After reading today’s Gospel story, I think I have a better idea now where my daycare mom got her ideas for conflict management with a dozen of us kids running around. I went to someone’s house every day for daycare growing up and I loved it; she really was like a bonus mom to us. And, I remember her setting some high standards for us and how we were to behave. It’s not that she didn’t care, it’s just when managing a dozen kids between the ages of 1 year old and 10 years old, she had to help us learn to be a bit more independent.
If we got into an argument with someone, we were supposed to work it out. Whether that was learning how to share toys or helping those around us be safer…although, if I’m being honest, I needed a lot of help with the last one. We were told that she needed to know if there was blood or broken bones, but otherwise she empowered us to work on situations by ourselves. Now, this didn’t work out most of the time, but it was a valiant effort! Honestly, I feel like the results were probably pretty similar in Jesus’ time too.
In our Gospel today, Jesus is beginning his teachings about how the disciples are supposed to live amongst one another, especially after he is gone. He doesn’t explicitly say this last part, but it is pretty clear that Jesus is doing what he can to prepare the disciples for when he won’t be around, especially because there will likely be a rise in conflicts among them in the days and years following his death, as they will each have different ideas for how they should proceed. So, Jesus is out here instructing the disciples what to do if they have a conflict with one another.
Now, for the most part, this is actually pretty good advice. If you have a problem with someone, bring it to them first. Don’t go around telling so-and-so that this person did something to upset you, but talk to the person directly. Now, this part is great in theory, except when we read it today, we have to read it within the context of our social structures and the power/authority that different people are given. The reading today really only addresses people of equal standing, but it doesn’t tell us anything about how to respond if this is a person who has more social power than we do, like a boss for example. It doesn’t consider gender or socio-economic differences or age differences either. But, overall, the principle is still a good one to follow if at all possible, especially in the midst of community living.
The reading continues with how to respond if that person will not listen to you, i.e. bring a few more people with to witness, and I’m sure help mediate the conversation. If that doesn’t work, take it to the larger church, etc. Again this principle applies well to small congregations like ours, but I don’t know how to translate it to some of the larger congregations of our world today. In the time around this reading though, the churches would have still been small, often gatherings in people’s houses. And, not only was unresolved conflict bad for the emerging community, but it could also potentially be dangerous because this was still the time when churches were being persecuted.
The other piece about this that confuses me a bit is that Jesus is talking to the disciples about church communities here, except our understanding of churches hadn’t really been established yet. After all, Jesus was Jewish and went to synagogue. The church didn’t really begin until after Jesus’ death and resurrection, so either this has to do with when the book of Matthew was written and translated, or Jesus is preparing the disciples for things that they don’t even know about yet. Both of which seem like possibilities to me. But, I do find it a little odd to think about.
Either way, these examples of how to solve conflict are a helpful framework to begin. Like I said, this won’t be perfect for every situation today, nor should it be used for every situation today as some things need to go to higher authorities, but really it is about empowering communities to be in relationship with one another and to try to solve problems at the local level. It would be like if one of you had a problem with another and instead of talking to each other about it first, you called Bishop Eaton’s office. You probably wouldn’t get a response….
Yet, Jesus doesn’t necessarily just leave the disciples to figure it out for themselves. Instead, he says, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there in their midst” (Matthew 18: 20). Now, not only is this a comforting phrase for most people, but I think it also gets to the point that they tried to teach us in Seminary about how Christ mediates our relationships. I had a hard time understanding exactly how this works because it’s easy to think of Jesus being like an actual mediator in the room as we might see in the example of our court system. But, instead it was described in class as seeing other people through the lens of Christ.
Okay, well that doesn’t really clear it up either, until we think more about what that means. In a sense, it means seeing someone as Christ would see them, not as we would see them. Christ would see them as a beloved child of God for whom he was willing to die, whereas it is a lot easier for us to see other people for their faults and failures. This is not to say that there aren’t consequences for the way that people behave, but it changes the way that we relate to one another if we at least try to see each other more in this way than only by their failings.
And, as I was saying, there are still consequences. Even in today’s reading, Jesus says that if people don’t listen, treat them like a tax collector or a Gentile (Matthew 18: 17). While this is pretty exclusive language from Jesus, it is important to know that for the well-being of the community, sometimes people cannot stay. I was explaining the other day at Bible study that it actually kind of connects to Paul’s writings about being one body together. Because, sometimes things happen in our body due to illness or injury that require removal. Usually, everything in our power is done to heal that part first, but sometimes, no matter how hard a decision that may be, something needs to be removed for the well-being of the rest of the body. This helps us to understand why not everyone can remain a part of the community, especially if their actions are causing harm and they are unwilling to change. Because, ultimately, church should be a safe place for people to gather and be themselves, and it is heartbreaking and infuriating when others have caused church to be a place of harm and abuse.
So, while our Gospel reading is rather short today, it is full of guidance for how to live and be in community with one another. And, not just be in community, but how to be a healthy community. I know that these principles won’t work for all situations, but like my daycare mom did for us, it is empowering us to improve the community for everyone’s sake. While Jesus doesn’t promise the absence of conflict, in fact he essentially promises the opposite, may we communicate with one another in love for the sake of the whole community so that we are able to grow together.