Church of the Holy City

First Be Reconciled

First Be Reconciled
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
November 10, 2013

Joshua 6:15-21 Matthew 5:21-26 Psalm 37

I recall an incident from when I was living in Florida. I lived in a mobile home in a nice trailer park. A hurricane had come through and blown down my car port, and I was having a hard time finding a construction company that would come out and fix it. I guess it was too small a job for them to be bothered. But that wasn’t all. I had let the grounds around my mobile home become somewhat unkempt. Furthermore, my mobile home needed to be pressure cleaned, and maybe painted. Although it was a trailer park, they had standards. Well finally, the management sent me a letter threatening legal proceedings–including possible eviction–if I didn’t clean up my lot. Eviction was an interesting threat. I owned my mobile home, and eviction meant somehow moving it somewhere else–where else and how, I couldn’t imagine.
My first reaction was to go to some friends of mine to see if the management had a legal right to do what they threatened to do. I had someone look over the terms of my lease. But more importantly, I had a friend who was a lawyer. I had him look over the letter the management had sent me. He told me something I didn’t want to hear. He told me to go in person and talk with the property manager and try to understand what they would settle for or what kind of time table I had. In short, my lawyer friend wanted me to meet face to face and settle things amicably. I asked him if the letter they sent me would hold up in court. My friend came back with his original suggestion that I talk with the management. When I pressed him further, he exclaimed in a loud voice, “Dave, this is counsel!” What he meant by that was that he had just given me real legal advice and I had best take it. He had made a very good living handling personal grievances as a lawyer. I figured I should take his advice and swallow the bitter pill. I had to reconcile myself with my adversary when I wanted to fight.
This is the message we heard from the New Testament. In our reading from Mark, we are told to work things out with our neighbor. Jesus told the Jews of His time not to offer a sacrifice in the temple if our neighbor had something against us. The temple sacrifice wouldn’t mean anything if it came from a heart filled with resentment or anger. Jesus taught further, that one should reconcile with one’s neighbor when one is on the way to the law courts. All these teachings are in a section that begins with a teaching against anger against the neighbor.
This is a teaching of peace. But it is, perhaps, a hard teaching. This teaching means that we are to face the one we have a beef with, or who has a beef against us. It means confrontation. And sometimes confrontation is hard; it is something we would rather avoid.
But those in the legal profession, the police force, and even in government favor this policy. Lawyers will counsel one to settle outside of court, as trials are difficult, costly, and uncertain. When one calls the police to complain about a neighbor, they will ask us to try to work it out between the two parties. Jesus says, “Blessed are the peacemakers.
But when there is no other option, then the use courts, police intervention, or armed conflict appear to be necessary. But this is only a last resort. It is only justified when all negotiation and sanctions have failed. Armed conflict is not God’s will. We heard about holy war in today’s reading from Joshua about the fall of Jericho. This is one of the earliest references to “jihad.” The passage in Joshua calls this devoting the city to God. And by devoting the city to God, the meaning is that Israelites kill everything in the city.
They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it–men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys (Joshua 6:21).
But there are some interesting things about this jihad that we need to consider. First of all, we do not find God ordering the Israelites to kill everything in the city. We don’t find this jihad commanded by God. The Bible only says, “They devoted the city to the LORD.” This is consistent with the idea that it was the Israelites themselves who declared jihad on Jericho, not God. This idea finds support from a passage earlier in the Jericho story. Before the battle with Jericho, Joshua meets an angel of God. Joshua tries to see whose side the angel is on, but the angel says he is on no one’s side.
Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?” “Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come” (Joshua 5:13-14).
The angel of God is not on anyone’s side. I take this to mean that God does not will that there be wars. Swedenborg writes,
It is not because of divine providence that wars happen, because wars are inseparable from murder, plunder, violence, cruelty, and other appalling evils that are diametrically opposed to Christian caring (DP 251).
Wars and other forms of violence are not God’s will. But God does allow them to happen. So Swedenborg writes, “Saying that God allows something to happen does not mean that he wants it to happen” (DP 234).
Each one of us is capable of the kind of violence that would lead to war. I say we are capable of it, not that we act or feel like acting on violent impulses. For the process of regeneration can make each of us meek and forgiving. But I find it interesting that Swedenborg describes greater and lesser wars–greater wars are between nations and lesser wars are between individuals.
There are lesser and greater wars, the lesser ones between property owners and their neighbors and the greater ones between the rulers of nations and their neighbors. The only difference between the lesser and the greater ones is that the lesser ones are limited by national laws and the greater ones by international laws. There is also the fact that in both cases the participants want to violate the laws, and that the lesser ones cannot, but the greater ones can, though still not beyond the bonds of possibility (DP 251).
It is a sobering idea to think that our grievances are alike to the grievances that set nation against nation. It is easy to point a finger at Iran or Syria and to exclude ourselves from the same drive to have things our own way. For that is the root of almost every resentment and grievance we could have against our neighbors: they are not doing things the way we want them to do things. We want our will to be law.
It is the desire to bend others to our will that makes our neighbors into our enemies. That desire forms the wall between us and our neighbors. Robert Frost has a poem that talks about walls between people. He talks about a certain day, when he and his neighbor meet for the sole purpose of building a wall between them–or between their properties to be specific. Yet the poet says that “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall/That wants it down.” The poem, from which I here cite a few excerpts, is called The Mending Wall:
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, . . .
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go. . . .
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down. . . .
This is such a case of irony! The two come together only to build a wall between them.
Who are we in this poem and in this discussion? Are we the ones who want the wall between people and nations down? Or are we the ones who allow our baser passions to erect a wall between us and our neighbors? Is our impulse to fight or to reconcile? Are we the blessed peacemakers? It requires humility, courage, and patience to confront an individual we may have something against, or who may have something against us. I like the tradition in Judaism that is observed during the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. During that time period, one is to go to anyone whom they may have offended and ask forgiveness. The implication is that the other will forgive, but if not, then the offence falls on the other individual. This, it seems to me, is an excellent exercise in peacemaking.
It seems to me that we have few spiritual options. We don’t want to quietly burn with rage against our neighbor. We don’t want to fight. And we certainly don’t want the court system. Jesus tells us to reconcile with our neighbor before coming to worship at the temple. And he tells us, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God” (Matthew 5:9).

PRAYER

Lord you have blessed the peacemakers, calling them the children of God. We pray this Remembrance Day Sunday for guidance and insight. Give us always to see the way of peace when we find ourselves in conflict. You have commended the way of reconciliation for us, when we find ourselves in conflict with our neighbor. For we acknowledge that there are conflicts in our lives–greater conflicts between nations and lesser conflicts between neighbors. May we urge our nations always to seek the way of resolution and peace, rather than the way of armed conflict. And in our relations with our neighbors, may we seek peace and not retaliation, resentment, or ill will. Yet we know that sometimes the way of peace is not heeded. We know that there are times when our words of peace need support from armed power. This Sunday we honor those who have served in wars and who have paid the ultimate sacrifice. For their efforts were necessary to ensure the peace for the greatest number in the long run. We ask that you comfort their families, friends, and loved ones. We ask for your special care for those returning from wars. Help mend their troubled minds and show them the way back to civil life. May we welcome our service men and women when they return home, after such a great sacrifice for us and our nation. And Lord, we ask for you to watch over our world, and to lead us all into goodness and peace.