The deputy sheriff who investigated the incident later said that the homeowner had gotten kicked several times during the melee and would probably be walking bowlegged for a while.  He’s actually very fortunate.  I hear tell that, though a six-point buck may look beautiful at a distance, when backed into a corner they have a way of defending themselves quite well.  The homeowner was apparently not interested in a win-win solution to this dilemma, though.  If someone had to lose, this man was determined not to get “bucked” off of his own property.

Just out of curiosity, how do you handle conflict?  Especially the kind that threatens your sense of normalcy and your comfort and privacy.  Not necessarily the kind of conflict that presents itself as horned evil, crashing into your life to destroy you.  How do you handle conflict at all?  Any kind.

Before I go any further this morning, I have to tell you that there is only one thing I don’t like about preaching, aside from the fact that Sunday seems to come around about four times a week anymore.  Jeff Walston text-messaged me this week from A&M and told me he was going to be here today.  He wanted to know what I was preaching about.  This was on Thursday!  I started to text back to him, “Are you kidding?  It’s only Thursday!  I’m supposed to know this now?”

But, what I don’t like about preaching is that it’s a one-way street.  I

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talk and you supposedly listen.  We don’t get to dialogue.  You have no idea how many times you’re having roast preacher for lunch how I wish I could join you for the roast.  I’m serious.  If I could, I would add this one grain of salt to the meal.  When you listen to me preach, far more often than not, you are hearing a confession, not a sermon.  When it’s all said and done, all I can truly do is try to honestly confess to you about where the gospel is rubbing up against my life and my values and where the gospel is crashing my middle-class, all-American lifestyle and inviting me to another kind of party altogether.

So, when I ask you this morning how you handle conflict, I’m not asking you how you feel, for example, about the war in Iraq, as vital a conversation as that might be, and interesting, as well.  I am asking you to specifically dialogue with me with Holy Scripture, while at the same time you hear my confession, about how the gospel conflicts with us and what we have come to expect to be our God-given rights to whatever in our day-to-day lives.  “The love of Christ urges us on,” Paul writes, into that very conflict.

Urges us on to what, again?  Well, Paul answers the question before we even actually get to ask it.  “The love of Christ,” he has written, “urges us on” to a place where we no longer live for ourselves, but for him, who “died and was raised for us.”  To a place where we “regard no one from a human point of view,” but solely from the perspective of the love of Christ, who seeks to transform all of his creation in his image.  Remember, please, this is confession more than sermon.  Most specifically, the love of Christ urges us on to a place where we see all of life, even more specifically, all of life’s conflicts, as nothing less than opportunities to be the agents of reconciliation God has “entrusted” us to be.

The whole Bible is the story of God’s work of reconciling his creation to himself.  We call that work a number of things.  We call it salvation, redemption, restoration.  It’s all part of the same thing, really.  God created the world, sin entered the world, and, at any point sin touches humanity, it causes some form of brokenness.  It is

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to that brokenness that God has come to bring his reconciling, redeeming, saving, cleansing love, of all things, through us.

Understanding the whole story of the Bible includes appreciating the fact that the story God is writing, the story of the Bible, includes you and me.  It is a story in some ways not written, in this sense.  God has come to reconcile all people to himself, and then, unbelievable as it may sound, entrusted us with the message of reconciliation to us.  God, trusting us?  Yes!  Think about that.

I was showing some friends the ostrich egg that Mary Neel Green painted for me a few weeks ago, with the beautiful birds on it.  It’s in my office on this pedestal.  This one friend would not hold it.  I said, “Here, this is incredible.”  She wouldn’t take it.  She was afraid she’d drop it. 

Think about this for a moment.  God has taken this most precious gift of reconciling the world to himself and said, “Here, I want you to hold it with me.”  How does that feel in your hands?  What will we do with it?  God is trusting us to help him finish the story of redemption not yet fully written.  Each of us in this room gets to write a chapter in this unfinished story of God’s reconciling work!

How will yours and mine be written?  It will be written, line by line, in terms of how we handle the conflicts that sin has created in God’s creation and into which the love of Christ urges us to interject ourselves as agents of reconciliation.  Those conflicts will present themselves to us in as many different ways as sin is insanely imaginative.  Wherever there is brokenness in this world, in whatever form, that’s where we are called to be agents of reconciliation.  Whether that brokenness is between you and another person, or groups of people, or nations of people, or families, or whatever.

Reconciliation is a big word, but it’s not an impossible word.  It means nothing less than bringing back into harmony or union, that

which has been separated.  Sin separates; the love of God in Christ

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urges us on to reconciliation.

Reconciliation begins, according to scripture, with how we choose to look at each other and see each other.  We see each other either from what the scripture describes as a “human point of view,” only as tall, short, fat, skinny, brown, black, white, yellow, red, precious in his sight, hungry, well-fed, English, Russian, whatever.  If those are the boundaries within which we choose to see each other, then our limited vision will scuttle any hope of reconciliation we may have.

