facing conflict, 2.17.13

David fled from Naioth in Ramah. He came before Jonathan and said, “What have I done? What is my guilt? And what is my sin against your father that he is trying to take my life?” ²He said to him, “Far from it! You shall not die. My father does nothing either great or small without disclosing it to me; and why should my father hide this from me? Never!” ³But David also swore, “Your father knows well that you like me; and he thinks, ‘Do not let Jonathan know this, or he will be grieved.’ But truly, as the Lord lives and as you yourself live, there is but a step between me and death.”

⁴Then Jonathan said to David, “Whatever you say, I will do for you.” ⁵David said to Jonathan, “Tomorrow is the new moon, and I should not fail to sit with the king at the meal; but let me go, so that I may hide in the field until the third evening. ⁶If your father misses me at all, then say, ‘David earnestly asked leave of me to run to Bethlehem his city; for there is a yearly sacrifice there for all the family.’ ⁷If he says, ‘Good!’ it will be well with your servant; but if he is angry, then know that evil has been determined by him.

²⁴So David hid himself in the field. When the new moon came, the king sat at the feast to eat. ²⁵The king sat upon his seat, as at other times, upon the seat by the wall. Jonathan stood, while Abner sat by Saul’s side; but David’s place was empty. ²⁶Saul did not say anything that day; for he thought, “Something has befallen him; he is not clean, surely he is not clean.” ²⁷But on the second day, the day after the new moon, David’s place was empty. And Saul said to his son Jonathan, “Why has the son of Jesse not come to the feast, either yesterday or today?” ²⁸Jonathan answered Saul, “David earnestly asked leave of me to go to Bethlehem; ²⁹he said, ‘Let me go; for our family is holding a sacrifice in the city, and my brother has commanded me to be there. So now, if I have found favor in your sight, let me get away, and see my brothers.’ For this reason he has not come to the king’s table.”

³⁰Then Saul’s anger was kindled against Jonathan. He said to him, “You son of a perverse, rebellious woman! Do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame, and to the shame of your mother’s nakedness? ³¹For as long as the son of Jesse lives upon the earth, neither you nor your kingdom shall be established. Now send and bring him to me, for he shall surely die.” ³²Then Jonathan answered his father Saul, “Why should he be put to death? What has he done?” ³³But Saul threw his spear at him to strike him; so Jonathan knew that it was the decision of his father to put David to death. ³⁴Jonathan rose from the table in fierce anger and ate no food on the second day of the month, for he was grieved for David, and because his father had disgraced him.

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Today I want to talk about conflict. Sometimes we face conflict in our families or our workplaces. Sometimes we face conflict with neighbors or friends. Sometimes we face conflict within ourselves. Conflict is universal and challenging, but it can be hard to talk honestly about.

            The passage Gary read from Samuel tells the part of the story of conflict between David and Saul. On the one hand, this story feels kind of irrelevant. After all, none of us is dealing with conflict over who will be the next king. On the other hand many of us face conflict because our goals conflict with someone else’s. Or we worry that someone else’s success might be a threat to our position. Or maybe you have a boss that doesn’t treat you fairly because they are threatened by your abilities. David’s story touches all those feelings.

            Most of us are pretty familiar with the story of David and Goliath. After David kills Goliath he becomes one of King Saul’s military commanders. He also becomes Saul’s son Jonathan’s best friend and before long Saul’s daughter, Michal, falls in love with David.

As David gets closer to Saul’s children and gains the respect of the other leaders in the military, Saul starts feeling threatened. He worries that David’s success will undermine his authority and threaten his kingdom. In Saul’s case, his worry is well founded. The Prophet Samuel, who had anointed Saul as king, later confronted him with disobeying God. He told him that God had rejected him and was going to seek a “man after God’s own heart” to rule Israel. So when David appears on the scene so obviously full of God’s power and gains popularity quickly, Saul concludes that David is the one God has found to replace him.

As readers, we know that Saul is right: David will be king and Saul will lose the throne. It’s classic epic tragedy: Saul can recognize what’s going to happen, but he can’t do anything about it. Everything he tries to defend against the threat from David strengthens David’s position and weakens his own. In the end, Saul will die, his family line will become mostly irrelevant and David’s legacy will define the rest of Israel’s story.

Unlike Saul, most of the time when we feel threatened by other people the threat is not that real. We are threatened because we are insecure. We worry that people will like someone else and forget about us. Or we worry that someone else’s success will somehow set us back. Fortunately, we are not living in an epic tragedy.

