Accountability and Forgiveness: Part I

Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20
September 4, 2011

The passages from the gospel of Matthew this week and next deal with two very related subjects: accountability and forgiveness. Today we are given a model for how to respond when you feel wronged by someone, and next week Jesus will answer the question, “How many times should I forgive someone?” One way to look at this is to say that the first passage is about how to hold one another accountable and the next passage is about forgiving people. But, that would be a misreading. Given that these two passages are only separated by our lectionary – not in the text itself – we must assume they are both about accountability and forgiveness together.

Which makes sense, because any discussion of one without the other is an inadequate discussion to say the least. Forgiveness without accountability is not only empty, it leads to terrible outcomes. It can encourage, for example, people to stay in abusive relationships – forgiving each abuse without requiring the abuser to change their ways, because it’s the Christian thing to do.

Accountability without forgiveness leads to rigid legalism and a world without empathy or compassion for the human condition. It is the birth of grudges and bitterness, and often when accountability without forgiveness is practiced, it is full of misuses of power.

So, while it might be nice and neat, I am not going to talk about accountability this week and forgiveness next week. Instead, lucky you, you are going to get two sermons on accountability and forgiveness: This week will be about how a community of people – i.e. the church – should function when someone has acted in a hurtful way. Next week we will look at accountability and forgiveness in cases where forgiveness seems out of reach and maybe even unjustified.

So this week – how Christians should deal with sins, hurts and disagreements within the community of the faithful. Now, when I say “sin,” I don’t mean murder or rape – that’s next week. But neither do I mean disagreements over the color of carpets in church sanctuaries. When Matthew takes up the issues of accountability and forgiveness within the church, he is looking at cases where something has been done or happened that truly threatens to tear at the fabric of the community in question. He addresses situations that might lead to divisions in the church – even to people leaving the community. And such things do arise within churches – ours and others. It’s pretty much a universal reality. There are disagreements about how to use resources, disagreements about what the faithful course of action is. At times we feel betrayed by someone. And, at times, usually inadvertently, we hurt one another.

Matthew, through the voice of Jesus, is recommending to the church community a process for settling such things. When you feel someone has wronged you, he says, you first go to that person and see if you can settle things between you. If that doesn’t work, the two of you go to one or two other people – a neutral third party to settle things. Finally, if that doesn’t work, then the whole church community is to be consulted.

I know this is going to come as a huge shock to you – community is hard. True community. Community that goes beyond surface level. Community that really tries to be honest, faithful, deep, and whole – is at times really hard. We all say we want community, but we rarely talk out loud about how hard it is.

One of the things that plagues most Christian communities (and other communities no doubt) is the inability to handle confrontation, disagreement and our mutual accountability when it comes to sin or hurt or disagreement. And this is because all of us are sinners. Pointing out hurtful behavior in another is really hard because it’s almost always on some level hypocritical. We have all hurt others. We’ve all made mistakes. What gives us the right to point out the speak in someone’s eye when we have logs in our own. Being honest about difficult things also makes us vulnerable to the same treatment…if we’re going to hold others accountable for their actions, then we have to expect the same – and this is scary. Often our preference is to abide by an unspoken pact: If I don’t point out your shortcomings, then you don’t point out mine.

This passage is about how to be in community even though we all are human – all sinners. So, how do sinners confront one another? How do we hold each other accountable? How do we practice forgiveness when people get hurt and when we encounter destructive behavior?

I think this passage gives us four principles we can follow: Be honest, be humble, get help, and forgive.

First, gather your courage and try being honest. Even though it’s hard, even though it’s probably hypocritical, even though it makes us vulnerable, we still need to do it. Because, as Matthew knows, to not do this means a community is un-reconciled – silence in the face of disagreements either leads to divisions sustained by bitterness, to a lack of intimacy and closeness, or to outright fracture and dissolution of relationships. It does take courage to go to someone who hurt you and tell them so. Of course it does. But if we really do want community – Christian community that reflects the realm of God, then we have to take the risk and be honest with one another.

