After his conversion, St. Paul helped bring Jews and Gentiles together, saying: “Then after three years I did go to Jerusalem to visit Cephas [Peter] and stayed with him for 15 days. . . Then I went into Syria and Cilicia [Gentile lands] . . . and they also glorified God because of me.”
-Galatians 1:18-24
Over the years, as an Episcopal clergyman, I have tried to mediate many angry disputes—sometimes successfully—between those whose marriages are about to break up to political disputes between the very liberal and very conservative members in the churches I have served. I have looked to St. Paul who, after his conversion that we celebrate today, showed us the way as he brought angry Jewish and angry Gentiles together. Here is what I have learned over the years and I hope this will be helpful to you when you try to bring angry, disputing people back together or are caught in one of these disputes yourself.
First, I always try to find win-win solutions in an angry debate. That seems so obvious, but all too often that search for the win-win does not come up. Part of this effort means: When possible, let everyone save face! Maybe as Christians, we shouldn’t need to save face, but most of us are regular humans, not saints.
Second, when people are locked in a never-ending dispute, I ask them to talk about what they dream of for the near or distant future. Both sides in a fierce couples’ debate often say, “Well, I want the very best for our children.” Angry church members may say, “Well, I know that the church must be a place where all people can feel welcome.” When people express long term goals on crucial matters on which they agree for the near and distant future, their arguments become ones of strategy—how to get there—and strategy arguments take some of the sting out of a current debate. And the less sting the better!
Third, I ask, “Can you really listen to the person you are in conflict with?” I don’t mean casual listening. I mean heart-and-soul listening. I mean the kind of listening where you learn about significant moments in one another’s life, listening to one another’s stories—why each of us is who we are. As a longtime prison volunteer in Kairos Prison Ministry International, I find that even inmates who have been convicted of terrible things can learn to appreciate the stories of other inmates, as well as us volunteers, and even those they have hurt, often terribly. I call this kind of listening, “sacred listening.”
And finally, I say to fellow Christians, “You know, we can know enough truth to live by and die by, but we cannot know Truth the way God knows Truth.” God is God and we are not! When we make the claim that we are speaking for God in an absolute kind of way, whether we use those words or not, we are indulging in a kind of blasphemy. Thus, just maybe, we can take a kind of humility into our great debates—an almost absent characteristic among our national leaders if not in our churches. It’s time once again to broadcast as far as we are able what Oliver Cromwell preached nearly four centuries ago: “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible, you may be mistaken.” One hopes that he was listening to his own words. And can we?
Musical Reflection - Sheku Kanneh-Mason - Song Of The Birds
Help us, Lord God, to find ways to bring together those caught in angry conflict. Amen.
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