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Galatians 2:11-21 (2 Sam “You’re
Wrong” In the name him who loved us and gave himself for us,
dear friends in Christ: Compared to
times past (and for better or for worse), it’s a kinder, gentler society in
which we live. I’m not sure, but I think
maybe we can trace its roots back to the late fifties and early nineteen
sixties when some highly influential child development books came on the scene. By studying these books, parents learned that
the proper way to raise their children was to always reinforce and praise the
positive, and never to offer any negative comment to criticize a child’s bad
behavior – which couldn’t actually be called “bad behavior” because that would
be a negative thing to say. Instead, if
little Jonny were found playing with matches next to the stack of old news
papers in the garage, or chasing the cat through the yard snapping a pair of
hedge trimmers after it, or laying on his back in a grocery store aisle kicking
and screaming, throwing a violent tantrum because his every whim with regard to
what went in the cart was not being obeyed, well, such behavior was to be
called “unstructured creativity” or “experimental assertiveness” – something
that had a positive ring to it. The idea
was that the reason Jonny misbehaved was that angry people said and did things
that hurt his feelings when he was only doing his level best to assert himself
creatively in an unstructured sort of way.
He acted badly because verbal (and yes, it’s horrible to imagine, physical) discipline by the very people
who said they loved him made him feel bad. No, the way to get Jonny to do
positive things is to impress upon him what a good boy he really is. Tell the child he is good, praise his actions,
and he do good and praiseworthy things.
Uh huh. Anyway, that’s my theory for how
it started. But now these and other
ideas like them have had several decades to percolate through (or some might
say fester within) society at large, and they’ve been extended to other social
situations, so that these days pretty much the same rules apply to all human
relationships. We’re always to reinforce
the positive, always to accept and tolerate the imaginative diversity in the
words and actions of others without ever offering any kind of criticism or
correction that might offend sensitive feelings. We’re not to confront anyone in a negative
sort of way. That’s not a loving way to
behave. I remember several years ago
there was a popular expression that said, “Love means never having to say, ’I’m
sorry’ – which is a pretty silly thing to say, as anyone who truly loves
someone knows; but now a much more popular idea is that love means it’s never
acceptable to look someone in the eye and say, “You’re wrong”. And since these values so dominate the
culture around us, it’s no surprise that they are found seeping into the
church, both in terms of how we deal with each other on a personal basis, and
also at the institutional level. Our
Synod’s dispute resolution process is a good example of this. It’s our official method for dealing with
conflicts between members. It was
designed to create a win-win situation for parties in dispute. Regardless of the circumstances or what
they’re fighting about, we must never find in favor of one party, because that
would mean finding against the other.
Instead, we must keep working with both sides to seek a solution, some
sort of mutually agreed to compromise, that allows them both to retain their
pride, their points of view, and their positions. Everyone is always right, and no one is ever
wrong. (And just in case you’re
wondering, yes, it works: it works just
as well as all positive reinforcement and no discipline worked in getting
little Jonny to behave appropriately.) How very
different are the three examples that we heard in this morning’s Scripture
readings. In the Old Testament, we have
a case of someone confronting the sinner with his sin. It’s the prophet Nathan who puts the finger
on King David who, as you may recall, had recently been involved in adultery
and murder – and who thought he got away with it. What’s remarkable is the way the prophet
confronts David. He goes to him
ostensibly to inform him about the crimes of one of his subjects: a rich man who stole his poor neighbor’s
sheep. And someone may think the prophet
is just being tactful and discreet; but that’s not it at all. It turns out to be a stealth attack. Nathan is setting a trap for David that he
won’t be able to escape. And it
works. When David hears the story, he is
incensed, and he decrees, “The man who did that deserves to die.” And with those words, he slams the trap shut
on himself. Nathan tells him, “You’re
right David, and you are that man;
only you didn’t steal a sheep: you stole
a man’s wife. And when you made her
pregnant, you had him killed so that no one would find out.” The prophet’s attack on David is brutal. It strips away all his defenses and evasions,
and leaves his black soul exposed, naked, and ashamed – which is exactly where
it needs to be if there is to be repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation
with God. That, of course, was the
purpose of the confrontation: to restore
David to the covenant of God’s grace.
