On May 22, 1856, in what is considered one of the low points in the history of the US Congress, Preston Brooks, a pro-slavery representative from South Carolina, entered the senate chambers and attacked Massachustes senator Charles Sumner with a cane beating him within inches of his life for an anti-slavery speech that Sumner had delivered two days before. The violence was seen as the beginning of the “breakdown of reasonable discourse”, contributing even more to the polarization of the country around the issue of slavery, and a precursor to the increasing violence that would lead to the civil war. And yet many historians say that the civil war became inevitable several years before that when the churches began to split, including the Methodists and later the Baptists, which is the reason we have a southern Baptist church over slavery. That when churches could not stay together, people believe, there was little chance for the country itself.
And so most of you here are probably aware of the issues now swirling around the Methodist church and the potential, or maybe likely, schism, which has been postponed at least until next year. And if you’ve been paying attention to the southern Baptist gathering this week, you also know that there was considerable debate there about actions that could lead to many or most African-Amercian congregations, and many others as well, leaving that denomination. This has led to some speculation about what churches splintering again means for us as a country. And then what the last election showed us is that 100% of the country believes that 50% of americans have lost their minds. And so it probably isn’t surprising that one of the things that several people have asked me to talk about, or just asked for advice itself, is how, in these troubled and divided times, we are supposed to deal with, let alone get along with, people who are on the opposite side of some issue, especially if they, or maybe even us, resort to anger and name calling and other derogatory behavior to make their point.
But none of this is really new, either in society or in the
church. Cain and Abel’s relationship was not exactly the high point of
reasonable discourse either. And we see plenty of conflict in the early church.
Just read Paul’s letters. His famous passage about love in chapter 13 of 1
Corinthians, often used for weddings today, is written as a rebuke of the
church in Corinth because they can’t get along. And we even have Jesus giving
the instructions we heard from Matthew today about how to deal with conflict,
or those who bring conflict in the church. And so it’s not that we are seeking
some golden time in which these things didn’t happen, because they’ve always
happened, although the level and intensity of conflicts can ebb and flow. It’s
what we called to do as Christians and how we are called to live not just with
those with whom like, but most especially those with whom we disagree. If the
church can’t get along then what chance does society stand?
And so perhaps a good place to start is with some
categorizations of people. In her book on dealing with conflict in social
situations, Jeanne Martinet, a specialist in social etiquette, says that when
it comes to conflict, or opinions, there are three types of people we relate
to. There are “Friends, foes and fanatics.”
A “Friend” she says, “is someone who feels the same way you do about an
issue. A foe is someone on the other side, but still open-minded or at least
able to hear you out. A fanatic is someone whose opinions are set in stone and
who sees the issue in black and white.” And she notes that you can have
fanatics who believe the opposite of you and also fanatics who believe the same
as you. And those who believe the same as you, but are just as unyielding, just
as absolutist, just super-radical as those on the other side can be just as
tiresome and difficult to deal with as those who believe something different,
and therefore really should be treated the same.
Now those who see issues as only being black and white, of
either they are right and you are wrong, are not going to be open to hear
differing opinions, and it’s even worse if they are angry and full of
self-righteousness. And so the simple rule is just try not to engage them. Most
fanatics are not going to change their minds, especially in a heated arguments,
and so simply don’t try, you cannot win that argument. Disengage or try and
move the conversation to something else. And one other thing to keep in mind
is, as Dr. Susan Heitler wrote in Psychology Today, “A fixed system of beliefs
that allows for no additional data to enter is clinically termed a delusional
system.” And so if you find yourself in
a position where others, or you, do not allow for any other additional information,
especially differing ideas, think about what we are losing in that. And one other thing to build on with this is
that there are people, especially online, who are simply seeking to create
arguments, or throw bombs, or name calls simply to make people upset and get my
arguments going. They are called trolls for a reason. Don’t feed the trolls.
