“If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, 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 the member 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.”
– Matthew 18: 15-17
Dear People of St. David’s,
This past Sunday we concluded the Adult and Youth Forum series on Forgiveness, but I want to circle back to one of the points we made in the first week of the course: Jesus’ teachings on forgiveness are about building a strong community.
Very early on in my ministry, in the first church I oversaw, the head of the Altar Guild asked me if during the week I would carry the heavy brass candlesticks from the church, across the parking lot, and into the parish hall kitchen so that she could clean them. I enthusiastically said “sure!” Then, I promptly forgot all about it.
Sometime midweek I was looking out the widow and I saw the head of the Altar Guild marching across the parking lot with the candlesticks. I ran out the door and up to her, ready to apologize, but before I even got close, she started laying into me. She was mad. I started getting defensive and being mad right back. Of course I had forgotten all about the brass, but we also hadn’t settled on a date-and-time for me to have everything in the kitchen. I offered to carry the last of the candlesticks over for her, and she refused. She went away angry, and so did I.
When Karen got home, she found me stewing in our living room. After I dramatically filled her in, Karen said, “Oh Rick, you have to go over and apologize. You just have to.”
I’m sure I tried to fight Karen on this, but she was right. So, I headed out the door, and I walked over to the woman’s home. When she answered the door, I could tell she was still mad, but I just started to tell her how sorry I was that I had forgotten about our agreement, and I was sorry for getting mad in return.
When I was finished, there was a slight pause in our conversation, but she finally said, “Well, I’m sorry too.” As I recall, she poured us some iced tea, and we sat down and worked it all out.
She was known in that church for being prickly and hard to get along with. However, for the rest of my ministry there she and I were as close as we could have been precisely because we had gone through this thing, and we took the time to work it out. This argument and the subsequent apology made our relationship stronger.
When Jesus speaks of forgiveness in Matthew 18, he compels us to seek out the person who hurt us and try and work out whatever happened. He presents forgiveness as a two-way street, where the injured party and the injuring party have to eventually put down the vitriol and defensiveness and find a way for forgiveness to win the day.
I can’t help but think of my old head of Altar Guild when I read Matthew 18, and therefore I can’t help but think that this was Jesus’ genius all along: Forgiveness is about strengthening relationships, families, communities, and churches. When we live in relationship with other people, someone is always going to be hurt—sometimes it will be us, and other times we will be the cause of the hurt—and those are opportunities to grow closer than we ever could otherwise.
This Sunday we start a new Forum series on Civil Discourse. There are churches all around us where, when you walk in the door, they just assume that you are on one side of the political spectrum or the other. The sermons lean towards those politics, the educational offerings lean towards those politics, and the conversations around the coffee urn lean towards those politics.
That is not St. David’s. This is a community that is diverse in thought and perspective. That can be tricky—especially in an election year! —but I think the rewards are so much richer. What brings us together at St. David’s is not our politics, but our commitment to knowing God in Christ and making Christ known. We are able to put our mission ahead of our individual political perspectives and focus on the things that unite us.
Our society desperately needs spaces like St. David’s where we aren’t just siloed into echo chambers, and where people are able to easily demonize the people on the “other side” because they don’t know anyone on that side.
What I’m looking forward to in this new series is learning how we can learn from each other and find areas of common ground that we hadn’t considered before. In this way, I think that the series on Forgiveness and the new series on Civil Discourse are focused on the same thing: making our relationships and our community stronger.
Peace,
The Rev. Rick Morley
Rector
PS: If you want to hear more about Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, check out our podcast bonus episode from this week.
Published on February 6, 2025