The Dance of Reconciliation: "If Your Brother Sins Against You...."

Long ago, someone I trusted was unfaithful, staging an iniquity that shocked and crushed me. I felt abysmally unloved and disrespected, and I suffered a grievous injustice. My heart broke under the weight of the trifecta of wounds.

Not long after I arose from my tear-stained couch (Ps 6) and my resilience kicked in, my pastor asked me if I had relied on counseling to deal with the trauma. I had not, I explained, because instead I bathed myself in the Word, and in my prayers, I felt called to forgive. So I did. Without any discernment regarding the sin with the offender or a counselor, I moved on.

At least that's the story I told myself.

In retrospect, the truth is that I chose not to address the sin against me because I feared the consequences of further conflict. I thought that if I named the evil, the relationship would end, and I could not bear that. And so I moved on, and I named my moving on "forgiveness."

Eventually, I met my personal Merlin, a theologian. He pointed to my error as he cauterized that old emotional wound and cleaved the cords of the baggage I had grown accustomed to carrying. Forgiveness without mutual discernment, he said, is merely moving on. It's not the good Jesus taught us to seek. Forgiveness that follows mutual insight, he continued, is a new creation.

What does Jesus teach us  to do when someone sins against us? Long ago, I thought the answer was "forgive." But I was wrong. Jesus understood that the health of our communities depends on freedom from fear, and the antidote to fear is love (1 John 4:18), and that love is where truth and justice meet. Forgiveness is crucial because it makes truth-telling possible, and truth-telling is what makes reconciliation possible.

Jesus does not say, "when a brother sins against you, forgive him." As noted in part 1 of this series, Jesus says instead: "If your brother or sister sins against you, go and correct them when you are alone together" (Matt 18:15). Our first step in the dance of reconciliation is naming the sin so that it can be addressed.

Unfortunately, many of us bear our wounds in silence instead of speaking to the offender about their action's painful impact. We suffer silently to avoid conflict. We move on as though our wounds won't add to our baggage. That's what I did. But that's often not the prudent course.

All wounds are not the same. Sometimes we crush each other with massive boulders like infidelity or chronic abuse. Sometimes we bruise each other with rocks, such as failures to love or respect each other appropriately. Sometimes we sting each other with pebbles like sharp words, embarrassment, rejection, or teasing.

Some wounds are so small that we rightly judge it imprudent to speak of them. However, a pack of pebbles bruises like a rock, and a pack of stones crushes like a boulder. The individual wounds may be slight, but their accumulated impact is significant. When the cumulative effects are large enough that we imagine ourselves retreating from our regular intimacy with our neighbor, then our silent suffering likely is not the prudent course.

Whether your neighbor crushes you with a boulder, bruises you with a rock, or chronically stings you with pea gravel stingers, when you fail to inform her of her impact and offer her the opportunity to make things right, your wound remains raw and unhealed. You may avoid conflict, but you perceptibly retreat from the fellowship God desires for both of you. Perhaps you bump her to an outer circle of intimacy. Maybe you slash the frequency and depth of your engagement. You avoid conflict, but the friendship suffers, at least a bit, and often a lot.

You also place your neighbor in an impossible position. Indeed, in jeopardy. She is responsible to God for living in fellowship with you, yet she cannot restore peace because she cannot do her part of the reconciliation dance without you. Even if she senses something is not quite right, she cannot address the specific wound she caused unless you first do your part of the dance. As discussed in part 1 of this series, your role is to name her impact specifically and concretely so that she can imagine and make restitution and promise repentance. Moreover, she cannot make that figurative offering of an extra 20% that is her sharing in the distress she has caused, and thus cannot be released from the torment of conscience. Neither of you can obtain closure and peace if you do not do your part.

Moreover, there is potential for reciprocal harm. For if the wound is allowed to fester, it, like cancer, eats away at the fabric of the healthy ties that bind families and friends together in Christian love. The victim obstructs God's mercy for both parties. And, if uncorrected, this transforms the victim into an offender, too. By nursing wounds and denying their remedy, he shares in the responsibility for the dissolution of healthy communion. The injury can fester into a far worse cancer because it can lead to a family or community's schism. As St. Thomas Aquinas observed, "Of all sins committed by man against his neighbor, the sin of schism would seem to be the greatest because it is opposed to the spiritual good of the multitude."

Whether inspired by a desire to avoid conflict or to nurse our resentment, when we accumulate wounds without doing our part of the liturgical dance of reconciliation over an extended period, we wound our neighbors by denying them goodwill between us. That denies them the enjoyment of peace that God freely gives those who trust in His Way of Love. When we allow wounds to fester, we refuse our neighbor the fullness of our love and fellowship and any means of obtaining them. We add our sin to theirs.

Our first step in the dance is truth-telling. Our role is not to speculate about the intentions of the person who hurt us but to name their impact on us. We say, "When you did this, it impacted me in this painful way…." If our concern is with chronic behavior, we say, "When you do this, it impacts me in this painful way." We speak in a collaborative spirit, trying to teach each other how to love reciprocally better. In so doing, we trust Jesus's instruction on how to handle conflict.

Once we speak the truth in this way, we mark time, waiting in place as the Spirit works in the heart of the offender. Our next step in the dance responds to her moves.

Our hope for sustained peace and joy leads us back to the two parables of forgiveness that sandwich Jesus' teaching on the dance of reconciliation (Cf., Matt 18:10-14, 21-35). Truth-telling is possible if and only if forgiveness is assured. For that reason, our forgiven-ness and our commitment to forgiving others are essential. Trust is not sustainable without mutual commitment to the practice of forgiveness in analogy to our cruciform forgiven-ness. For that reason, our next step in the dance, when our neighbor responds with discernment, repentance, and reparative offerings, is to say, "I forgive you." We restore her to full communion.

Yet forgiveness is discordant when she responds differently. She may respond with denial. She may respond with a quick "I'm sorry" that skips discernment and conveys instead, "Let's move on," inviting us to carry on as though nothing happened. She may argue that her actions were reasonable and proper. But forgiveness is untimely without mutual understanding that she did a wrong.

Sometimes, all that's needed is a conversation that creates that mutual understanding. Yet sometimes, our neighbor chooses, after our repeated attempts, not to pursue that conversation. Or perhaps the conversation reveals that our neighbor has no intention of changing the behavior that causes our wounds.

In such cases, discernment may consist of our recognition and respect for her free decision to walk apart. That does not mean there should be a schism between us. On the contrary, Jesus calls us always to love our neighbor. Forgiveness, in this case, means that we sort through which activities we can carry on together in the same old way and which things may be no longer realistic in their old forms because their foundation is that commitment to a way of life not mutually shared. The future fellowship may feature less frequent engagement and greater distance, but it can be sustainable and joyful. The relationship continues, but in a different way; all things are made new.

The dance of reconciliation begins with the truth-telling that enables the learning that is the gift of wisdom. That wisdom, in turn, becomes the balm that transforms the wound into a scar memorializing God's mercy upon us. Only when we speak truth to each other may we be assured that Jesus is present in our dance. Only then are our failures to love as God calls us to love rendered redemptive; only then are we strengthened by wisdom; only then are our bonds of affection healed.