We either see people that way, or we come to see them as the scripture describes, how God in Christ has died for them, to make them new creations.  If we see people only in terms of what human experience has made of them, then we tend to see them as locked into that mold.  If we see them in terms of what God in Christ has died to make them, then the sky of heaven itself is the limit.

It’s really a strange thing to be locked into a mold.  You ever been there?  In Rockwall, there is this subdivision called The Shores.  It’s built around a country club.  It’s a nice place.  It’s not the most exclusive neighborhood in Rockwall anymore, but it’s a nice place, a place most people can’t afford to live. 

Ten years ago, when I was a single father living in an apartment, I was took my boys to YMCA soccer practice several times a week.  Just like most parents, I was looking for the some relief from the never-ending soccer-practice shuttle.  At one practice, I overheard some other parents talking about carpooling for soccer practice.  Three times during that conversation, I said, “That sounds great to me.  I’d be glad to be a part of that,” and was totally ignored by this one man who was instigating the conversation.  “We ought to get a carpool together,” he said.  “I’d be thrilled to do that.”  Ignored.  Three times.  Finally, about the fourth time it was said, “We ought to get a carpool together,” and I said, “I’d love to be a part of that,” he turned and looked at me.  He was taller than I am, and he looked

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down at me, and he said, “Do you live in The Shores?”  And I said, “No, I live. . . .”  He turned, without saying a word, walked away.

What I got that day was a lesson in how it feels to be locked into a mold based solely on how someone saw me from just a human point of view.  It gave me some appreciation for how many people live their whole lives on the other side of social acceptance tracks.  This is what I’ve also decided.  How the world chooses to look at me is the world’s business.  It is how I choose to look at the world, even those who shun me, that is my business with God.  How I responded how to the man who shunned me is part of how my chapter in the story not yet written about reconciliation will be written.  “Christ’s love urges us on.”  Which seems to me to mean something even more threatening, or challenging, depending on how you look at it.

Again, confession.  This is something I just started learning in about the last six months, at least, as I can calendar it.  Helping people to be reconciled to God is one thing, in terms of preaching the Gospel, or whatever.  “Since God is making his appeal through us,” Paul writes, “we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”

So, I would ask you this morning, have you been reconciled to God?  Do you have a personal relationship with this reconciling God through his reconciling son, who died a reconciling death for you?  If you don’t, would you please, I beg of you this morning, consider accepting Christ into your life?

Are you still at war with God?  Are you still angry at him?  Are you still trying to find where he’s drawn the line in life just so you can step one foot over it?  Have you come to Christ?  If you haven’t would you?  That is very important.

But, there’s more.  This is what I have come to learn in the last six months.  We should not perceive conflict as a threat, but as the blessing of opportunity it is to be all that God has created us to be. 

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There is no way to be an agent of reconciliation in this world without being personally engaged in the conflict ourselves.  No way.  I cannot stand at a distance and talk about reconciliation and be a reconciler.  I can’t even wait until the horned enemy crashes my party and only react to crisis when it presents itself and call myself a reconciler.  If I am to be an agent of reconciliation, then I’ve got to hear these words, “The love of Christ urges us on,” then I must do what God in Christ has done.  I must leave the comfort and the safety of wherever I am and move out into those places where sin has broken God’s creation and do something about it.

God has reconciled himself to us through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, the scripture says.  God has entrusted us with the most sacred of all gifts, into our very hands.  How we are handling that gift has everything to do with how we are writing the chapter in the story not yet finished.

This morning, you can think about writing a check to the Thank Offering as just paying for brick and mortar.  Or, you can even see your signature on a check as part of the chapter you’re writing to help this church be an agent of reconciliation in this world.  It’s up to you. 

You’ve certainly heard by now that Rosa Parks died a couple of weeks ago at 92 years of age.  She’s the woman who played such a pivotal role in the early days of the civil rights movement.  She’s the woman who sat at the front the bus one day instead of the back and was arrested for it.  Her single-handed determination that one day led to a great deal of what happened to bring about civil rights for people of color in this nation, even the world.  You can study about civil rights, and you can preach about it.  You can get angry about injustice.  You can get a Ph.D. in justice and teach courses on how others should know about justice.  Or, you can finally decide you’ve had your stomach full of injustice and just refuse to give up your seat on a bus.  It is the people who move into conflict, even at great personal risk, who change the course of history.

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In Matthew 5:9, Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God” (KJV).  Peacemaking is not just reacting to conflict when it comes to me.  Peacemaking demands proactively entering conflict.  Listen to James, the half-brother of Jesus, who wrote these words.  “What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but have no deeds?  Can such faith save him?  Suppose a brother or sister is without food or clothes.  If one of you says to him, ‘Go; I wish you well.  Keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?  In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead” James 2:14-16, (NIV). 

This is what James’ words mean to me.  This is confession, not sermon.  Once I see human need, in any shape, form, or fashion, once I see injustice or brokenness, whether it’s on the most personal level, or whatever level, once I see it, I become responsible for how I respond to it.  “How can a man see it and do nothing, and claim to have faith?” James asked.  How I respond to the conflict of unmet human need becomes one of the lines in the chapter God has entrusted me to finish in the story not yet written of God’s redemption of mankind.

