"Triangulation Strangulation" - Saint Matthew 18:15-20

If ever there were words of Jesus that were addressed to everybody today’s gospel contains them. Jesus is talking to the church but his words include every living person who has ever drawn a breath. You don’t have to be a member of a church to understand what he is talking about. You don’t even have to leave your house in the morning to discover the truth of these words. And the simple truth is that life together is hard.

Michael L. Lindvall wrote about this once in a short story in which he affirmed:

Life together is hard. The are no perfect husbands, no perfect wives, [no perfect partners,] no perfect children. No perfect mothers-in-law. Life in family, life in any community, is both our sorest test and our sweetest joy ... the only thing harder than getting along with other people is getting along without them...” “Serves them Right.” Sermon preached at the Brick Presbyterian Church of New York City. September 7, 2008.

So what to do? I’m going to back into this by introducing a concept from communication and family systems theory called “triangulation.” You have all been involved in this at one time or another in your lives. The wise avoid it, the foolish thrive on it. You can tell it is happening when you hear yourself complaining about one person to another. When you hear yourself gossiping. When you give into the temptation to get on the phone and complain to one friend about how another friend has treated you. Or worse yet, when you hear someone say something to you in the hopes that you will repeat it to the person who has offended them. It’s called “triangulation” because it makes you the third party in a potentially difficult conversation and this is a position that is to be avoided at all costs for it is not a safe place to be.

Jesus offers a far better way to handle our difficulties with another person. It would have been much easier if Jesus had said, “Go around and tell everybody you can what that stupid jerk did to you.” What he says is instead, “No, you go talk to that stupid jerk and tell them what they have done.” That is hard, even for the most mature Christian.

When the Chicago Bible Church started renting our facility there was some territorial issues with the Good News Church and Pastor Ang, perhaps one of the finest Christian men I have ever met, came to me to talk about it. What he was asking for was triangulation. That I should tell the Chicago Bible Church about the problems the Good News Church were having with them. As you all know, I never get myself into a triangle, so I read Matthew 18 to him and reminded him how Christ would want the potential conflict handled. Frankly, because of the language barrier, I wasn’t even sure what the problem was but I could tell by the look on good Pastor Ang’s face that while he believed the Bible and was deeply committed to following Jesus he still would rather have had me do his talking for him. Instead, I patted him on his back on the way out of my office and wished him luck. By the way, everything must have worked itself out because I never heard another word. Either that, or they just learned to live with whatever the conflict was.

That is another way people handle things – they ignore them. We take the attitude, says Dr. Thomas G. Long in his commentary on Matthew, of “If somebody hassles you, forget them. It’s their problem not yours.” But that just harbors bitterness, resentment, people not speaking to each other for days, months, or even years on end.

Jesus is ruining all of the good options. He keeps insisting that there be a meeting – one on one. But this meeting is to have as the number one spot on its agenda not confrontation but restoration. Believe me, because I have made this mistake, if you go in with your finger pointing and a three point verbal tongue lashing all prepared, you are setting off the first strike in what may become a verbal thermo-nuclear war. That is a worse idea than becoming part of “triangulation strangulation” because it just might kill the friendship, strangle it to death.

Jesus says our goal is to be restoration not retaliation. And this restoration was as important to the churches of the first century as they were in ours because there were no mega-churches back then. The average faith community consisted of no more than 50 people.

So, observes Brain Stoffregen, on www.crossmarks.com Their gatherings were much more like small family reunions ... we can easily imagine how the actions or attitude of one family member could spoil the festive gathering for the rest of the family.

We’ve seen it happen – in church, anywhere – one person in a small group gets out of hand and it spoils it not only for them and the subject of their wrath but for everyone. So you go to them in the hopes that what they desire most is restoration to the community from which they have become estranged. In going to restore, you speak not out of anger but out of a loving care that they might feel missed and you give them the opportunity for a graceful re-entry.

What if they don’t want to take it? That is why you bring two witnesses along. It is not to “gang up” on them but only that the other’s can say that you tried your best at reconciliation.

