Reconciliation

Peter, Paul and Mary had a memorable song called “Right Field.” It was about the common childhood experience of being chosen for a pick-up ball game. The team captains choose the best and most athletic kids first, so one finds out pretty quickly how one is regarded. Unlike the person in the song, I was never the last to be chosen, but I was pretty close to it. It’s not that I was uncoordinated or unathletic. I just didn’t care that much. I’d rather stand in the middle of the field and talk with a friend than pay attention to the game. That’s not what a team captain likes.

Being part of a group, even at the lowest level, is always important. It is how we are made as humans, to be in relationship with one another. We like to think that we are independent sorts, but in reality we need one another. This past week we saw an example of that in Vermont, a state full of independent people. When Hurricane Irene wiped out roads and isolated villages in the Green Mountains, the people in those towns got together and started fixing roads and cleaning up long before anyone “official” arrived. Eventually all will return to their scattered homes deep in the woods. But for a short time, at least, they worked together as a community. They know that’s part of their identity.

The Gospel reading for Sunday shows us just how important it is to be part of a community, particularly the community we call the Church. I’ve heard some say that this reading is all about forgiveness. I think it is more accurate to say that reconciliation is at its heart.

Suppose someone sins against you, Jesus says. The first thing you should do is go to that person yourself and point out the problem. He or she might listen to you, and if so, you have regained a friend. But if no listening occurs, next take along another person or two. After all, you may have misheard. Or it may be that part of the fault lies with you, and a neutral observer can see that. If it turns out that the offender refuses to listen to anyone, tell the church. If he or she refuses to listen to the church, “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

All of this sounds very awkward to our postmodern ears. After all, aren’t we supposed to respect everyone, even if we think they’re wrong? (Tell that to Congress!) Aren’t there many ways of being right? And how can we afford to turn people out when we want more to attend church?

Jesus wasn’t talking to postmoderns, of course, or even moderns. He was talking to people who were quite comfortable with the idea that there is one true church, and people are either in it or out of it. Even today some Christian groups operate that way. Some practice “shunning” – when someone is cast out of the group, no one will ever speak to or acknowledge them again. Shunning is based on that very verse: “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

I don’t think shunning is what Jesus had in mind. For one thing, the “you” is singular. It is not the plural “you” of the whole church; it is the “you” who originally went to talk one-on-one with the offender. And treating a person as a total outcast is to act as ancient Jews did toward Gentiles and tax collectors. It is not the way of Jesus, who ate with tax collectors. Matthew himself, we are told, was one of them. And by the end of Matthew’s Gospel, the apostles will be told to make disciples of all nations – all Gentiles. It’s hard to make a disciple of someone you’ve shunned.

Maybe that’s the point. An unrepentant sinner is an outsider, but not beyond reconciliation. He or she is not destined to remain outside permanently. The community must have boundaries, if it is to have any integrity, any clarity of belief. Yet those boundaries are not so solid that reentry is impossible.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu after the collapse of apartheid in South Africa is the best illustration I know of what Jesus was saying. During weeks of testimony, those in the former government who had committed atrocities confessed what they had done, in the presence of their former victims. It came with a tremendous emotional cost, as Archbishop Tutu vividly describes. But the reward was greater. For telling the truth, the torturers received reconciliation with the community that had thrown them out.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is far from the light-hearted “Right Field” song. Yet both spring from the same basic human need to belong. Without other human beings, we are lost. We may do things that cause us to lose community, but no one is ever beyond reconciliation. That is true for individuals as well as the church. Is there someone formerly in your church who needs to hear from you? Someone in your own life who needs your reconciliation?


[Pentecost 12: Matthew 18:15-20.]