Sermon for Sunday, February 12th 2023

Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany [Proper 6], rcl yr a, 2023
DEUTERONOMY 30:15-20; PSALM 119:1-8; 1 CORINTHIANS 3:1-9; MATT. 5:21-37

be reconciled

A number of years ago in my home province of Manitoba, there was a dispute between two Hutterite colonies about a hog feeder. More accurately, it was a dispute about a hog feeder patent. What happened was that a member of one Hutterite colony built a better hog feeder; but a member of another colony took that better hog feeder design and was the first to patent said hog feeder.

Now, this might all sound a bit baffling. Because what, really, could be at stake over a hog feeder? Well if you’ve ever done any driving through southern Manitoba, and if you’ve ever had your windows down as you’ve driven through southern Manitoba, you will come to know just how big a business hog farming is; and at that kind of scale, any efficiencies you can build into hog farming can be lucrative. And Daniel Hofer’s better hog feeder design, the better hog feeder design to which he unfortunately did not have the patent, was worth a lot of money.

Now if you’re still baffled as to what a Hutterite hog feeder might have to do with our readings today, let me come to one of the interesting results of the conflict over this better hog feeder. When the Hutterite governing body weighed in, what the elders that oversee inter-colony disputes decided was that Daniel Hofer—the inventor of the better hog feeder—and his family should be excommunicated from Lakeside Colony, unless he and his family were reconciled with the others. But the Hofer family decided that despite their excommunication they would not leave the colony.

So they stayed—and were not spoken to by any of the other members of the colony; women would be baking, for example, alongside one another, not speaking to one another; the courts, even, said that the Hofer family could stay at the colony—but they couldn’t go to the dining hall and eat with any of the other members of the colony. And so at Lakeside Colony, not being reconciled meant shunning—if you had sinned (allegedly), and did not repent, no one else would communicate with you.

Most of us as Anglicans can hardly imagine a situation in which we would shun someone, and this is, to be sure, a good instinct. Many of us bristle at the idea, and rightly so. But Jesus, here in Matthew’s Gospel—while he doesn’t speak of shunning, nor of public pronouncements about the sin of another—Jesus, here, does seem to think that we shouldn’t come to the altar if we are in some kind of unresolved conflict:  “So when you are offering your gift at the altar,” says Jesus, “if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.”

When I said two weeks ago that the Beatitudes were hard, this is what I meant. “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy,” says Jesus, earlier on in the Sermon on the Mount, the sermon from which today’s passage comes; “Blessed are the peacemakers,” says Jesus, earlier in his sermon, “for they will be called children of God.” The Beatitudes are but the beginning of this sermon of Jesus’s; and what follows the Beatitudes, is Jesus telling us about a community shaped by him and in him—a community shaped by, and in, Jesus the merciful one, a community shaped by and in Jesus the peacemaker.

And a community shaped according to the Beatitudes, a community shaped as the body of Christ, will be a community of mercy, and it will be a community of peace, a community in which this will make utter and complete sense: “when [we] remember that [our] brother or sister has something against [us], [we will] leave [our] gift there before the altar and […] first be reconciled to [our] brother or sister.”

Mercy, and peaceableness, are what grow out of our own reconciliation in Christ, and his mercy and peaceableness. And this reconciliation is what we would seek out with our siblings in Christ, a reconciliation that we would value so highly that we couldn’t imagine sharing in the body and blood of Jesus at the altar, we could not imagine ourselves as members of the body of Christ, unless we were reconciled to one another, with mercy, and in peace.

And if you are sitting there wondering, “well I did get in a fight with the verger, and we haven’t really made up yet,” you might be ok. We do argue with one another, and we do disagree. In truth and kindness. And perhaps you’re in an extended, and quite difficult, and are unreconciled with a spouse, or someone close to you; again, things are complicated; talk to your priest, or to a spiritual director. Arguments, even fights maybe, and extended difficulties are tangled things. And we don’t want to turn these words of Jesus, words meant to set you free, into a new legalism that keeps you from the altar, the fount of peace and mercy.

This is partly why we ought to be reluctant to pronounce too loudly about who shouldn’t come to the altar and communicate, except at times when someone publicly rends the fabric of the church through their actions—and remain unrepentant. I once had a couple take out a restraining order against parents, and come to church 45 minutes early in an attempt to keep those parents from entering the church. That’s about as close as I’ve come to not giving someone the sacrament! Because it was just that—by taking out a restraining order and keeping their parents from church, they publicly rended the fabric of that little community, and with no sign of even hope for reconciliation or repentance.

Reconciliation is fraught. Sometimes we have the opportunity to seek forgiveness from the one we might’ve wronged; sometimes we wait on someone who is aggrieved and self-righteous, and clearly in need of amending their own ways; sometimes we might be willing to reconcile, but another isn’t willing or is stubborn; sometimes we would wish for reconciliation from someone who has passed away; sometimes we are only partway through a long journey of reconciliation and haven’t reached the end yet.

So sometimes, we have only God to seek out, and it is only God who can respond, and it is only God who can heal. And in these cases, we still seek out God for forgiveness for the ways we’ve contributed to broken relationships, praying that God will reconcile us to one another, though first by reconciling us to him; and always as we wait on the fulness of God’s new creation, and the New Jerusalem.

And so take heart. Indeed, seek out reconciliation with others. That reconciliation is a sign to the world that we are a community reconciled in Christ, indeed that we are the body of Christ the merciful one, Christ the peacemaker. If you find yourself unrepentant and in need of forgiveness, may God soften your heart (and pray that mine, too, is softened).

And if needs be, join in confession and absolution, certain in your faith: that Jesus Christ the merciful one, Jesus Christ the peacemaker, will bring you, and his community, ever more closely into his likeness, by grace, goodness, and kindness; confess, and come to his altar.