What we usually do first is the last thing that Jesus suggests we do. “Tell it to the church.” Again this is not so much to be understood as shooting for a giant congregational “harumph” but rather in context of Jesus day. It was all about “restoration to the community” and in his world it was not so much listening to an inner voice but a worry about what the neighbors might think if you got booted out of the church.

And, even if you are, says Jesus, “let the one who is lost or alienated be treated ‘as a gentile or a tax-collector.’” We think that means you put them outside of the triangle or circle and let them stay there forever. And that would be a very tempting response were it not for the irony. The whole of the Gospel of Matthew is about reaching out to and including those very Gentiles in the Christian embrace. They are to be included in the family of faith. And tax-collectors? Well, the author of this Gospel, Saint Matthew, was found by Jesus working in the tax collectors office. It seems that even tax collectors are a part of Jesus family.

All of what I have said can be avoided if we don’t give into a “triangulation strangulation” that chokes the life out of friendships, communities and even individuals. We may want to wash our hands of the difficult relative. We may want to dodge the difficult people at coffee hour. We may think we have every right not to talk to somebody for a very long time but Jesus doesn’t.

In the family of God Jesus wants to build – not the Gentiles, not the tax-collectors, not the difficult relatives or the impossible friends, not even cantankerous church members are ever beyond the long reach of God. For when God is brought into the triangle there is always the promise of restoration, emotional health, and wholeness.

In the name of the triangle we call Trinity who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

4 September 2011

"Misplaced Zeal" - Romans 12:9–21 and Saint Matthew 16:21–28

For a couple of weeks now I have found myself more than intrigued by the story of the pastor succession problem at a far away place named the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Coral Ridge was one of early pioneers in television ministry (remember those?) that featured amazing music and the preaching of Dr. D. James Kennedy, who when he stuck to scripture was good but often wandered into some political theme or another that was so off-the-wall that it would make even a conservative like me, blanch.

Kennedy served for forty years as the church’s only senior minister, and did the worse thing any pastor can do to a congregation – he had a massive heart attack right after Christmas in 2006 and died the following September. Such an act, in non-Roman Catholic circles, usually qualifies one for sainthood and Kennedy was, in fact, canonized by his loyal followers who were still, and rightly so, morning his passing when a new Senior Minister was called.

The church elders landed on an unlikely candidate with the unusual name of Tullian Tchividjian (pronounced cha-vi-jin). Actually his full name is William Graham Tullian Tchividjian, after his grandfather, Billy Graham. He is a chip off the old block. He is an excellent preacher, handsome, smart, who preaches Christ centered and biblically based sermons. With all that going for him you think he too would have been subject for canonization too but unfortunately, he was only the subject of vilification after having a honeymoon with his new people he described as lasting about ten days.

What was wrong? The first complaint I heard was that Tchividjian preferred to preach in a suit rather than in his Geneva robe as had Dr. Kennedy. The second complaint was that he preferred to be more like his grandfather and preach solely scripture rather than pick a political side and ride that pony. And the third was that he changed the service. None of these seemed to be hanging offences so I was surprised by the zeal of his attackers. They passed out flyers, they called for a congregational meeting to have him removed, and generally made his life miserable fighting against any change he tried to bring. Here is what one member said:

“God bless the young people that he’s brought over, but you’ve got to understand they’ve been meeting in a cafeteria or the high school. They are now in a multi-million dollar edifice, and they didn’t have to work for it”

To which, church consultant John H. Armstrong, responded:

It seems very apparent to me that the opposition to Tullian Tchividjian was rooted in raw power and control. The all-American view that you only get to share in what you’ve worked for, and thus paid for, comes through very clearly in [the disgruntled member’s] comment. I have heard this argument my entire life. You are an outsider because we paid for this and we own it. But I thought the building belonged to God, not to us. [John H. Armstrong, “Lessons from the Coral Ridge Con
troversy.” Posted on his blog September 23, 2009]

We know that fight and we know that having a multi-million dollar building can be a blessing but also know that it can be a burden. We know what it is like to be in Pastor Tchividjian’s shoes thinking that the church should be open to everyone and having members leave because they didn’t want to share the facility with people of other nationalities. What this is all about is a misplaced zeal that tries to control God.