And that does indeed happen; but there are bitter consequences
nevertheless. Though David’s sin is
forgiven, he has to live with the fact that his infant son will die on account
of his sin. The point to be made,
however, is that David needed the confrontation. He needed someone who loved and cared for him
enough to tell him that he was wrong. We see Jesus doing the same thing
in this morning’s Gospel lesson; but the case is a little different. This time it’s not the obvious sinner who’s
being confronted, but someone whose sin is a little harder to detect. David knew all about his sin, and hoped that
it would not be discovered; Simon the Pharisee, on the other hand, hasn’t got
the foggiest notion that he’s absolutely lost in his sin: the sin of self-righteousness. Jesus has accepted an invitation
to dine in Simon’s home. This pleased
Simon, no doubt, as it would have been another feather in his already highly
decorated cap to have the famous miracle-working Rabbi as one of his guests,
not to mention an excellent opportunity for him and his friends to probe and
perhaps discredit Jesus’ more radical teachings. It happens that while they’re dining that a
notoriously sinful woman enters the room.
She is likely the town prostitute – or perhaps I should say former prostitute: it’s clear from her actions that she’s had a
life-changing encounter with the Savior, and now she wants to show her
heartfelt gratitude. She has purchased
an extremely expensive container of perfume with which to anoint Jesus. Normally such a product would be used very
sparingly and then only on the head, but it seems that she does not consider
herself worthy of presenting it that way.
Instead, she lavishly uses it all on Jesus’ feet, which she further
anoints with her tears of gratitude – tears that I suspect Jesus valued far
more than the costly perfume. All in all
it is a tremendous outpouring of her love for her Savior in response to the
forgiveness he gave her – which is precisely the point of the short parable
that Jesus shares with Simon. For his
part, Simon is horrified that Jesus, a man of God, would allow this disgraced
woman to touch him. But like Nathan
confronting David, Jesus invites Simon to walk into a trap so that he can
reveal his sin and confront him it. “Who
will love more”, Jesus asks, “the one who is forgiven much or little?” Simon correctly deduces that someone having
received much forgiveness would display the greater love. “Very good,” says Jesus, “now let’s apply
what you have just said”; and then he begins contrasting the woman’s
overflowing love with Simon’s comparatively stingy treatment of his highly
honored guest. With each point he
hammers away at Simon’s hypocritical and loveless heart – and he does this in
front of all the other guests – proving to him and everyone else that this
woman they all look down on is a lot farther along on the path of righteousness
than they are. She has shown that her
sins, though many, have been forgiven.
Their acts prove that their own sins have not been forgiven. It’s a blistering indictment on the Pharisee
and his guests – but again, the point is that without the confrontation Simon
would never have known how lost he really was, and, I might add, we would not
have known to see this same sin in ourselves. Turning then to today’s Epistle
lesson, we have yet another even more public confrontation in which one person
thumps another on the chest, and says, “You’re wrong”. This time the issue is one that most folks
would think is pretty trivial – certainly nothing to get all worked up
about. But that analysis would be wrong. At stake here is the Gospel of salvation in
Jesus Christ itself. David’s sin and
Simon’s self -righteousness put them both in a state of jeopardy regarding
their salvation – but Peter’s seemingly innocuous behavior put the whole church
at risk of losing the saving truth and being damned forever. The situation was this: the early Christian church was headquartered
in Jerusalem. That’s where most of the
apostles of Jesus still were – and of course, the vast majority of believers
there were Jews. So, though they were
now Christians, they had all grown up under the Law of Moses, and they
continued to observe those laws – they were, after all, commanded by God. So they still circumcised their infant sons,
and they kept all the dietary restrictions:
no pork, no shellfish, that sort of thing. And it only made sense: that’s what they were comfortable with. Meanwhile, the good news of
salvation in Jesus was spreading throughout the world. And one of the places it really took root was
in the city of Antioch, which was a predominantly Gentile city. The apostle Paul spent a lot of time working
with the Christians there. And one of
the big issues that came up very early was the question of whether these
Gentile converts to Christianity should be required to obey all those rules
that God gave the Jews. Paul came to
realize very rapidly that these laws were not about questions of right or
wrong. They were rather shadows of
Christ in the Old Testament. Therefore
he correctly concluded that it was not necessary for Gentile converts to
observe them since they were all fulfilled in Christ. Who needs the shadow when you have the
reality? Well, a lot of the Jewish
Christians had a hard time with that.
They thought that if God commanded it to us, then it was for
everybody. They thought that you
couldn’t really be a proper Christian unless you lived like a Jew. So there was this big debate as the church
went through its first major doctrinal crisis.
Finally it was decided that Paul was right: that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is about
faith in his accomplished work on the cross, and not about following lots of
ceremonial rules about what to eat and so on.
