FIX, FORGIVE, FORWARD
Psalm 15
II Corinthians 1:23-2:11
Stephen Hamilton Wright
First Presbyterian Church, Wausau, Wisconsin March 7 2010
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If you are on a side in a church fight, you are on the wrong side. Anyone who chooses sides in a church fight chooses the wrong side. That doesn’t mean that we can never have disagreements, even debates and arguments. We have different ideas about goals, and different ideas how to get to the same goal. Differences are good, because they keep us from turning stagnant. When we handle them well, different opinions let us learn from each other and help us move forward together. But disputes must never be allowed to harden into sides or factions. We will not take part in parking lot meetings to complain about the official meeting that just finished indoors. There will be no off-the record phone calls, secret living room gatherings, anonymous letters, or sentences that start “A lot of people are saying . . .” None of that belongs in church, because the church of Jesus is about building up and growing together instead of beating down and driving apart. A faithful church does not fight with itself. Any side in a church fight is the wrong side.
Don’t be worried. Don’t worry. I’m not talking about anything happening here—at least not anything I know about! Not now, anyway. It’s true that there are people who get very agitated about how we manage our money, demanding on one side that we never spend anything from savings, and on the other that we should never let ministry opportunities be limited by predictable financial constraints. We have a few people on both sides who never miss an opportunity to press their point. From both sides, some of them attack me more or less publicly, and more or less directly, as if my salary or my leadership or lack of leadership were the only determining factors in this discussion, which of course is not true. But we do not have a major dispute, and as far as I can tell, we don’t have anything like the firmed-up factions Paul writes to in Corinth. Don’t worry. This isn’t about arguments we are having, at least not now.
Think about the bigger picture. Think about the picture of the whole church. This congregation has had fights in its past, some of them pretty painful. There was behavior from some leaders, including pastors, that was not handled very well, and some of the hurt is still here, or out in the community with people who left this congregation. We are neither the first nor the last to experience such things. We cannot tell exactly what happened in the early church in Corinth, because both the writer and the readers of the letters already knew the facts, which are not listed specifically. We can make some guesses, though. By reading the first chapter of Second Corinthians carefully, we can tell that Paul had planned two other visits to Corinth, and cancelled at least one of them. He wrote that it would have been too painful, because of the conflict between them at the time. It seems that because of that decision, someone in Corinth started name-calling. Maybe he said Paul was wishy-washy, or dithering, or a lightweight, and if they couldn’t trust him to follow through on plans, they shouldn’t trust his teaching or leadership, either. Maybe he objected to the amount of money it took to keep Paul coming around. Or perhaps the charge was that the Apostle set impossibly high standards and wasn’t connected with the real world of jobs, kids and getting food on the table. We don’t really know the content, but the context sure makes it look like an attack directed against Paul by one person that by implication attacked the whole community. If Paul was wrong, then the people supporting him were wrong, too. Conflict never happens in isolation. See the bigger picture.
You know that community is one of Paul’s big buttons. We read over and over about the unity of the body and the importance of community. He goes back to this main theme of building up community in the body of Christ. The one person who has caused so much pain is being punished somehow by the rest of the congregation, and Paul says it’s time to stop. Enough is enough. Whatever the offender said or did, the point about his error has been made, and now it is time to forgive, console and comfort—there is that word again—and yes, to love. You heard it here last week: that word console or comfort has the same root word as the name Jesus uses for the Holy Spirit in the Gospel of John. Paraklete can mean comforter, counselor or advocate. Paul is saying, in effect, ”Do the work of the Spirit.” The offender has been disciplined; the next step, to forward both his growth and yours is to reconnect him with the community. Bring him back in. Now, it is hard for a church to deal effectively with one or a few people who constantly criticize leadership, apparently unaware of how out-of-step they are and yet how damaging. It may be even harder to rehabilitate such people once they have gotten the message. Some habits die hard, after all. Can you trust that they aren’t still making behind-the-scenes phone calls, and talking the church down in public? But Paul tells the Corinthians to let the offender back in. Not only that: they are to show their own spiritual maturity by wrapping him in genuine love, so that the whole community will be stronger. Anything less means that evil still has the upper hand, keeping the community divided on a false pretext of justice. Don’t let the devil make you do it! Community is everything.
We are all about love. We know that Jesus says the two greatest commandments are love for God and love for neighbors. Our mission, our core, our main value is love that nurtures the whole body of Christ, always seeking to make that community bigger. Jesus came in love, not to build a mighty church with worldwide status, but to put people at peace with God and with each other. In a few minutes, we will share the communion meal that is the enduring sign of the Christ’s love. Communion is about community first of all. It is not something we do in private. Jesus told His disciples, “This is my body, which is for you.” That you was plural: you all, all of you together. In the sacrament we are reminded that we are His new body. The true resurrection of Christ, His new life in glory, is precisely in the faithful work and community of the church. We don’t always live that identity very well. Too often we reverse the equation, still expecting that church and faith are for our benefit, when the opposite is more true. We do try to serve each other here, to love and nurture and challenge and energize on e another, but that is not the end of the story. We welcome people here and try in various ways to charge up our batteries for the coming week SO THAT we can go out into the world with courage and goodness, resisting evil, supporting the weak and suffering, and honoring all people in the name of Jesus. We come so that the joy we feel in here can be contagious out there. Contagious Presbyterians—that’s an interesting concept, isn’t it? But that is the goal—to love so well and so enthusiastically, following the example of Jesus, that everyone around us wants to join the celebration. Our mission is to include more and more people in our circle. We want to spread joy as far as possible, and, of course, the feeling has to start right here. Love is our mission.
Love the world. Love each other. When we have problems or disagreements, fix them, forgive any injuries, and move forward. Stretch out the circle around Jesus. That’s our job.