That’s what Peter wanted to do. He had just finished confessing Christ as the Messiah, the Son of the living God, and then Jesus tells him what that means. It means that Peter’s friend would suffer and die and Peter just hates that idea. Who wouldn’t? Let’s not be too hard on Peter here. Jesus had come along and given his life meaning, fulfillment, wholeness, a sense of purpose. Besides that, Jesus was Peter’s friend not a single one of us in this room, no right-minded person who has ever read these words, hasn’t stood in Peter’s shoes and when a friend delivered bad news hasn’t replied with “God forbid it.”

And here is why I think Jesus had to react so sternly and swiftly to Peter’s words, which have also been translated, “God would never let this happen to you.” Jesus had to react because there was a real temptation being put before him here. He could go home, go back to being a carpenter, raise a family, retire, live to a ripe old age, and die of natural causes or he continue on his journey to Jerusalem. He could give into Peter’s zeal for his protection, or he could follow the Father’s will. Jesus had to put Peter and his thoughts behind him in order to do what he had to do.

Misplaced zeal always tries to control God. Misplaced zeal always puts its trust in things that are less than God. Misplaced zeal spends enormous amounts of time trying to stand in the way of God’s will instead of standing behind the people who are going to carry it out. Misplaced zeal spends more time attacking than it does affirming.

Jesus puts Peter behind him. And Saint Paul tells us how we are to react to those who would tear down rather than build up. First, he says, never let them take away your zeal for the gospel. Serve the Lord above all, pray with those who need prayer, weep with those who need someone to weep with them, party with those who need someone to party with. In other words, live out the gospel.

And to those who would attack you, be as kind as you can to them, and then leave them in God’s hands.

Here is what Tchividjian said about his critics, the people who zealously worked to take away his job:

My commitment is to speak about those who opposed me in a forgiving manner, in a Christ-like manner. I will, by God's grace, do my best to take the high road, to not disparage anybody, to operate in a posture of understanding. Some of these people had only had one pastor ever. So that's going to be hard for some people.

So I am very much working hard to treat those who have opposed me the way God and Christ treated me. [Bobby Ross, Jr., “Tullian Tchividjian: Allow Your Critics to Teach You.” Christianity Today. August 19, 2011.]

He learned how Christ’s treats all of us from his grandfather who spoke about Christ’s unmerited love and grace to millions. Billy Graham and his grandson, have a zeal that is firmly rooted in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. May we like them do as well in never lagging in our zeal to serve the Lord. And may that zeal never be misplaced.

©The Rev’d Dr. David C. Nelson
21 August 2011o Teach You.”

"Misplaced Zeal" - Romans 12:9–21

"Real Basics" - Saint Matthew 16:13-20

The next time you are watching the news and you hear any politician or public official asked a really tough question I want you to listen for something. You’ll hear the question and the answer will almost always begin with, “That’s not the question. The question is...” and the interviewee will be off and running on their “talking points” and never really answer what has been asked. This kind of deflection stops them from every appearing like they don’t know an answer.

But sometimes a public official is stopped in his or her tracks by a question that is so good they actually do have to think about an answer. It happens so rarely that when you see it it will stick in your memory for a long time.

One of the best questions that I have ever heard came from Bob Sirott and was directed at Cardinal Francis George. Sirott was going through the usual litany of questions that the Cardinal had heard a thousand times before and could answer sound asleep without engaging a single neuron. Cardinal George is a very, very, intelligent man and one doesn’t get to be a Cardinal by flubbing questions on gay clergy, or women clergy, or married clergy, or Father Flager, or clergy misbehavior. So while Sirott was running through his obligatory list of questions the Cardinal was responding with his own list of non-spontaneous answers.

