Sunday, September 7, 2014

Disciplinary Schemes

Sermon 9/7/14
Proper 18, Year A
RCL

Track 1

I have been reflecting recently on the ritual of the courtroom.  Have you ever thought about how scripted and prescribed the actions are?  Think of how often you have seen the courtroom scenes play out in media—TV shows like Matlock, Law and Order, Boston Legal, and movies like 12 Angry Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, A Time to Kill, A Few Good Men, Legally Blonde.

The ritual of the court comes from centuries’ worth of tradition, legal interpretation, standards of order, policy, hierarchy, and practice.  The system may look different depending on what culture you may be in.  For instance, our court system practices according to an adversarial model in which parties square off to plead the case in front of a (hopefully) impartial judge and/or jury.  Other systems operate under an inquisitorial model in which judges act as investigators and examiners.  In any case, we are familiar with a lot of the rituals that have developed.  The practice of standing when the judge enters the court room in something of a procession.  The swearing in of witnesses.  The requirement that the defendant must stand for the reading of the verdict.  The emphasis on maintaining order, decorum, and dignity, or else risk showing contempt of court.   These are common fixtures of the popular image of the court system, the parts we see in media.

And there is a reason for treating this system with gravitas.  The court system is the institution we have invested with the authority to judge us, to imprison us, to possibly even kill us in the name of each other.  Such power should carry a solemnity. And regardless of whether or not the pageantry—the liturgy—of the courtroom is intentional, it serves the purpose of marking liminal spaces in the lives of those whose future is decided in the courtroom.

I would suggest we would lose some confidence in the system if the power with which the court acts were to be treated in a trivial manner by the people who wield that power.  In essence, the court has a reputation to maintain, and ritual mystifies and legitimates its practice.

I have also been thinking about the power of the ritual, and its effect on the people who go through the system.  If one is found guilty within the court system, they are found guilty within this highly ritualized system that then pronounces judgment; a judgment which may often include separation from society—prison.  In extreme cases—separation from society by death. 

The court in our name pronounces sentence according to a proscribed form that has as its goal to pronounce with finality the reality we will recognize.  The individual is guilty, as punishment, and possibly for our safety, the person is to be separated and grouped with others who had transgressed our laws.

Highly ritualized and choreographed acts.  The person is given a new status.  Criminal.  Guilty.  Convict. 

We see these images on the news, even if the trial is not in our own sphere of friends, cases are often reported as at least local news.  We are frequently treated to national stories of court cases.  The person led away in handcuffs, perhaps even shackles on the ankles, in jumpsuits marking their new status in our society.

But the ritual of the trial and conviction is only half the story.  What I’m interested in is the ritual that does not happen.

Have you ever noticed that the person convicted does not return to court to be ritually restored to the community?  The release of a prisoner has a script, absolutely.  But it does not have anywhere near the same level of ceremony.

As I think about the stigma that ex-convicts live with, I wonder if our practice of putting them in prison with ceremony and finality and publicity without the same level of ceremony and publicity in welcoming them back into society means that the status the court confers upon prisoners is never actually lifted.

I wonder if things would be different if we as a society gathered to acknowledge the debt as paid and to welcome the formerly imprisoned back among us with as much decorum as when we imprison them. 

These are musings I have had for years; thoughts that recur somewhat frequently especially as I follow the uneven justice that our institutions administer.  No system is perfect, right?  All human institutions carry the capacity for sin, right?

The reflections came back as I was thinking about our gospel reading for the day.  The reading is given as Christ’s own institution of church discipline.   And anytime we talk about discipline within the communities we inhabit, it would be pretty natural to read the Bible with our cultural context informing our vision of the text, perhaps without our knowing that this is what we are doing. 

One way that may look is this:  When we read this passage through the lens of our notions of discipline conditioned by our society’s conception of justice, it’s possible to see this passage as answering the question of when we are permitted to break contact with someone who wrongs us.  In that lens the passage reads like three strikes and the person is out.

