Unclutter Your Lives - Clear Away the Conflict

Matthew 5:23–24 (ESV)

"So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift."

I met this man on my vicarage.  I was the fourth of 7 vicars (interns) to serve this vacant congregation in southern Nebraska.  He was a man every single one of us vicars visited sometime during our year of vicarage.  He came to church, but he refused to go to communion.  He hadn’t been to communion in 40 some years.   So each vicar, during his year, went out some time to visit with this man out of spiritual concern.  Why wouldn’t he take communion?  The initial reason we were given was that he objected to having to kneel for communion.  Back in the day, when the congregation put in the kneeler for communion, he was against it. Since the congregation went ahead and did it anyway, he refused to go to communion. 

Well I suggested to him that he didn’t have to kneel.  He could stand to receive the Lord’s Supper.  Apparently, I was the 4^th vicar to suggest this to him.  That was when the real problem came out.  40 years earlier this man had been involved in a conflict with another church member from a nearby church.  The other man had accused this man of attempting to have an immoral relationship with his wife.  This was fervently denied by the member of my vicarage church.  So the other man proceeded to beat him up… severely beat him up.  The result was that this man, the member of my vicarage church, was very bitter.   He was bitter about being wrongly accused.  He was bitter about being beaten up.  He was bitter because this other man was never disciplined by his church.  He held on to that bitterness for 40 years. That day of my visit, he showed me an old picture of what he looked like after the beating.  He carried that picture in his wallet.

I share that story because that conflict from 40 years earlier had really cluttered up his life.   This unresolved conflict left him angry, destroyed his marriage, hurt his faith (he wouldn’t go to communion), lost him all sort of friends.  The list of clutter goes on and on.  That’s what unresolved conflict does – It leaves trash all over your life.  It is a cancer that eats away at your heart and faith.  When you allow conflict to fester, you hurt yourself most of all. 

How do you clear away such conflict?  The words of Jesus make that clear.   So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.   First, go to God and ask for his help and his forgiveness.  After all, it takes two to tangle.  Then go to whomever it is. Go not for revenge. Go in humility – willing to listen and willing to see your own fault in the matter.  Go ready to ask forgiveness.  Go in love.  Speak the truth in love to the other person.  Jesus said it in Matthew 18, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.”

Why should you go, especially if the other person was wrong?  Well it doesn’t really matter which of you is wrong.  Most likely you both are wrong.  No, the reason to go is because that is what God did for you and me.  He didn’t wait. He came searching for Adam and Eve.  He promised a savior from sin right there in the garden.  “He sent forth His Son…”  “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their sins against them…”  “God demonstrates His own love for us in this, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.”  “In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and gave His son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”  He is the shepherd “who leaves the 99 in the open country and goes and searches for the lost sheep,” came searching for you and me.  That’s why you go… that’s why you seek to clear away the clutter of conflict – you want others to know about, to see and meet in you the love of the God who loves them and you.  You love because Christ first loved you… That’s what God’s love does – It clears away the clutter.