Then Sirott asked a question the clearly the Cardinal had never heard before and had no pat answer for. Sirott asked, “Is there anything that you’d like to do that you can’t do because you’re the Cardinal?” It was a great question and it stopped the Cardinal, who does have a gift to gab and in person is a “hail-fellow-well met” and made him think. You could see him lean back in his chair and in the moment he was taking to answer the question I thought to myself, of course there is! You can’t just wander down the street to take in a movie, have a beer with your buddies at the corner watering hole. You couldn’t just settle in with friends to watch a Cubs or Sox game at the ball park. Dinner out can be done but it would be hard and you would still be on stage with people watching you. In the moment the Cardinal was thinking I’m sure he came up with a list far longer than mine but then he finally caught himself, regained his composure and said something like, “There are, but I like being the Cardinal. It’s all right. It’s good.”

It was such a basic question but sometimes those questions are the best.

Actually today’s question of Jesus and Peter’s answer has become one of our talking points. Most of us can do this in our sleep. After 2,000 years of repetition it is our basic response to the question of who Jesus is. “He is the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” has become a talking point. It can be an automatic response. Unless we take it a step further. If that is true, so what. That is the real question, the more basic question. And it is harder to answer than you might wish.

You may have come to believe that to have Jesus as your Messiah all you would have to do is be sensitive, caring, kind, compassionate. And to a certain extent that is true but it is not the whole story. A member of the Rotary or Kiwanis Club is expected to be that. What happens when you confess Christ as your Messiah is that you are expected to act as if he really were your Messiah and his being such makes a huge difference in your life.

It did for Peter and it did almost immediately the right answer came out of his mouth. As soon as Peter confesses who Jesus is, Jesus tells Peter who he is. When Peter figures out – by a sure gift of the Holy Spirit – what Jesus is up to then Jesus tells Peter what he is to be up to. He is to be the church.

You can’t be a church member just by believing what the church believes, as important as good theology is. You’ve got to work in the church. You’ve got to work in the world on behalf of the church. That’s the stumbling block for most people. They want the church to always be there for them but if you ask them to make a sacrifice, to work, to make Christ known in what they do, they begin to back off. Still, Jesus’ promises that he would build his church on the testimony and deeds of ordinary women and men, boys and girls, who he has chosen to use to get done whatever he wants to get done in the world. People like you and me.

And the weird news is that Jesus seems to believe you can do it. He believes that you, like Peter, can be his witnesses. And please always remember that it is Peter he uses, imperfect, full of bluster, brag and bravado, Peter that gets chosen and gets used. Peter may have fumbled a few times in his life but he still was a powerful force in spreading the Gospel. Peter calls Jesus the “Christ,” the Savior of the world; Jesus calls Peter the very “rock” on which he will build his church to save the world.

So on his way Jesus doesn’t just call Cardinals and Pastors and Professionals to spread the good news of his Gospel but ordinary limited persons like Peter. You may not think you have what it takes but Jesus does.

Jesus thinks you are up to the challenge because he not only said, “I am the light of the world” but “You are the light of the world.” The first is a basic promise, the second proposition is a basic challenge. What would it mean to live as lights to the world. How would that effect your outlook on life, the way you treated others. The way you talked about God. The way you shared the gospel.

How would that get you away from your talking points and like the Cardinal force you to think about who you are and what you claim to be. Claiming Christ doesn’t put you on easy street but puts you to work. It makes you the church. It makes you Christ’s witnesses proclaiming the basic message that Christ is real in your life and his presence makes a difference in how you feel but how you act.

Act as if you really believed that Christ believed in you and you’ll be surprised as Peter was, and I’m sure the Cardinal is, and all of us are everyday, of the things we can accomplish in Christ’s name and for his sake. Amen.

21 August 2011

"The Women in Jesus' Life" -- Saint Luke 1:46-53 & Saint Matthew 15:21-28

Have you ever noticed how many strong women there were in Jesus’ life?

I thought about this because of the strange confluence of today’s gospel and the celebration of his mother Mary’s feast day on August 15. While the guys who Jesus associated with acted like guys and sometimes had to be told over and over again what was going on and even then they didn’t seem to fully comprehend the women all seemed to, if not fully understand him, at least challenge him.

You could probably think of a list longer than I can.