Someone asked recently, in light of our partnership with Buckner and our new community center, “Are we just becoming a social service church?”  I’ve thought about that question.  It’s a good question.  A fair question.  Now, they didn’t ask me personally.  But, if they had, my answer would be, “No.  We are becoming a full gospel church.”  The most obvious thing the scripture seems to be saying to me this morning is that the gospel is holistic.

I cannot legitimately any longer, in my life, say I am concerned about a person’s soul if I am not concerned about their physical needs.  Was that not the model Jesus demonstrated when he went about preaching the gospel, and, as the gospels record over and over, healing every manner of disease, feeding the hungry, granting dignity to the disenfranchised and on and on.  It would more, then,

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appear to me that James is also saying that once I see anyone in need, no matter what that need may be, then I become responsible for how I respond, and how I respond becomes one of the chapters I’m writing in the story not yet written.  How someone gets hungry or naked or whatever is not the issue here.  What is the issue is that my response to human need on any level, no matter what it is or how I see it, is the true measure, not just of the depth of my faith, but of whether or not what I am trusting to be an eternal faith to save my soul from hell exists at all.

If we are only concerned, and this has been the single most significant spiritual lesson of my journey with you at Cliff Temple, if we are only concerned about preaching a gospel that saves people from hell after they die but does nothing to deal with the hell they are living in now, then whatever we are preaching is not the gospel of Jesus, who left the glory of heaven, entered into our conflict, and lost his life when he wouldn’t give up his seat on the bus of salvation.

Every point of human brokenness, whether it is anger between two brothers in faith, a husband and wife who cannot resolve their differences, a parent and a child, a church and its community, a nation and a nation, every point of human brokenness, no matter what form it takes, is a point at which sin has broken into God’s creation and destroyed whatever it touched.  It is also the point at which God is entrusting us to be his agents of reconciliation.  If I am having a fight with Nancy, I don’t have the right to win.  I have the responsibility to reconcile.  If I am in conflict with you, I don’t have the right to win.  I have the responsibility to reconcile.  If something we are doing makes each other uncomfortable we do not have the right to entrench in our polarized positions.  We have the responsibility to go more than half the way, interjecting ourselves into the uncomfortable places as Christ’s love urges on, until we have proven ourselves to be the people of faith we claim to be.  Rosa Parks changed the course of human history but only as she interjected herself into injustice at great personal risk doing it,

because she chose reconciliation as the way her life’s story would

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read.

“Can you imagine,” someone asked recently as we were sitting around the table with a bunch of great Christian friends, having a great time, “how wonderful heaven is going to be?”  My candid response was, “It all depends on who we’re asked to room with.”  I’ve begun to wonder lately, how are we adjusting to our future roommates?  We don’t get to pick our roommates in heaven.  It’s pot luck.  How are we adjusting, to all of our future roommates, in this room, in this community, in this world?

Serendipitously, as I told you two weeks ago, I recently picked up The Five People You Meet in Heaven.  I bought it over a year ago and hadn’t read it.  I finally picked it up to read it and couldn’t hardly put it down.  One line from that books stays with me daily.  “Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know” (Mitch Albom, the five people you meet in heaven, Hyperion, 2003).

So, this is my confession.  I cannot withdraw from or just react to conflict and call myself an agent of reconciliation.  I cannot call myself an agent of reconciliation until I interject myself into the conflict and bring God’s reconciling grace and peace there.  I don’t have to have an opinion about every issue anymore.  I don’t have to respond with rudeness, even when others are rude.  I don’t have to be right, and I don’t have to win.  What I must do, if I would call myself a follower of Jesus, is be the agent of reconciliation God has called me to be in this world.

The gospel, more than ever before, is beginning to challenge me by rubbing up against some of the things I have valued most all my life.  Honestly, I don’t know how well the story that is not yet written about how I’m going to respond will turn out.  Ask me in 10 or 15 years.

The other morning, my dog Beau needed to go to the bathroom about 2:45 in the morning.  It turned out it was a good time for both

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of us.  I got up to let him outside and, when I opened the back door, the cold morning air washed over me.  The north sky was as clear as it could be.  Though it was cold, I stood there awestruck as I looked over our back fence.  There it was, big dipper, just on the other side of the fence, only a few feet above the prairie it seemed.  I felt as though I could just reach out and just take it by the handle.  As I stood there in that moment, transfixed by the glory and the magnificence of God’s creation, this scripture came to mind.  “Who is man, that thou art mindful of him” (Psalm 8:4, KJV)?  The big dipper, in the cold night air, renewed my eternal perspective.  The light coming from those stars for how many tens of thousands of years and from who knows how many tens of thousands of light-years away, gave me perspective.  God is up to something big.  Best of all, God has given you and me the privilege of writing one chapter in whatever that is.

How’s the writing going?