At some point, I will stop living my life out of a suitcase. I spent the first few days of September at the Full and Equal Conference celebrating 50 years of LGBTQIA+ inclusion in The Episcopal Church.
Of course, anyone who has followed this blog for any period of time will know that the story of our inclusion has not necessarily been full, and in some parts, far from equal. Thankfully, the organizers emphasized repeatedly that "this conference is not a victory lap, but a next leg of the race."
It also came right at the moment when the wider liturgical church community had some important verses assigned from the Gospel of Matthew that fit with the theme of truth-telling. Because I was on such a time crunch and did NOT want to drag my laptop with me to Minneapolis, I wrote my sermon ahead of time....with the full expectation that what happened would happen: namely, I needed to do some revision and rewrite very early Sunday morning.
Here's the result. See what you think.
Text: Matt 18:15-20
There’s a prayer in our Prayer Book
credited to the Fourth Century Bishop John Chrysostom.
It contains the line that “when two or
three are gathered together” in Jesus’s name, Jesus “will be in the midst of
them.”
And to that…we say Thanks be to God!
Because in my experience when two or
three people get together in the church…there’s liable to be conflict.
Conflict is just part of human nature.
We come from different backgrounds…with
our different histories…different ideas of how to solve problems…all informed
by the way we live and move in the world.
So some level of conflict is
inevitable…not just in the church but in life.
How we handle it…and keep it from
unnecessarily going from zero to 60 … is the focus of what we just heard from
Jesus.
Our Gospel lesson this morning is often
labeled in Bibles as Jesus talking about “Church Discipline.”
Not the type of discipline that is like "getting whacked on the knuckles with a ruler" discipline.
But what we hear Jesus recommending… is
a process that is grounded in mercy for both the person who was injured and
offended AND the person who has committed the injury and offense.
It’s more like reconciliation…and
repairing the gap that’s occurred in a relationship.
It’s also nothing new for the community
Jesus was talking to back in the First Century.
I’ve said it before: we have to remember that the people in the Gospels…unless they are identified
otherwise…are all Jewish.
And so the disciples in the story…and
even those who were hearing the Matthew Gospel read to them back in the
beginnings of the Christian movement… understood that Jesus was referencing the moral holiness codes of Leviticus and
Deuteronomy…and putting them into practice.
They understood that it wasn’t healthy
to harbor hatred and resentment toward someone who did them wrong…and that if
the matter was serious…it was important to have more than the testimony of just
one witness to what happened. Otherwise, it could lead to someone getting
falsely accused.
To illustrate the importance of this
point…in the verses right before today’s reading…Jesus talks about children…the
most vulnerable and innocent among us.
Children…like widows… represent the
powerless…the ones who depend upon the kindness of strangers…to protect them
from exploitation and cruelty.
Then Jesus drives home this point with
the story of the shepherd…who notices that one of his flock has gone missing.
The shepherd leaves the 99 on the
mountain side to go find that one and bring them back into the fold.
It’s not that the other sheep don’t
matter to the shepherd.
But what Jesus wants them…and us… to
understand is that when it comes to living in community…all members…especially
the least…the lowest…the lost…the overlooked…are important and must be
included.
And it’s essential that when conflict
arises…for a community to remain a thriving living…breathing… example of God’s
loving kindness…God’s mercy… there is a way to go about addressing the
issue…that protects everyone…and offers a means of making amends without
causing more harshness and injury.
It's about restoration…reconciliation…
…and giving grace for all voices to be heard.
It’s about telling the truth.
And that’s what makes this particular
discipline challenging.
Because truth-telling takes honesty…and
a willingness to listen to those who are the vulnerable…without making excuses
or cutting off the dialogue.
I just got back last night from a
conference in Minneapolis where the Episcopal Church did some truth-telling
around the treatment of the LGBTQIA community.
While our church is now standing on the
other shore from outright rejection of the queer community…it didn’t happen
without conflict and a lot of hard work.
And it has taken us fifty years to live
into the promise that was made in 19-76 to the LGBTQIA community...a promise issued by the whole church, that quote:
“...homosexual persons are children of God who have a full and equal claim with all other persons upon the love, acceptance, and pastoral concern and care of the Church.”
