ReconcilingConflicts With Holy Love (proper 23A)

Jesus is teaching us how to reconcile conflicts in the church with love. Conflicts can pollute our soul with the sin of unforgiveness if we fail to love the other. Love requires us to respect the privacy and dignity of the person who we think is sinning. We are to make two attempts to resolve the issue privately and discreetly before “taking it to the church’ and making it public. This is the opposite of the way most people handle disputes. We can fail to love our neighbour and tell all our friends in church about the terrible thing someone has done. This is a failure to love and creates a much more dangerous conflict. It makes the issue harder to resolve as reputations are on the line. The three-step process protects reputations, determines the truth and facilitates forgiveness:

1.     First go alone to the person to seekréconciliation

2.     If this fails, take one or two witnesses and go again 

3.     Only if  both attempts fail, take it to the church leadership, again in confidence, to avoid spreading the conflict beyond three or four people 

 

Step #1: “Go and point out their fault just between the two of you” 

Repentance is the Gateway to Reconciliation (Proper 24c)

    Jesus is teaching us the great lesson of repentance as the gateway we must all walk through from the spiritual prisons of pride and un-forgiveness to the joy of reconciliation. We have all at some time been lost sheep who got into trouble and needed to repent our foolishness and come home to Jesus. Jesus and His Church – all of us are in the reconciliation business. This is who we are and what we do – or at least are supposed to be doing.

 

1.    We Are All Lost Sheep

Reconciling Conflicts With Love

(Available on Youtube "John Gishler")

Jesus is teaching us how to reconcile conflicts with love. Matthew 18 describes this section (v. 15-22) as “Dealing with sin in the church”. Paul explains that all sin is a failure to love God, our neighbour or ourselves. Conflict and unforgiveness pollutes our soul (sin) and separates us from God and other people. Today we are focussing on the work of the church to proclaim, teach and model orthodox faith with love. Jesus repeats Mt. 16.19 re-affirming the role of the church as holding the keys to the Kingdom with the authority of binding and loosing sin guilt. This three-step process of confidential reconciliation is the opposite of what normally happens. It protects reputations, determines the truth and facilitates forgiveness:

1. Person goes first to the person to seek reconciliation
2. Only if this fails, they take witnesses and go again to reconcile
3. Only if  both attempts fail do they take it to the church leadership, again in confidence, to avoid spreading the conflict beyond three or four people 

Step #1: “Go and point out their fault just between the two of you” 

Love Binds and Looses (Proper 21a)

(Teaching available on John Gishler Youtube channel Aug. 22) 

Binding and loosing are words that many people may not be familiar with. Jesus reveals His identity as The Christ - the long expected successor to Moses, who will free His people not from political and military oppression, but from the much more dangerous spiritual deception and oppression of Satan. Jesus is talking about the love of His sacrificial death that broke the power of Satan. This enables forgiveness of sin and frees people from their bondage. Jesus love  binds us in a love relationship as the body of Christ. This binding and loosing is the essential work of the Church. The story of Moses birth illustrates how the fear of loosing the love of God strengthened the Egyptian midwives in disobeying Pharo’s order to kill male babies. 

The Romans reading (12.1-8) explains how the love of the members of the body of Christ grows and binds them to Jesus and each other as they exercise their spiritual gifts.

1. The midwives of Egypt were bound by “fear” of God

A Conscience Ruled By the Holy Spirit (Proper 18a)

(Watch on Youtube channel "John Gishler" Aug. 2)

 

The Readings are a profound message to all church leaders and anyone who would like to develop a serious Christian life. Jacob was wrestling with his conscience and afraid for his life. It was like wrestling with God Himself – and God let him win! Jesus is in grief over the death of John and overcomes it by focusing on what those around Him need – not want. Paul is also in spiritual grief over the Hebrew people who do not believe him about Jesus. We learn that listening to the Holy Spirit is why it is that some people “get it” and many do not.

1. Jacob’s conscience is bothering him for good reason

Easter - The Good News of Reconciliation With God

There are three huge questions:

• Can we really believe the Good News of Reconciliation?
• What does the Good News of Reconciliation mean?
• How do we apply the Good News in this Church?

 1. Can we really believe the Good News of Easter?

The Good News of Easter is that God raised Jesus from physical death to authenticate all Jesus teachings and to create a new way for individuals to be forgiven and reconciled to God. Forgiveness removes the sin guilt that separates us from God, creates a holy place in us for the Holy Spirit and enables our soul to live on with God after our body dies. Many people have trouble with the miraculous and tend to dismiss the Resurrection – and its’ implications for salvation as myth. How do we know this is not a myth?