need to take care of?

2. Acknowledge that we are in need of forgiveness – this is confession – the admission that we have fallen short.  Leviticus 5.5 (NRSV)  When you realize your guilt, you shall confess the sin that you have committed.  To whom?  12-step programs recommend that we admit our specific failings to (a) God; (b) ourselves; and ( c ) another human being.  The point is to get honest – honest with God, honest with ourselves and lest we hold back with God or ourselves, that we lay it all before another trusted human being – someone who will hold us accountable in love

3. Open ourselves to receive God’s forgiveness.  2 Corinthians 5.17 (ESV)  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. Our job is to open ourselves to receive this truth and having received it, to live it, by not holding ourselves captive to the things we have done and by opening ourselves to a new way of living.

4. Expiation – the act of making amends for the wrongs we have done.  Numbers 5.6 (NRSV)  Speak to the Israelites: When a man or a woman wrongs another, breaking faith with the Lord, that person incurs guilt . . .  Biblically understood, guilt is that which requires payment to satisfy the wrong.  What does expiation or an amend look like?  It depends.  Sometimes it’s repayment.  This is the eye-for-eye mode of justice.  In day-to-day life, however, we are not often in the land of offering up our eyes.  But neither are we in the land of pretending nothing ever happened.  Our wrongs require our effort to restore to the other what was lost. The most genuine amend is the evidence of change – of not doing the thing again. Thus restorative justice has two parts:  (1)  as to the past, we restore to the other person what was lost, by apology, by returning to the extent we can what was taken, and so on; and (2) as to the future, we commit to a new way of being so the thing is not done again. [A side note: making amends always requires that we do no more harm than we already have.]

Expiation is the means by which we enter in to God’s redeeming grace in the day-to-day – not to earn our way into God’s good graces – we’re already there.  We really are already forgiven.  No – we expiate our sins, that is, we make amends for them, in order that we may become that new thing God created us to be.  Expiation is our co-work with Christ – Christ made us new from the cross; by daily making amends when we fall short, we live out the reality of our new-ness.

Guilt is a healthy thing – it is the immediate price we pay for having wronged others.  But it is not a penalty.  Rather, our feelings of guilt exist in order to prompt us to change – to redress the wrongs we have done and to foreswear doing them again. Guilt has a purpose.  Once the purpose has been met, the guilt goes away – when we are healthy.  When we cling to unhealth, we hold on to guilt long past the time when it serves its purpose.

To forgive ourselves or to fully embrace our God-given forgivenness, we have work to do – not to earn the forgiveness.  Rather, we atone, we make amends, precisely because we already were forgiven.  It is an act of ultimate gratitude, of thankfulness to God, that we can enter in to God’s grace that we would seek to make right that which we have done wrong.

How do we forgive ourselves?  How do we enter fully in to God’s forgiveness?  We do the work – we take a good, long, hard look at ourselves . . . we admit where we’ve fallen short – we admit it to God, we admit it to ourselves and to keep us honest and accountable, we admit it to another human being.  Then we make amends as and where we can, doing no harm to anyone else in the process.  And we surrender our guilt to God having done the very best we could, in thankfulness for Jesus’ own sacrifice that makes it possible for us to be forgiven in the first place.

Joe, Joe, What Did You Know?

I’m not much of a sports fan, but even I know Joe Paterno, the grandfather of college football, whose very name evokes his long-standing image of being the kind of coach you’d like your kids to have.

You know . . . paterno, sounding so much of paternal, or fatherly. But it turns out Paterno is a place name for a town with ancient roots in Sicily and that the name paterno comes from the Greek paeter, meaning fortress.

Given recent events, it is the image of the fortress rather than the protecting father that comes to mind.

The repeat of Mr. Paterno’s name in the title above is the cadence of the biblical lament . . . the signal of pain so deep that the words seeking to express the pain must be repeated. And it is pain that the nation is experiencing. . . the pain of disappointment and shock and disbelief . . . the pain of betrayal . . . the pain of looking in the mirror and not liking what we see.

Reflecting on the depth of pain expressed on the national stage, I am struck by the fortress image.

What causes otherwise good, kind, and even noble human beings to run and hide from ugly truths, particularly about people we like or revere?

Why is it so easy for some of us to believe the worst and for others so virtually impossible to believe anything but?

Why can we not take people as they are, sometimes noble and sometimes incredibly stupid, ignorant, frightened, and just plain wrong?

In June of this year, David McRaney posted an article on his blog You Are Not So Smart, a piece titled The Backfire Effect, the thesis of which is: When your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger.

In other words, contrary facts make us believe what we believe more rather than less.

Or stated even more simply, don’t bother me with the facts.

McRaney makes a strong case. I hope he’s wrong, which may simply be evidence of my own backfiring effect.

I hope McRaney is wrong, but his theory is the only explanation I have for the response of some to give Herman Cain more money and support in the face of not only allegations, but also two legal settlements of sexual harassment claims against him and for students marching in support of Joe Paterno in the face of his concealment, passive or active, of allegations of child sexual abuse by a colleague and subordinate.  Whether we like Mr. Paterno or not, under the circumstances, an honoring parade hardly seems appropriate.

Avoiding a rush to judgment is one thing; insisting that these things simply could not be true and attacking those making the allegations is quite another.

The truth the Backfire Effect seems to be getting at is this: it is easier to simply hold to our beliefs rather than to reexamine them. It is more comfortable to continue to believe that we are right rather than accept that our judgment might have been wrong. It feels more honorable to claim honor for those who do not deserve it rather than acknowledge that they and we are broken and sometimes simply cannot be trusted.

In 12-Step programs, the word for the phenomena is denial, the refusal to believe or accept that something is true because the believing and accepting would require some unwanted action on our parts.

In spiritual terms, the same word might apply. Denial protects us from having to do the hard work of being human together, of having to look at ourselves and each other with the divine love that would hold us accountable, knowing that that very accountability is itself an expression of great love.

By hiding in our national tendency to denial, it seems to me that we do ourselves, as well as others, a great disservice. And we get the questions that need asking wrong. The question to ask ourselves about Herman Cain is not, I submit, whether he did or did not sexually harass female colleagues. The question is whether someone who has settled two claims of sexual harassment (because that is the fact) is someone I want to be my president. Sexual harassment is the term we use for behavior that, when it moves from the verbal to the physical, is criminal. We can dress it up any way we like, but that’s what it is. 

In the situation of Joe Paterno, the question is not whether he is a good football coach or even a generally good and likeable man. The answer to both seems to be yes. But that is beside the point. The question is whether an employee of a college can continue to remain in his position after failing to notify legal authorities of allegations of child sexual abuse on the part of another employee of the institution. That answer is equally clear: no.

Isn’t it time we took seriously our duty to Truth to name things as they are? Isn’t it time we come out of the false paeter fortress of our own construction and into the arms of wisdom, knowledge, truth-telling, and courage that we might deal with the destruction we do singly and together?

Isn’t it well past time that we ask ourselves how it is that we have built a society together in which people believe themselves to be good and honorable while concealing the exploitation of children and settling claims that they sexually exploit those who work for them? 

Neither of these episodes represent good and honorable behavior.

Isn’t now the time to simply sit with the enormity of those realities and come to some answers about who we are and who we wish to be?

Isn’t it time?