Second, if you are going to be honest – if you are going to confront someone – be humble. Issues of disagreement and wrongdoing are rarely cut and dried. Yes, there are some obvious cases of evil in this world. But, most of the time, though we might think someone is responsible for their actions of wrongdoing, it almost always “takes two to tango,” so to speak. Nuance matters.

We can never approach another without remembering that we too are sinners. We have likely done the exact thing we accuse another of. And, if someone has hurt us, there is a fair chance that we are not entirely blameless. Humility is essential.

Even when we have courage and are honest, and even if we’re humble, the third important principle is that the community helps. This passage is less about the two parties involved in the dispute and more about how a community should function together. It’s about helping one another work through really hard and complicated things that come up when we are in relationship with one another – so that we might be reconciled to one another, not separated.

Each step of the process for Matthew brings in more people from the community. When the two people involved can’t agree, they turn to others as witnesses – not of the original wrongdoing – but of the process. The witnesses we’re talking about can’t adjudicate the offense – they weren’t witnesses of that. Instead, they are witnesses to the process. By witnessing the process between the two people, they help guide them to reconciliation rather than division.

The bottom line is: When we can’t agree – we often need help sorting it out because things are complicated – rarely black and white. And in the church, we get help sorting it out using God’s love and grace as the model – which brings us to the fourth principle: When we’re honest, when we’re humble and when the community helps shepherd the process, the goal – the end result – is forgiveness and reconciliation.

Reconciliation is the basis and priority of this whole passage. In the first interaction between the two parties, we see that the point is to win back a brother or sister…to become reconciled to our fellow Christians in community. That’s the goal…that’s the goal all along. This comes right after the parable of the lost sheep – the parable that says you never give up on keeping people in your community. And it comes right before Jesus says you should forgive someone 490 times. This is not just about accountability, but about forgiveness as well.

Sadly this passage has been used as a literal model for a process that leads to ex-communication for recalcitrant members. I have seen this happen first hand with devastating effects. We don’t even have to go outside this passage to realize it’s not about excommunication of people who just won’t admit what they did was wrong. We need only look at the brilliant, possibly humorous twist at the end of the instructions: the very last thing Jesus says is that if the person who you believe wronged you does not give in, treat them as a gentile or tax collector…and we all know how Jesus treated tax collectors and gentiles – heck, we know Matthew was a tax collector. So this is not a play-by-play for excommunication. When all is said and done, Jesus says, “When you have tried, when the small group has tried, when the whole church has tried, and someone still doesn’t get it, still doesn’t admit it or apologize, love them anyway – even if you don’t want to. Forgive.

It’s radical, actually, to believe so strongly in reconciliation. Remembering that we aren’t talking about egregious things, prioritizing reconciliation over being right, being affirmed, being justified, is pretty hard for most of us. Our instinct is to sever ties or distance ourselves from someone when we get hurt or when someone disagrees with us and won’t back down. When our pride has been dented, we don’t feel particularly compelled to reach out to the one who dented it and invite them back into community. But that’s what Jesus did and that’s what we are called to do. It’s not always possible – sometimes it’s more hurtful to try to stay together than to separate. But, reconciliation should always be the ideal – the goal.

This passage ends with some powerful statements about communities that follow these principles. Jesus follows all this with talk about the power of agreement, saying that anything that is agreed upon by two on earth will be done for them by God in heaven. But notice that this is not where Jesus ends. Jesus says, "where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them." There is no question of agreement at this point. Christ is present, really present, where two or three are gathered in the Divine Name, not just where two or three agree in Jesus' name, but where two are three are gathered; presumably this includes the two who cannot listen to each other about a matter of sin, and how to handle it. Even there, perhaps especially there, Christ is present.

When we come to this table, when we gather together around this table – we come as sinners, we come as people who have at times hurt one another, disagreed… we come as an imperfect community. But we gather, and so we meet Christ…and that encounter compels us to allow the divisions to fall away and leave only our oneness is Christ. The bread is broken to symbolize how we approach the table, but we share one loaf, a common cup, to symbolize that in Christ we are made whole – not just as individuals, but as a community. Then, assured of that wholeness, we can, with great humility and the help of the community, be honest with each other in ways that deepen our relationships, deepen our faith and bind us ever more closely in the love and grace of God. Amen.