In the Christian context, the passage is saying something different.  The passage is telling us the lengths to which Christians must go to stay in community.

It is our judicial context that leads many to think that the separation of one who does wrong from the rest of society is for our own protection and that person’s penalty.

By contrast, what this passages intends is for us to recognize that once a wrong is committed, the person who did the act is spiritually in danger, and at risk of alienation by her or his own choosing, and so the community has responsibility to act to keep them in relationship.

These differences between our judicial system and the church point to a set of assumptions about who we are when we gather that are at odds with each other.  Our culture has us as bound together by social contract, which we are free to accept or deny.  But as long as we live within the political bounds, we are governed by the rules of the realm.  The church is different, even as the church is treated in culture and in practice as a voluntary association of like-minded individuals.   The Church at its best and most reflective of Christ is the acknowledgment that we are the Body of Christ despite the differences we see or learn in our society.  As the body of Christ, we cannot say that we have no need of each other (1Corinthians 12).  No, Paul says in our readings from Romans today:  Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments are summed up in this word, "Love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.  This is not the teaching of our culture, which as a whole seems to emphasize our right to be free of each other.  Our faith, instead, calls us to tangible relationship and care for those around us.

These differences point to another way in which Christians can exist within our culture.  But it is also harder; so much harder.  Especially if you are as judgmental a person as I am.

I’d like to highlight 4 practical implications from this passage

1)      It’s not uncommon to hear that we may have conflict in every other area of our lives but somehow the church and its members are supposed to be immune to this.  After all, we’re Christians!  “In this passage, Jesus seems to assume that there will be conflict among his followers.  What makes us Christian is not whether or not we fight, disagree, or wound one another, but how we go about addressing and resolving these conflicts.”[1]  These guidelines may be directed to those within the church, but they offer an example of the way Christians can show Christ to others who know little more about us than that nationally Christians have a reputation for judgmentalism and hypocrisy.
2)      It is not in keeping with this passage to refuse to exercise forgiveness when it is genuinely sought. After all, the passage seeks to keep all in community.  In the verses just after this passage, Peter asks the question:  How many times must we forgive?  Jesus’ answer?  Essentially:  Always forgive.
3)      It is not in keeping with the passage to ignore the harm done to another person for the sake of maintaining niceties.  After all, this passage assumes that sin exists, and that the harming of another is never to be overlooked.  For the church to preach the demands of forgiveness without thorough attention to the demanding need and careful attention to repentance would risk passive, if not outright, violence to the injured.[2] 
4)      It is so normal in a situation in which we have been wronged to absorb that hurt and take it to others to talk about.  It’s actually comforting, isn’t it?  Without the input of the person who hurt us, we can tell the story our way (The way it *really* happened, according to us) and receive our support, and have people affirm that, yes, the person who harmed us is a scoundrel.  This passage counsels that the first thing we do is fight that natural tendency, and address the harm with the person.  Directly.  The potential benefit is enormous:  regain a member of the community without having to deal with the distortion that comes through hearsay and rumor—or the festering that comes through inaction and stasis. In the passages just before this one in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells the story of leaving the 99 sheep for the one. It is hard not to then see a connection to this discourse on discipline. To retrieve the one who by sin alienates herself or himself from others is more important than sitting in smug satisfaction with those who have never strayed.

Beloved of God, there is a difference between justice as it is practiced in our world, and that which Christians are called to enact in communities in which we find ourselves.  It is a harder task, to owe all nothing but love.  It is a harder task to seek a reconciling justice with which to replace punitive retribution.  But it is our task to be the leaven wherever we go, to make true the statement that justice is love when love enters the public realm, and to seek justice that builds community instead  of writes off others’ lives.  Practice a love that rebuilds and reconciles in the wake of sin both great and small, both in private and in public.  And may doing so inside and outside of the Church show that a different way is possible in an unforgiving world. 

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