But let’s focus on the more reasonable dealings. The first
thing to know is that according to a recent poll 86% of Americans are exhausted
by how divided the nation has become, which makes me wonder about that other
14%. But that means that most people don’t want to keep doing what we are
doing, and that’s a start. One of the
questions we asked all of the candidates for our faith development position was
how they would deal with someone with whom they just fundamentally disagreed,
and all of them gave great answers, and similar answers, and that was that they
would first listen. We know how to do
this, we just choose not to.
And so you’ve probably heard this before but silent and
listen have exactly the same letters. And so listening to someone else requires
us to be silent not just externally, but also internally. If you are listening
so you can come up with your response of what you are going to say next, then
you’re not actually listening. And a great way to listen and explore even
deeper is to ask the question why. Why do you believe that? This is a way to
actually engage them and find out why they think the way they do. Because when
we differ from someone, that’s often the question we wonder is “how could
anyone possibly ever believe that?” And so this is a way to actually explore
it. But, if their why is “because that’s what we are supposed to believe, or
that’s what they said on X program,” then you will also know if there is a way
to truly explore that idea further or not, and whether there is actually room
for conversation, for dialogue, a place to try and find common ground or not,
as well as just learning more about them as a person, which is a way to
actually connect, which is really the purpose here, and that can often be very
enlightening. It can also help us find common ground. Another question is to
ask an even harder question, which is “what if you are wrong?” But, before you
do that to someone else you better have asked that same question of yourself
and be ready with an answer. And when you ask yourself that question it can
free you from absolutes and lead to a position of humility.
But another reason for listening to others and asking them
questions is that it can also help us to see under the hood. Richard Rohr has
said that pain that is not transformed will always be transmitted. Fear and
anxiety will do the same. And we can often see that in people who are striking
out in anger or animosity towards others. The comedian Sarah Silverman was once
called an extremely nasty word used about women on Twitter one day. But rather
than responding to the man who said it in-kind, she instead looked through his
prior tweets and could see that he was in physical pain, which was then leading
to emotional and psychological pain. And so she responded to him with a tweet
not of hate, but of love telling him that she believed in him and how he could
get help. They continued their conversation, and he did get help, and
apologized to her. When it became public, she said she was embarrassed that
people were making a big deal about two people being decent human beings
towards one another. “Literally anyone can do this,” she said. And if anyone
can do it, it should be us as Christians.
And one other piece
of that is that our response to listening can also be silence. Silence can be
extremely powerful, because when someone says something that we find troubling
or even repulsive, rather than striking out, which leaves the other person
feeling defensive and therefore justified, staring at them and not saying
anything can be hugely effective in conveying the message. Or as we said, just
walking away or saying that the conversation is over, can do the same thing.
You do not have to respond to everything, which is often our inclination when
we get our hackles up. Sometimes silence can be the loudest message we can
give. Earlier in Romans, Paul says do not return evil for evil. Or we no not to
return hate for hate, because love can overcome, just as water is more powerful
than rock so silence can be more powerful than words. You can overcome hate
with kindness. Now are there times in which someone does need to be called out
and told that what they said or did is unacceptable? Absolutely, and there is a
time and place for that, but it doesn’t have to be done every time.
Another key piece of this is prayer. If you are going to be
having a meeting or conversation with someone that you know is going to be
hard, lift it up in prayer before hand. Jesus tells us to pray for our enemies,
so pray for peace and calm and assurance, and pray for the other person as
well. Again, not to see the error of their ways, but that they too will feel
God’s presence and peace and calm. That God will be with them, and I can assure
you that will ultimately help you. Bathe brokenness in prayer and ask for God’s
healing. And that probably really should be the first thing we do to deal with
difficult people and situations: pray about it and for it. And when we do need
to respond is to ask “why am I doing this?” what is our purpose in calling them
out? Is it because we are angry and want them to know? Is our anger righteous or self-righteous? Is
our response simply to tell them how wrong they are, and therefore how right we
are? Is it to change behavior or to set expectations about what is acceptable
and what is not? In his book on practicing civility, P.M. Forni said, “Self-expression
is in; restraint is, if not out, an annoying after thought. When we lack
restraint, we inevitably hurt others and eventually pay dearly ourselves.” (163)
Ask why, and pray before you respond.
