II Corinthians 2:5-11: But if anyone has caused grief, he has caused it not to me but to some extent—not to exaggerate it—to all of you. This punishment by the majority is enough for such a person; so now instead you should forgive and console him, so that he may not be overwhelmed by even worse grief. So I urge you to reaffirm your love for him. I wrote for this reason: to test you and to know whether you are obedient in everything. Anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. In fact, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ. And we do this so that we may not be outwitted by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his designs.
I have wondered from time to time if Jacob and Esau’s story would have ended differently had they have had someone like the Apostle Paul in their lives. Paul—if you are familiar with his letters—was not the most congenial guy. He was prone to losing his temper. He had no problem calling people out when he was displeased with their behavior. He sometimes made rude and unkind generalizations about people, and he had a really hard time keeping friends. No sooner did Paul write about a friend in one letter, he was writing about how he was no longer associated with that person in the next. But the thing that nobody can deny about Paul is that he cared about both the churches that he was planting, and the churches that others were planting across Asia and Europe. Paul was deeply invested in the Body of Christ and in the understanding that he had of the cross. To Paul, the cross was the place where all sin and death had been defeated, and where all people—no matter who they were or who they had been—were being brought together to God and to one another.
So, even though Paul himself was a bit of a curmudgeon and wasn’t really all that good at managing conflict in his personal life, for Paul, keeping churches together was of the highest importance. Walking away and never seeing each other again wasn’t an option. Going part way through the motions of forgiveness and of reconciliation but not having the endurance or the desire to actually dig deep and to solve the problem wasn’t acceptable. It didn’t matter if the grace of God was going to make all things right again in the end or not—the Church was now. The people who Paul had met and worked with and befriended on his mission trips were living and working together in real-time. They had to figure out how to be a community, even if that meant that Paul was going to force them into it.
It would be incredible dishonest not to tell you that I struggle with this aspect of Paul. As much as I love a happy ending, and as much as it bums me out that Esau worked so hard and made so much effort with Jacob only to have Jacob blow him off, I am also not sure that reconciliation at all costs is the answer. I would never tell someone to stay in an abusive marriage or relationship. I would never tell a child who had been seriously harmed by an adult in their lives that they needed to continue spending time with that adult. And—on a much less extreme note—when you look at the story of Jacob and Esau meeting again, Esau honestly did all that he could do. He did everything that he should have done. It was Jacob who didn’t want to go the extra mile. It was not Esau’s job to force Jacob into doing the right thing. That’s “Human Relationships 101.” I suspect that maybe Paul—with this forcible reconciliation thing—perhaps could have used a good therapist.
But at the same time, I do love the heart of Paul was trying to do with his churches. Three weeks ago, I challenged us all to hold out our hands. I asked us all to try reaching across the divide and to begin the process of building bridges. In encouraging his churches to forgive and to forgive and to keep trying, that’s essentially what Paul is also asking—he is just asking that we try to do it more than once. Paul is asking that we keep our hands outstretched. He is requesting that we keep the lines of communication open. He is begging us to not throw in the towel. He is essentially reminding us of so many of Jesus’s teachings—turn the other cheek, forgive 70 x 7, take up your cross and follow Him—and urging us to actually put them into practice. Paul is inviting us to continue loving one another up close and to keep closing the gap between us.
Forgiveness is hard. Reconciliation is hard. Peacemaking is hard. All of it is hard because there is no tried and true blueprint for it. Different circumstances call for different measures. Again, there are times where the “happily ever after” way of doing thing, or where the forced reconciliation way of moving forward is unsafe and unwise. But maybe, we could try holding out our hands for just a little bit longer. Maybe we could keep the bridge semi-open instead of closing it. Maybe we could remain willing to keep trying. We might be surprised to see what God might do.
Hannah Lutz is the pastor at both Ada Chapel Friends Meeting and Wilmington Friends Meeting in Wilmington.
