Sermon for September 6, 2026: On Fighting Better, Matthew 18:15-20

Matthew 18:15-20 Reproving Another Who Sins (New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition)
 
“If your brother or sister sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If you are listened to, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If that person refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church, and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a gentile and a tax collector. Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you, 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.”

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     As I began my research for this sermon, I found a couple articles with great subtitles that I think are worth sharing. Dr. Eric Barreto has a commentary on this text with the first line: “Churches are full of troublesome people.” Dr. Audrey West has an article about this scripture with this first line: “Whenever two or more are gathered … it can be really hard to get along.” They are saying something that many of us who have been a part of churches for a while know to be true: People in churches fight. There’s never been a time when people in churches haven’t fought with each other, because fighting is a thing humans do. Some people are very good at it.

     While there is certainly unhealthy fighting... fighting that is abusive, mean-spirited, manipulative, and dangerous... conflict itself, isn’t always a problem. Well-intentioned, good-hearted, and thoughtful people disagree, often about important things.  Our goal in building any healthy relationships really shouldn’t be to strive for no conflicts. It should be to have conflicts that contribute to the health of our community, serve the aims of love and justice, and reflect the best of our values.

     In going through some of our digitized historical records this week, I came upon a booklet printed in honor of our 100th anniversary in 1876. It was printed at Rev. Thurston’s son’s print shop in Portland. Within the booklet is guest preacher and Winthrop native Rev. Thomas Newman Lord’s Centennial Address. One thing I appreciate about Rev. Lord is that he was both loving and truthful, so far as I can tell, about not just the celebrations of this church, but the challenges.

     Lord spoke of “three trials of the church” beyond the comings and goings of clergy. These conflicts were significant enough to shape the trajectory of the church, and in some cases, the town, for a very long time. All were during Rev. Thurston’s long ministry. The first was a conflict about money that I don’t fully understand. It seems that there were funds set aside to support the town calling a minister. At the time the fund was created, it appears to have been created to support finding a Congregational pastor. Eventually, as other denominations became established, they, too, wanted to have some of the funds. There was at least one lawsuit and even attempts to change legislation that are all described more fully in Everett Stackpole’s 1925 history of Winthrop that I will attempt to describe in this sermon.

     Eventually, to stop the fighting among neighbors, the church voted to tell the town council that, while money was ours, we would give it to the town for the school fund.  Even this act was greeted with a backbiting response from some on the council, whose official acceptance of the fund came with reiteration that it wasn’t only this church’s money to begin with and that the church, insisting that it was, was the problem in the first place. The whole ordeal sounds really messy and really disheartening... not the kind of conflict that is generative at all.

     The other two trials are more familiar to me. They are the arguments about temperance and slavery. Early Congregationalists imbibed as much rum as anybody else, but, in the 1800’s, many began to embrace the temperance movement. Their distrust of alcohol came from, in part, observing violence and neglect in families where people struggled with alcoholism. Rev. Thurston stopped drinking himself, and I believe pushed for using grape juice with communion, which is how we practice to this day. He tried to get the whole church to agree not to drink anymore, going so far as to intentionally preach on the text, “Wo [e] to the drunkards of Ephraim.” While many disagreed with him, eventually, the church would agree to embrace temperance. I do wonder how many people still had a little brandy at home for “medicinal purposes.”

     And, finally, he was a passionate campaigner against slavery, a moral question that would eventually drive our nation to war and split some entire denominations into pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions. I hope that none of us in this room will be tempted to say, when describing pro-slavery beliefs, that “it was simply a different time.” Many people in that era, including our pastor and members of this church knew that chattel slavery was wrong. Of Thurston, Lord said, “The pastor at this time was far in advance of his ministerial brethren on this subject.” Plenty of clergy, as well as lay Christians, chose slavery, and the economic system that relied on it, over the kind of neighbor love that Jesus demanded.

     While the church as a whole supported Thurston in his missionary work towards dismantling slavery, the people who supported owning humans and the people who were afraid to dismantle slavery with the radical quickness that was merited, worked together to push Thurston out. Technically, according to Lord, Thurston asked for a dismissal. But, that is only because they made it too hard to continue to pastor here. But, the moral question did not leave with Thurston. The next three pastors, Rev. Sawyer, Rev. Bowker, and Rev. Noble all had to attend to it during their time here as pastor. It is a wonder that the conflict at the heart of the Civil War did also not split this church in two. Churches have split over far less important, and less morally clear, issues.

     In my reading, I also spent some time reading the church manual from 1896. It includes articles of faith and covenant as well as by-laws to guide the church’s government and discipline. I was not at all surprised to see today’s reading explicitly named in the section on church discipline. Among the Duties of the church and its members is an instruction to address conflict in ways that reflect their religious values. The manual reads, “Any member having cause of complaint against another, should immediately seek to have it removed in a Christian manner-Matt. 18th chap., 15th and 16th verses, being our guide, especially in cases of personal offence.” Our church isn’t alone in using these scriptures to guide our fights. Jesus gave these instructions to the disciples so that they would have a process to allowed them to fight more faithfully. Just because people are troublesome, that doesn’t mean we can’t learn to do better.

     I see versions of the practice Jesus described being utilized at all levels of church. They are usually at the forefront of my mind as some of the best practices in addressing conflict here in this church. They also guide committees on ministry on the association level, and the work of our conference ministers and conference. 

     Even though other practices for addressing conflict are useful, in returning to these scriptures in particular, we are reminded of the commitments Jesus had when developing relationships and how those commitments should guide our behavior in community. In these instructions to people in conflict, Jesus is, as Audrey West describes in her commentary, encouraging the church to be a place that cultivates honest conversation and does not allow harmful behavior to go unaddressed. West notes that the verses preceding our reading are about protecting “little ones.” The basic assumption of this process of conflict mediation is that care is central to the act. We should care enough to listen when someone says we’ve harmed them. And, we should accompany someone in solidarity if harm cannot be rectified in an initial one-on-one conversation.

     Recalcitrance in the face of harm is not rewarded. Instead, there is a risk of being cast from community if one is not willing to make amends. Our old order for church discipline provided a process for hearing complaints, allowing someone to speak up for themselves, and for assuring that majority vote was necessary for any disciplinary process. While I know that these kinds of processes are used for harm all the time (one only has to listen to testimonies of survivors of church abuse to hear today’s reading evoked to do the harm it was intended to stop), in a healthy congregation, a process like this that requires what West calls “hearing and listening at every step” can go a long way towards creating a model for conflict resolution that is ultimately faithful and generative.

     We as a nation are in a season of conflict in which the loving and relational scaffolding that could help it feel constructive and useful has largely been dismantled in order to favor a few powerful people. This, however, isn’t the first time this church has been operating in the midst of arguments that seem intractable and are definitely unwieldy and often mean-spirited. We were not unchanged by those conflicts and will not be unchanged by the conflicts of this era. Perhaps one step to help us move forward to re-examine our faithful guidance, like today’s scripture, to remind us of Jesus’ own commitment to protecting the vulnerable and naming harm. Following the example of Christ and our forebears, may we fight for what is meaningful and just. May we fight with our commitment to care firmly in mind. May we fight better than many are fighting right now, so that love and justice are bound together on this earth.

Resources consulted while writing this sermon:
Records of our 100th anniversary: https://digitalmaine.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=wccucc_books
Audrey West: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-23/commentary-on-matthew-1815-20
Eric Barreto: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-23/commentary-on-matthew-1815-20-5
Everett Stackpole's History of Winthrop, Maine, with Geneological Notes: https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/me_collection/175/
​1896 Church Manual: https://digitalmaine.com/wccucc_books/1/