That was the decision – and it
was the right one because it kept the focus on Jesus and not on the works of
the individual believer. But
unfortunately there were a lot of Jewish Christians who weren’t too happy with
that decision. They still thought that
living like a Jew was the right way to go. Then it happened that Peter went
to Antioch to see how things were going and to help build up the church
there. While he was there, he freely
mingled with the Gentile converts. He
ate with them in their homes and so on, and he didn’t pay any attention to what
he was eating. He wasn’t keeping
Kosher. But then, some time later, came
along another delegation of Jewish Christians from Jerusalem; and some of them
were definitely the guys who thought that following the Jewish customs made you
a better Christian. Peter knew this, and
he didn’t want to get a lot of criticism from them because of the way he had
been behaving. So, when they arrived, he
stopped mingling so freely with the Gentile Christians. He didn’t eat with them any more. Instead, he spent his time with Jerusalem
folks, and he reverted back to all the Jewish customs to avoid offending
them. And it happened that other Jewish
Christians in Antioch, taking their cue from Peter, did the same thing. But imagine how that looked to the
Gentile converts. They had been told
that there was no reason for them to follow those Jewish customs; that what
they needed was faith in Jesus Christ as their Savior, and that faith in him
made them the children of God and full heirs of the eternal kingdom. Now they were seeing a different message being taught. Though Peter knew the truth, and though he
would never stand in front of a group and teach them otherwise, his actions told these new Christians that
following the Jewish rules really was important. It told them that they were second class
Christians as long as they did not obey those rules – that simple faith in
Jesus was not enough. And this just
wasn’t any person who was teaching this to them, it was Peter: the same Peter who
walked on the water, who saw the Lord’s glory on the mount of Transfiguration,
and who was commissioned by the risen Lord to “feed my sheep” – his example
carried a lot of weight. Though he never
intended it, they got the message loud and clear. This is why
Paul could not allow the situation to continue.
And you’ll note that he didn’t pull Peter aside for a private
consultation about it. Peter’s public
distortion of the Gospel message, whether intended or not, needed to be
corrected publicly so that all would know and understand the truth. In front of the entire assembly, Paul told
Peter, “Your actions are denying the very Gospel you proclaim. You are teaching these people that they must
behave as Jews to be real Christians – that being a good Christian involves
observing the works of the law – and if that is true, then Christ died for nothing.” Now, I suspect that Peter was embarrassed,
that his friends were offended, and that many people thought that Paul’s
approach was inappropriate and unloving.
But the truth is that when a leader of the church is leading people to
hell, the loving thing to do is to put a stop to it. And that means standing up and saying,
“You’re wrong.” So what
we’ve seen in these three examples from Scripture is that the Christian faith
is inherently confrontational, and that it’s right to be negative and to criticize
when someone is wrong. When calling the
sinner to repentance, when uncovering a person’s hidden sins – sins he doesn’t
even know about, or when defending the basic truths of the Gospel, there is a
need and a loving purpose to telling someone, “You’re wrong”. We are to speak the truth in love. And love does not mean being namby-pamby
about it. The examples we’ve seen this
morning could not be described as especially gentle or tactful. They were direct, they were emphatic, and
they offended the people who heard them.
But it must be remembered that the goal of such Christian confrontation
is always true reconciliation – reconciliation that can only be achieved when
the person who is wrong admits his fault and turns to the truth. Still, it’s
not easy, and no one likes to do it. Be
it from lack of confidence, or fear of offending, or from our having
assimilated cultural values that tell us that it’s unloving, I’m sure that all
us can think of times we’ve recoiled from the task and neglected to act when it
was called for. This even happens
collectively. A good example is our
church’s practice of close communion, which is, among other things, a form of
confrontation that says to people who do not share our confession of faith,
“You’re wrong”. There is constant
pressure from within and without for us to abandon this practice because, we’re
told, it’s unloving and offensive – and besides, the argument goes, it scares
away visitors, so it violates the mission of the church to bring people to
Christ. Well, I’ll agree that it offends
people; but that’s as far as I’ll go. It
certainly does not interfere with the church’s mission, because those who don’t
know Christ don’t go into a church expecting to commune – they don’t even know
what it is. The ones who are offended
are those who are … well, wrong. And the loving thing to do is to tell them
so. We won’t come to agreement in the
truth by ignoring our differences and pretending they don’t exist; rather we’ll
come to real unity in Christ by dealing with our differences openly and
honestly. And again,
that’s the goal of all Christian confrontation:
it’s genuine reconciliation – to God first, when the sinner comes to
repentance, and with one another as we share a true confession of faith in the
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So, today,
for the times we have failed to confront the sin and error of others, the Lord
says to each of us, “You’re wrong.” With
David, let it be that each one of us confesses, “I have sinned”, that we may
also hear the words of grace that make us one with Christ and with each
other: “God has taken away your sin, for
the sake of his Son who lived and died for you.” In his holy name. Amen. Soli Deo Gloria! |
