Chasms, Rifts, and Brokenness

 The Holy Gospel According to St. Matthew, the 18th Chapter

“If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

These days you can’t turn on the TV without someone accusing someone else of something horrible.  But as tempting as that is, these three lessons remind us that, at least for Ezekiel, Paul and Jesus, the “act” itself, while bad, now lies in the past and therefore can not be un-done.  However, the rift, the separation, the fracture in relationships which the act created between you and another person, the community, or God...  THAT part is still in the present, and so THAT is the part we are called to work on and repair.   

In Bible times that was a practical, life or death necessity. Living apart from others, you just didn’t have the things you needed… like food and shelter to survive. In Bible times we needed each other to just stay alive! Today we hear that idea and think, “Well, that was then! I can do it all myself now!” The trouble with that idea is that it’s not true!  The last six months have horrifically and graphically demonstrated to the world how not-true that really is! People are discovering once again, that “alone” and “living only for myself” still literally leads to death and even today continues to be NOT how God created us to live. It has been one of the horrible aspects of this pandemic that we are having to re-learn this truth even though it’s been around since Bible times:  That we’ve ALWAYS been and always will be, deeply dependent on one another for life. That’s not a flaw. That’s not a shortcoming. That’s the way God created us to be! We have been designed and loved into being to be interdependent… to live in relationship… to need each other.... to sacrifice for one another... to live in community… together.

That's why the first lesson, the psalm, the second lesson and the gospel all tell us how to do that… how to live together and how to confront sin and repair the rifts that inevitably happen between individuals, between communities and between us and the One who loved us into being. The key, it turns out, is love. Not a Hallmark Channel, blurry camera lens, sappy sort of love. Not a Poker Buddies or a Cosmos with Friends kind of love either. But the kind of love which compels us from the depths of our bones, to creatively put ourselves in the other’s shoes, listen deeply to our neighbors, and imagine life in their skin.  Then, show up and do the hard and sacrificial work of love.... which means thinking about and then doing what is in the other’s best interest.

This is the kind of love where owning up to the hurt we have done as individuals, or the hurt we have inflicted as part of a community or system is only the beginning. The real work comes on the heals of that very difficult honesty, when we must work relentlessly to find ways to come back together and rebuild… or maybe build for the very first time… a healthy, honest, genuinely mutual relationship with the person, community, or Divinity with which our actions have created a rift. This is the kind of love that speaks hard truths… holds each other to account… sets clear, firm boundaries… and offers healthy, humble, honest, and mutually respectful ways to return. It is the sort of love that demands truth AND reconciliation.  It is the sort of love that is determined to be relentless until it has both.

To do that, Jesus calls us to treat those who seek to dig the world’s rifts deeper as he treated tax collectors and gentiles. He saw them. He sat with them. He talked with them. He ate with them. He leaned into this hardest sort of work, offering a Way toward truth AND reconciliation.  He did all he could… including sacrificing his life for them… to heal the rifts and restore the community to wholeness so there would be life for all.

But don’t be fooled. This in no way makes Jesus or those who follow his ways a pushover! He never simply let those who were hurting others, lying, oppressing the weak, cheating the poor, or dividing the people off the hook. He was even known to lead protest marches riding on a colt into the capital city, confront the corrupt Roman government’s lies to the point they confessed “what is truth” and he even wrecked other people’s property, turning over tables in an attempt to get the people who were breaking the world apart to SEE what they were actually doing! But Jesus also never gave up hope that the people who were digging a new bottom for the world each day might one day wake up and those relationships could begin to be repaired.

Personally, I find that “Jesus Way” of living to be hard on the best days. When I turn on the TV and see the death, the hate cranked up past 11, generations of service members including a member of my own family buried in the cemetery at Belleau Wood, called “losers” and “suckers”, I find living the “Jesus Way” incredibly hard!  Even when I manage to let go of trying to fix the world and just focus locally it’s still really hard!  Even when I try to just fix me, it’s hard!  I suppose that’s why many are hesitant to even begin.  And yet this is the work to which we are called. Not to fix the whole world at once. (unless you have the power to do that, because then you should TOTALLY DO THAT!) But to come together as best we can in groups as little as two or three and trust that even as imperfect humans, Christ is there with us guiding us in a Way where captives are set free, exiles are brought home, and life is brought out of death.... Guiding us in ways we have never imagined before to inject kindness, love and healing into the world.  God’s done it before you know? Given hope to the hopeless. Healing to the sick. Justice to the oppressed. Food to the hungry. Water to the thirsty. That’s what our God does!  It is God's ongoing promise... to be with us and guide us with a light more powerful than any darkness.  May we come together, with Jesus among us, and bravely begin anew each day the healing our world so desperately needs.  Amen.