That simple sentence led to years of
conflict…with steps forward…and many steps backward...and more lurches forward.
And…despite what some have tried to
argue…it was all Gospel-based hard work.
Gospel-based hard work that grew out of
the equally hard…Gospel-grounded work of the church accepting the idea that
women could be ordained as priests in the church.
The same work that’s found in our
baptismal covenant…when we talk about seeking and serving Christ in ALL
persons…ALL persons.
Not just persons who are just like us.
And respecting the dignity of every
human being.
That’s hard work….and it’s on-going
work.
And I think this is some of what has
been tripping us up in this country...our reluctance to do hard...truth-telling work.
Throughout our history…there have been
many histories.
But too often the stories told by the
least…the lowest…the overlooked…get pushed aside.
Sometimes…just our basic understanding
of major events…the things we were taught in school.. depends on where you were
growing up in the country.
I was shocked in my senior year of high
school in New England when I learned from my sociology teacher…a native of
South Carolina…that the war fought in this country between 1861-1865 was not
“The Civil War” as I had been taught.
It was “the War Between the States”
because…as she told us…South Carolina’s Education Department declared that
there was “nothing ‘civil’ about it.”
I’m not going to argue that war is
“civil”…but when we can’t agree that the reason the North and the South fought
one of our most deadly battles was about slavery of black people…we’re not
being honest.
If we can’t teach our children that the
years following that war were marked by broken promises and more violence…we
are only doing further injury… not just to the memory of those who were
enslaved and their ancestors…
Not telling the truth also injures those
of us who are white who are descended from the perpetrators and as well as
those who witnessed the violence.
It traps all of us in a skewed version
of history…where the truth is buried and the hurt is allowed to keep growing.
And it prevents us from reaching the
desired outcome: restoration with the possibility of forgiveness.
This is the very thing Jesus’s
instruction is getting to when he talks about treating the one who refuses to
listen even to the church to as a “Gentile and a tax collector.”
He’s not saying to kick them out…but as
professor Aaron Gale notes…these are the ones who need more instruction…more
remediation.
They’re the toughest nuts to
crack…but….like that lost sheep…we must keep looking for the way to bring them
back…and accept that they have done wrong so that the breech can be
repaired…and open the way for healing and even forgiveness.
Can you imagine if this were the way our
justice system operated?
Actually…some have imagined it.
There was a woman I knew in
Tallahassee…a retired nurse and social justice advocate named Agnes Furey.
Agnes had a daughter named Pat.
Pat loved animals and gardening and
helping people.
But she also had an addiction to
alcohol.
For a time…Pat’s youngest
child…Christopher…lived with Agnes while Pat was in rehab.
And it was in her addiction recovery
program that she met a man named Leonard Scovens.
Agnes felt uneasy about this
relationship…but Pat insisted to her mom that Leonard needed help.
Scovens murdered Pat and Agnes’s six
year-old grandson.
And as you might imagine…that loss was
devastating.
Agnes was rightfully angry and deeply
wounded.
And after some time….she did the
extraordinary: she wrote Leonard Scovens a letter in prison.
He wrote her back…a dismissive letter
apparently…which infuriated Agnes.
So she wrote to him again.
And gradually…as they corresponded back
and forth…Agnes learned more about the broken and dysfunctional childhood that
had helped to create Leonard into an anti-social human capable of murdering her
daughter and grandson.
And Leonard saw in Agnes a
soft-spoken…kind-hearted…and tough as nails woman…who wasn’t going to let him
off the hook…and that he had hurt her in a tragic and brutal way.
The story is not so much about Agnes
forgiving Leonard…or Leonard having some great kum-by-yah moment with his
victims’ mother.
But they found a type of peace in
knowing each other more fully...in the space between them.
For Agnes…it freed her from the anger
that was burning inside of her.
For Leonard…it freed him to feel what
Love really looks like for the first time in his life.
And their letters and stories are in a book called, "Wildflowers in the Meridian."
This is what restorative justice looks
like.
And this is the world that God imagines
for all of us.
One in which we will do the hardest work
of them all:
Telling the truth.
Loving our neighbors as ourselves…and
respecting the dignity of every human being.
That’s our work. That’s the example we
can give to others.
In the name of our One Holy and
Undivided Trinity.