But as different as our stories are from Saul’s story the basic core of conflict is often the same. The real problem for Saul is not David, it’s that Saul has broken faith with God and God is going to remove him from the throne. David is the means of that, but God is the one opposing Saul. Saul blames David, but the problem is really Saul.

We often see a problem and we blame it on someone else. Then we try to solve the problem by putting up defenses against the other person, when the problem is actually within us. Even when the problem starts with something someone else does, our response contributes to the conflict. When we put up our defenses, usually the other person responds defensively too. We both say words that fuel the conflict and we misunderstand each other because we’re too defensive to really listen and much too defensive to talk openly about what’s going on.

Misunderstanding reinforces our fears and negative feelings about the other person, and their fears and negative feelings about us. Everything new we learn about each other person gets filtered through the darkening lens of our conflict, so it gets harder and harder to see the situation and our role in it accurately. The conflict spirals downward, and before we know it the walls between us are too high to imagine taking down.

At the same time, the trouble inside us that caused or contributed to the conflict goes unrecognized and unaddressed, so we are likely to repeat the same mistakes over and over again while blaming other people each time.

Conflict puts up walls; misunderstanding makes those walls higher and harder to see through. Then, our natural reaction is to talk to our friends about what the other person has done to us. More often than not, that reinforces our negative feelings and brings someone else into the conflict in an unhelpful way.

In contrast, there is Jesus’ approach to conflict:

Matthew 18:15-35

¹⁵“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. ¹⁶But 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. ¹⁷If 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.

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You’ve probably heard me talk about this passage before because I think about it any time there is a problem, misunderstanding or conflict. Our first instinct is usually to talk about a conflict with a friend, with someone we count on to agree with us. Jesus says our first move should be to talk with the person we’re having a problem with. That’s hard to do and it requires a frankness and honesty that is not common in our culture.

Our culture values politeness almost to a fault when it comes to face-to-face conversation. Whether it’s work place feedback or fashion advice with friends we struggle to give honest, constructive criticism. It is hard to tell someone straight out when they have hurt us. It’s even hard to tell someone when we disagree.

The thing is, honest engagement cuts through the fog of misunderstanding. It’s hard, it’s scary to think about approaching someone we’re having trouble with and sharing our concern. But Jesus is never one to shy away from things that are difficult, and here, as usual, his advice is right on target.

Caring for God's vineyard, 10.2.11

Philippians 3:4b-14

^4bIf anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: ⁵circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; ⁶as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

⁷Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. ⁸More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ ⁹and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. ¹⁰I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, ¹¹if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

¹²Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. ¹³Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, ¹⁴I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

 Matthew 21:33-46

³³“Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. ³⁴When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. ³⁵But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. ³⁶Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way.

³⁷Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ ³⁸But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ ³⁹So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. ⁴⁰Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” ⁴¹They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”

⁴²Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’? ⁴³Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. ⁴⁴The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”

⁴⁵When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. ⁴⁶They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.

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            Ok, so let’s start with this story Jesus tells. What’s the problem in the story?

How does the owner of the vineyard try to resolve it? What might some other options have been for the owner?

What’s the outcome?

Now, Jesus doesn’t just tell this story at random. Matthew tells us that the chief priests and scribes figured out that Jesus told the parable about them. Let’s think that through.

If the parable is about the religious leaders, who are they in the parable?

What does the vineyard stand for?

Who is the landowner?

What does it mean that the religious leaders refused to give the vineyard’s produce to God? What would that produce be? What are they doing instead of giving it to God?

What servants does God send to convince the religious leaders to share their bounty?

How do the leaders treat those messengers?

Why do the leaders kill the son? What are they trying to accomplish? How do you think that’s going to work for them?

What might it mean in this context for God to give the vineyard to others?

This gives us one great image of the church. In fact, several great biblical images for Israel work really well for the church. It’s important for us to remember that we in the church join God’s story; we don’t replace Israel. God and Israel have an ongoing story that is in conversation with our story. The stories are related, but not identical: we can’t live Israel’s story and neither can they live ours.

So the vineyard is one great image of the church from the Bible. What would stewardship look like in that image?

There are many images of the church in scripture and others we can come up with on our own. Each image focuses on some aspects of the church and may leave out others. Even though we all might have images that speak to us more than others, it’s important to know that no one image tells the whole story, so we can learn from each other.