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Living and serving the church out in Montana gave me a look at a lot of cluster, or yoked, parishes.
One was a set of churches led by a seminary mate of my mentor, The Very Rev. Heidi Kinner. As such, I got to see the inner works of this cluster quite a bit.
The cluster centered on a church in Butte, St. Mary and St. John’s if memory serves. The church itself was a combination of two former parishes. I don’t recall the whole story, but what originally was St. John’s involved a rector who I believe had been steadily trying to move the parish away from The Episcopal Church. There may have been some misconduct too, like embezzlement. Because of whatever he did, the rector was eventually removed from his position.
Before then, the bishop had set up a mission, St. Mary’s, led by my mentor Heidi’s friend. As the first parish shrank, it grew. When St. John’s pastor was removed, the parishes were joined together. Instead of going back to the original name, Heidi’s friend decided it would be better to combine the names as a sign of a new moving forward together.
It was still hard for many members. Some of the people that they were back in church with had been, at the very least, enablers of their former rector’s behavior. It was very hard to let the past go.
I was fortunate enough to see hearts melt though. One day when I was visiting the church, the words of the day were centered around emulating Jesus, and part of that message included Jesus’ forgiving us. Heidi’s friend told me later that on hearing those words, one of the members said “ok” and that she was ready to try to go on the path of forgiveness.
I got to see a similar situation where I lived in Helena, serving under Heidi at the Cathedral. There was another Episcopal church in the area, the name which I no longer recall, which was part of another cluster of churches. This particular parish had formed because of some disagreement with the members of the Cathedral from some time no one could remember over some issue no one could recall. The parish was getting ready to close down.
The rector made a really good decision and asked Heidi to sub in for her one Sunday. The hope was that on meeting Heidi, the members would consider coming back to the Cathedral since there was no other Episcopal church nearby for them to go to.
Unfortunately forgiveness was too much to ask for with this group. Even meeting a leader they liked was not enough for them to put aside the no-longer-remembered disagreement of the past. There were only a handful of them, but their unwillingness to forgive left them without a church home.
“Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” These are the words Paul tells us this morning as he reminds us of the Second Great Commandment given to us in Scripture: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This with the First Commandment, as Jesus and Paul tell us, “contain all the Law and the Prophets.”
In the end, how we interact with each other matters. When it comes to our disagreements, Jesus tells us, essentially, to talk it out. When that doesn't work one on one, we are then called to bring our issues to the wider to church to be sorted out.
While Jesus does lay out what to do if the guilty party refuses to listen, the point very clearly is that both parties should be listening to one another. Because, as Jesus reminds us, “if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
Both members are meant to be reconciled. That is the ideal action. That is what we want to happen.
In doing so, we are not only reflecting the love that Paul calls us to today, we are also emulating God’s own actions towards us. In Exodus we hear about the first Passover, where God “passes over” the Ancient Hebrews to lay a curse on the Egyptians for failing to listen to His words.
When we expand this story from a Christian point of view, we realize that all parties are deserving of this wrath. As Paul says towards the beginning of Romans, “There is no one righteous, no not one.”
Instead God provides the means to us so that He will “pass over”. That word, פּסח, can also mean “to skip by” or “to spare”.
Passover is a sign of God’s mercy. It shows what God does, what He provides to us all. God forgives us.
For that reason, when we come together as a community, God calls on us to forgive one another too. It’s not that it is an easy process. Forgiveness means both sides accept a wrong has been committed. Not everyone will accept the process of forgiveness, and Jesus does give us a protocol if that happens.
From what I’ve seen, especially from my time in Montana, is that if you are willing to forgive your fellow members in community, something new and powerful can result. If not, you’re kinda left in the lurch. It’s really your own stubbornness that leads to you becoming, as Jesus puts it, like “a Gentile or tax collector.”
Forgiveness is hard. It is a process. It is a process that doesn’t always come to completion. For those that are willing to try, things will never go back to how they were before, but you can forge ahead to something new and something great.