The first one who immediately comes to mind is Martha – all bluster who never took any guff from anybody. You remember her. She was the one who, at a dinner party she and her sister Mary threw for Jesus, was doing all the work in the dining room and kitchen while Mary just sat there listening to Jesus. Martha’s patience runs out but she doesn’t suffer in silence she blasts into where Jesus and Mary are chatting and bellows in effect, “Hey! A little help here, please!” No push-over there and even though Jesus commends Mary for listening I don’t think he ever forgot that without Martha’s hard work they would have been having “take-out” that night.

Neither do I think that Jesus ever forgot the time he took so much time responding to Mary and Martha’s request to come and help with their brother Lazarus that Martha greeted him on the outskirts of their town not with a “So good of you to take time out of your day” but rather with a wagging finger, a scolding voice and the words “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” It was very confrontational and very public! But, it leads to Martha also speaking works that led Jesus to the central proclamation of the faith. When she says: “I know [my brother] shall rise again at th last day.” I Jesus proclaimed: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" And Martha’s reply is historic. “She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’” Jesus. Son of God. Messiah. The core principals of Christianity.

Jesus not only had strong woman friends but he seemed to run across them at every corner of his daily rounds. He finds a woman in mid day at a well in Samaria, a place neither one of them were supposed to be – she because water was drawn in the early morning hours or after sun set when the heat of the day was less intense. And he, because, to put it quite distinctly for hundreds of year Jews and Samaritans had nothing to do with each other. So both he knew and she knew that their conversation would be frowned on not only by his people but by her people. Still she engages and is on the defense all day long. Challenging his every word, his every assertion, protecting herself from his probing question. Finally, Jesus breaks through her tough exterior and their final exchange hears her say: “I know that Messiah is coming" (who is called Christ). "When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us." Then Jesus said to her, "I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” And she doesn’t ponder but goes and becomes the first evangelist by returning to her village and saying, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”

He was and she was right to proclaim him so. But she never would have made that discovery had she not been willing to debate in broad daylight at the town watering hole.

But perhaps the best confrontation of all comes in today’s Gospel when Jesus meets a woman who is not only tenacious but who will not be denied. She will not take “no” for an answer.

This is a difficult story because of the way Jesus treats her. First he ignores her and then he insults while all the while his disciples are telling her to “beat it.” All of them are not at their best.
And to make matters worse when the woman comes and even kneels before him – a posture of pure submission, he says to her, “it is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” This is one dog who is not going away with her tail between her legs. As a matter of fact she is not going away without calling him into account. She verbally swings back and connects with, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."

I have to tell you I have no idea why Jesus treated this woman the way he did but I do know that in her he had met his match. He may have been great in his debates with the scribes and Pharisees but this woman is not only winning the debate but making him look bad. She is telling him directly that if his ministry does not include her and her daughter, it does not include everybody, and what he has been telling people about God’s whose love is open to all people is a lie. He is either going to have to heal her daughter or suffer a loss in credibility second to none.

All he can do is stand back, perhaps rocked a little, and admire this woman for her strength, spirit and faith.

I think Jesus had such an affinity for strong women because a strong women raised him.

His mother Mary was no pushover either. She had to be strong to do what she did. First, even at his conception she didn’t just take the word of the angel she made poor Gabriel explain himself. And then she had to face the real danger that her beloved Joseph wouldn’t shunt her aside and, even when he didn’t she still had to face the questions on the faces of her neighbors.

Sometimes she didn’t understand what her son was doing and so had to let him go and do what he believed he was called to do. Yet, she loved him enough to stay with him even to the cross. And beyond to experience his resurrection.

Their encounters with Jesus brought out the best in these women just as they should bring out the best in you. Loved and accepted by him you can be like them and other great women through the centuries – Mother Teresa, Rosa Parks, to name but a couple – and stand up for what is right in the face of injustice.

Loved and accepted by him you can be brave, you can be strong, you can be what you were meant to be. Loved and accepted by him you can serve not out of submission but out a desire to help those who need you. Loved and accepted by him you can accept others because you have felt his acceptance.

This is a lesson for all this. That because of Jesus you can be like all the faithful men and woman through the ages and be all that you can be if you follow the example of the women in Jesus’ life. Amen.

©The Rev’d Dr. David C. Nelson

7 August 2011