Calling Out or Calling In

Who says the Bible isn’t a rulebook? We’ve got clear-cut rules for conflict management right here in today’s Gospel from Matthew.

Step 1: If you’ve been hurt by someone, go directly to that person and say so. Step 2: If the offender will not listen, go a second time, but take one or two trusted witnesses along. Step 3: If the offender still won’t listen, bring the matter to the community, and together decide on the terms of reconciliation, or, in the event that the offender refuses to take responsibility for the harm they’ve caused, dismiss them.

It’s cut and dried. And since it’s biblical, I’m sure this process works smoothly every time. God said it; I read it; that settles it, right?

I trust you detect my sarcasm, but if you don’t, I’ll come out and say it: conflict in human relationships is messy and defies any straightforward approach to resolution, even the one Jesus proposes.

That is not to say these guidelines aren’t helpful at all. Jesus encourages healthy communication after all, insisting on gentle yet direct confrontation,^[1] shared witness to harmful behavior, and finally collective discernment regarding the repercussions. There’s deep wisdom in the three-step process described in Matthew 18, but it’s not a simple cure for conflict. It’s lovely in theory, but difficult in practice.

Maybe this teaching is less a set of hard-and-fast rules than it is a lesson in the importance of addressing harm in the first place. Maybe Jesus is giving us permission to respond decisively to destructive behavior, not for the sake of punishment, but accountability and restoration; or in the case that restoration is impossible, in order that the community be protected from further harm.

The truth is that communities, churches included, struggle to address conflict in healthy ways. Rather than respond, we tend to avoid or react. We grumble, we hold grudges, we defend our pride, all the while skirting the kind of direct approach Jesus teaches and letting conflict come out sideways instead.

That may be fine if we’re dealing with a disagreement over the color of the carpet. But Jesus’ mention of sin in today’s Gospel doesn’t have to do with conflicting preferences or ornery personalities. He’s referring to persistent, disruptive behavior[2] serious enough to cause a rift in a community and damage its witness to a gospel of mercy and love.

Harmful behavior is not always incidental. Sometimes the people involved in conflict are not intent on resolving it, as we might expect, but instead become trapped in it.[3] For any number of reasons offenders may not acknowledge the gravity of, or be willing or able to take responsibility for, their actions. Social and emotional instability are real factors in conflict, and may impede progress toward a resolution no matter how thoughtful or intentional the approach.

And for its part, a community may be disinclined to deal with conflict for fear of making it worse. We try to ignore or placate offenders, but we do not address bad behavior head on, and so we run the risk that the harm will deepen or harden.

Hence the permission given in Matthew 18: speak up, recruit supporters, and if necessary, take it up with the wider community. In a well-known book about church conflict, Kenneth Haugk describes this hard and holy work in terms of the rightful exercise of authority:

[Excerpt from Antagonists in the Church, pp. 104-5]

Friends, the health of a community rests on a shared commitment to accountability. As Prentis Hemphill puts it, to establish a healthy boundary is to maintain a “distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.”[4] As it pertains to harmful behavior, boundary-keeping is an act of care, both for the offender and the one they’ve hurt. By holding people to account in a way that preserves their dignity and the possibility of belonging, we don’t call them out, we “call them in.”

And it’s in that very space where Christ promises to be truly present even “where two or three are gathered.” In the end, he not only gives us permission to pursue justice and healing in community, but he enters into that process with us by grace.

[1] Michael J. Chan, “Opening the Door to Reconciliation,” www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=5453.

[2] The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. VIII, 378.

[3] Kenneth C. Haugk, Antagonists in the Church, 32.

[4] As cited in Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart, 129.