Matthew 5:23-24 “Reconcile First”

A few years back on a Saturday night, I got a call from another pastor on the island. It was already relatively late, not quite bedtime, but close. I really did not know the pastor well all back then as he was new to the island. He said to me: “Pastor, you know Matthew 5:23-24?” This is of course our scripture for today.

“Yup, I think I know that one.” I replied.

“Well, I am angry with you, and I did not want to bring my offering to worship tomorrow morning without first reconciling with you.” he continued.

He was upset with me because of a misunderstanding that stemmed from a third party saying things about me that were not true actually. I thanked him for reaching out to me and clearing the air. Of course, now he was angry with the other person that had told him falsehoods, but there was nothing I could do about that. He had more reconciliation on his plate before he could preach the next morning.

At that time I went back and read this passage again because something did not feel quite right in the phone conversation with this other pastor. I realized then and so share with you this morning that this text does not say “That if I am angry;” it says “If your brother or sister is angry with you, go to him or her. . . .”! That is the exact opposite of what happened.

Let me therefore make the Commandment from Jesus, and it is in the imperative in the Greek, perfectly clear: If you know that somebody is angry with you, GO to that person and reconcile.

My immediate thought is that this must be the hardest commandment in the Bible. Reality check here says that I will always have people angry with me. I might not even know that they are angry with me. I will always be failing other people’s expectations. I will always be unable to give other people everything that they want of me, and unfulfilled expectations are the root of anger. The first person to express that so eloquently was in fact Willian Shakespeare (“All’s Well That Ends Well,” Act II Scene 1). Please read that Shakespeare comedy as homework if you like!

Should we as Christians just go around automatically thinking that everyone is always upset with us? How else should we know? I think this commandment requires a heap of empathy–that is the ability to feel what others are feeling. In a world that would have us harden our hearts, we are supposed to soften them up enough to understand the anger in another person and to address it. The world is a very angry place right now. We want other people to understand our anger, so this commandment is really gut-wrenching. We are supposed to go to our brothers and sisters and reconcile, knowing that they are angry with us!

The question is now what does it mean “to reconcile.” In bible club in the high school we had this question come up two weeks ago. The kids had a real hard time trying to come up with a good answer. They do not really understand the word because it has fallen out of usage. We see it in the bible, but we do not generally use it on a daily basis–unless we are in the accounting business.

You know, every month we reconcile the accounts of the church with the bank. So, I pray that that is not the only reconciling that we do in the church! And that we are more engaged in reconciling than holding off until the end of the month to do it!

What word should we use other than “reconcile” that folks today would understand? I am just going to pump a little Greek at you for a minute to help us understand. Generally speaking the word in the New Testament that we run into that is translated as “reconcile” in English is καταλλασσω (katallasso) in the Greek. It can mean to “under change” literally. Instead of “understand” we under change. We bring our hearts down and change so the relationship with another may be equalized, squared up, rectified.

Yet, in this particular passage we see a word that only appears once in the entire bible. It has the same root, but the prefix is different. This word is διαλλασσω (diallasso). It means not to change your own heart but to change the heart of the other person. That being said, we see that if our brother or sister is angry with us, then we must change his or heart–not ours.

I am thinking that a more appropriate translation in this context is “to influence” the other person. If someone else is upset with you, the command would seem to be to go to the other person to influence his or her heart.

A recent article in The Atlantic periodical by Arthur C. Brooks asked teenagers what they wanted to be. They were given a list to rank. 70 percent of them said that they would like to be “influencers.” Do you know what that is even? This is the person who sits around all day creating content on the internet, hoping that they might be the progenitors of the next great social trend.

Wow, this is strangely exactly what Jesus is commanding us to do here in this Sermon on the Mount message. We are not being told to change our own hearts at all. WE already have hearts for Christ. We are being told by Jesus to influence others–to change their hearts to Christ. We are to go out into the angry world and reconcile it to Christ. This action means to influence others.

Last week we heard the commandment to Love. This week we hear the commandment to influence others to Love, too. That is how the world will be reconciled to God. Just changing your own heart is not good enough. You must change the others’ hearts too. You have to face their anger in love and bring that love to their hearts too.

More than a few years ago, I was trying to reconcile my bank accounts. I was using Quickbooks which at the time would not let you out of the reconciliation submode unless the numbers match. The numbers did not match. I could not close out the program. I could not shut off the computer. I kept going over everything again and again, but I could not find where I had made a mistake. Then, it hit me. Maybe it is not MY mistake. I have always just assumed that I am at fault. I have always assumed the bank does not make errors. I studied the bank statement and checked it against cashed checks. Sure enough, the bank had transposed to digits on a check. As I could not log out of the computer, I left it on and ran down to the bank.

“Oh yah, that was the day we had our internet go down, and we had to reenter some items manually to the system.” They corrected the issue on their end, I got a new bank statement, and I could finally reconcile and get on with life.

WE should not always assume that we are in error. Sometimes, you have to tell the other person that they have goofed. When we see the other person is off, we are in fact commanded by Jesus to change that other person.

I wanted to bring up this bank story because the person who recorded this command to us in the Gospel of Matthew was of course Saint Matthew. He was a publican, a tax collector, an accountant for the state. Hearing this command from Jesus must have cut him to heart. “Maybe, Matthew, you have been wrong!” “You have spent your whole life reconciling accounts in the wrong.”

How does Jesus tell us to reconcile accounts exactly? The answer is “urgently”! If you are in the middle of a worship service, about to put your giving into the offering plate and suddenly remember that there is anger in a brother’s heart, drop what you are doing and go influence that brother! Do it now. Reconcile first.

Did you notice that of all the commands we see in the Bible this one seems to be the most urgent? Jesus says to drop everything and do this thing! Why? The answer is that none of us know how many days we have left in this world. We do not know when it is that we may no longer have the chance to reconcile with those whom we love. What if I die before I can fulfill this command? What if I die and people are still angry with me? What will they say at my funeral?

Actually, I have been to a few funerals at which unreconciled feelings were openly displayed. It is truly sad. You pray that in heaven one day the final accounting will take out that anger. If not, then we all may be lost though Jesus came to save us.

Romans 5:11 “We also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have now received our reconciliation.”

Amen.