And that leads us into gospel passage we heard this morning.
Jesus gives instruction on how to deal with troublesome people and situations,
which can lead to correction such that they are to be, in his words, like
gentiles and tax collectors. That’s often seen as exclusionary, but how did
Jesus relate to gentiles and tax collectors? He loved them and offered them the
gospel message. He went to their houses and ate with them, and even had a tax
collector as a disciple. So this isn’t to exclude them, but to see them in a
different way perhaps than before, and to keep offering them the love and forgiveness of God, because
perhaps they need it even more, as do we. And the story that comes immediately
after is that of Peter asking how often we need to forgive someone who has
sinned against us, up to seven times, and Jesus says, not seven times, but even
seventy times seven times. As we talked about with the petition for forgiveness
in the Lord’s Prayer, if we want to live in community, if we want to be in
relationship with others, if we want to claim and live into the healing and
wholeness that God offers to us through Christ, and if we want to bring that to
others, than forgiveness has to be a part of how we live. If we want to make
connection in a divided world, then forgiveness has to be part of our practice
in dealing with and living with others, as does love. And, according to Sally
Kohn, the opposite of hate is connection.
Now one of the problems in our current situation and is that
we are connected all the time, and yet that connection is really disconnecting.
Our devices these days make it really easy to express everything to everyone
the moment we feel it or think it, which often leads to destructive behavior,
usually because it’s all disconnected. Additionally we are surrounded by a
toxic sesspool of negativity because two people yelling at each other on tv is
a lot more entertaining than two people agreeing. And we then get the idea that
this is what discourse has to look like, and end up locked into our own tribes,
and the more we are around people who only think like us, our ideas become even
more radicalized and we move even further to the edge and away from each other,
and then it just keeps getting worse. But that’s not how love works. We are
called not just to see one another, everyone as neighbor, as brother and
sisters, but to love one another. That leads some people to ask, “how can I
love them when I don’t even like them?” But, as you have heard me say many
times, this is not the feeling of love, but the action of love, of willing the
good for others, of seeking to do no harm to them, because when we strike out
at others, when we respond in anger, it ultimately only hurts ourselves.
And so Paul says, owe no one anything except to love them,
because that’s the ultimate debt that cannot ever be repaid, because of the
love that God first offered to us, and the love that God gave to the world.
And, when we move out of the darkness and the ways of the flesh and into the
flesh, one of the things we will dismiss is quarelling. Anger, hate and quarelling are not what is
found when we live in the light, when we put on the armor of light, to put on
Christ himself. And I think that the armor of Christ is to help us to withstand
the arrows that others might shoot at us, but because we live in the light and
have Christ protecting us that we can overcome them so that we don’t respond to
evil with evil, or hate with hate, but instead we respond with love and with
mercy and with forgiveness. We hear people’s pain and offer healing. We listen
to people’s stories and see them as beloved brothers and sisters. And when we
seek to find the common ground that unites us, we will find that we have much
more in common with others than we have that divides us. and we seek to be
known by the love that we offer to others through how we live and interact as
examples of doing no harm, doing good and loving God. and we recognize that
this is not easy, because if it was easy then everyone would do it. But we also
know that now, more than ever, is the time for the church to be different, for
the church to be the witness of light and love in the world. To show that we
don’t have to agree to love, that we don’t have to be disagreeable in order to
disagree, and that we can indeed be beloved brothers and sisters, neighbors to
one another living in love for love lives in the light and seeks to do no wrong
to a neighbor. And so I would like us to conclude with the prayer of Saint
Francis, as our prayer for connecting and offering peace and love in a divided
world.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen. I pray that it may be so. Amen.
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