At least that is often what happens, isn’t it?  Most people want community, until it starts to actually happen.  Most people want to feel welcomed, have a place to belong and fit in, and they want the pastors to visit them when they are sick, or help out with finances when times are tight.  But people generally don’t want to test their convictions in a community, the don’t want to submit their discernments to a community, or let the community be a mirror by which to see themselves as they really are, beyond the self-protective delusions in which we all engage.

But when a serious dispute arises, all that wonderful talk of community disappears and people just want to kill each other, at least in their hearts, but usually also in their words, and actions (although hopefully not extending to physical harm, but I’m sure it sometimes does!).  When conflict arise we stop submitting our discernments, we stop testing our conviction, we begin to feel justified and pious, and often always attempt to bring in the pastoral cavalry, the Authorities, to make a judgment on our behalf.  Has anyone else experiences this?

But Jesus leads us into a new community, a community of reconciliation where there aren’t just winners and losers in a conflict, where there aren’t merely those who are right and those who are wrong, but where restoration of relationships can occur.  In Matthew 18 Jesus give us a process for church reconciliation, not a process of church discipline. And in this process the ecclesial authorities come in last.  This process is what John Howard Yoder calls “reconciling dialogue” where each person commits to continue talking to each other (“just between the two of you”).  If that doesn’t work, then broaden the conversation with a mediator (“so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’”).  If that doesn’t resolve the dispute, the offense, the sin, then bring it to the “town-hall meeting” (the meaning of ecclesia, not “called out ones”), so that it, the community, can decide (“binding and loosing”) the issue.  And the entire purpose is the reconciliation of those involved, not the public shaming of sinners, or an example for youth about the consequence of sin!

To sum it up, here are three ‘P’s.  The purpose/product of Matt. 18 is the reconciliation of one to another when there has been an offense.  And this reconciliation is lived as peace in love for each other and God.  But this product of peace, of a loved unity-in-diversity cannot come about through the pronouncements of various leaders or authorities regarding the disputed matter.  Pastors can’t just jump into a dispute and pronounce the virtues of tolerance, of diversity, of loving acceptance at the beginning because these can only truly be a result. So instead of making pronouncement for/against the people involved, which inevitable creates a class of victimized losers and righteous winners, we must all commit to the process of reconciling dialogue, submitting fully to this Christ-ordained process so that we can become a real community which lives into and between all the diversity, differences, annoyances, and blessings of each other.  So the product of reconciliation can’t be short-circuited by authoritarian pronouncements, but must enter into the Spirit directed process of where care and clarification can occur.

So can we just stop killing each other and/or stop playing the victim, and get to the work Christ has put before us?

Things still to cover:

1) In more concrete terms, what is this reconciliation we are after?
2) How does this not turn into a tyranny of the community (group think)?
3) How does the larger community of God relate to a local community?
4) What about 1 Cor. 8, 10, and Rom. 14?

One can never look directly at one’s own body.  All we see are fragmented parts, disconnected limbs, but never the whole.  We only come to understand our bodies, and therefore ourselves, as a whole units, as a totality, through other bodies, even if reflected in a mirror.  Jacques Lacan speaks our need to find mirrors, our need to see idealized reflection of ourselves, to show us that we really are not just these disconnected limbs, that we really are not just broken, fragmented people, and without the “mirror stage” the process of subjectivity and the production of an ego is halted.  It is only through other people that we imagine ourselves to be whole, and only through other people can we know our own bodies.

It is the same for the church.  We can’t directly gaze at the unity of the church, the unity of the body of Christ.  We can only see it through others, through the discernment of everyone.  The body of Christ is not something available to be pointed out, “Hey.  There’s the body over there!”  And things are complicated because this body is not merely a physical body gazed at indirectly, but a social, even spiritual body, requiring more than sight. We need spiritual insight linked to the practices of confession, repentance, forgiveness, speaking truth in love, humility, compassion, and mercy.  Isn’t this what Paul means in 1 Corinthians 11 when he speaks of discerning the body of Christ at the Table?  That we must discern the unity of Christ in/through others as we discern his body at the Table?

But I’m not just saying something banal like, “It takes a community to know yourself.”  That is patently true.  But Lacan’s points is also that is takes a community to utterly misrecognize yourself, as you project on to it your hopes and dreams, and what you think you are as you lie to yourself about yourself.  But the true body of Christ is always broken, it is never whole, and we can never claim to be whole until we follow Christ to the cross (the above image of Christ on the cross is interestingly called “Tree of Life”).

So, can you see your body?  The body of Christ?  Are you even looking in the right place?  Are you finding unity as a defense against something else, or are you finding unity in the broken body of Christ?