In it was his detailed history of each man in the church (there were no women on the list).  A history that consisted of every significant detail he could recall, positive or negative, that had been part of each man’s life and that went back several years in some instances.  I suppose he thought he was serving the cause of holiness by making certain that the new pastor didn’t inadvertently ask someone less than holy to serve in any position of leadership and he must have spent hours hunched over a keyboard hacking out every gritty tidbit.

His finished product was something any FBI agent would have been proud to get his hands on had he been doing a background check on certain members of my church.  To say the least, when I opened his report, I realized at first blush that I was reading something no one’s eyes should see.  Knowing who could serve as effective leaders was one thing but access to the sordid details of everyone’s past was another.  Nonetheless, I thanked him for his efforts and, as soon as he left the office, I destroyed the document without reading another word.

The truth is, we all have a history.  And all of our histories have some good and some bad in them.  Some that we would want remembered for all time.  And, some that just can’t be forgotten soon enough.  Certainly most of us, like George W., hope that the stuff that’s at least twenty-five years old doesn’t matter anymore no matter what it was.  Yet, sadly, there is no statute of limitations with the memories of some.  Someone will always be willing to write our histories in a less than favorable light and doing it, they really believe, in the name of holiness.

Jesus knew that this group of His followers, that would soon become what we know of as the church, had nothing less than fully human sinners in it.  People who would fail each other from time to time despite their common faith.  It would not be a perfect community.  But, it would be a community of faith in the risen Christ and, because of that, one in which His followers would find that, as they gathered in His “name,” He would invest that gathering with His very presence “among them.”

That is at the heart of what we have celebrated here this morning in the taking of the Lord’s supper.  This is not just about remembering the historical Jesus but celebrating the presence of the risen Christ in our less than perfect company.

But, if you look closer, Jesus was also promising something else very curious.  He was saying, in essence, that when the history of the church was finally written it would be composed not only of how Christ conveyed His forgiveness to us but also how the men and women in the church conveyed Christ’s forgiveness to each other.

So, the common thread that runs through this church’s history that is still being written is how we do the work of forgiveness with each other.  Think of it this way.  This supper is a living witness of how God has responded to our failures.  Jesus is then binding us to be God-like with each other in the way we handle one another’s failures as we go along.

In other words, our history is not just a record of our past but a living record of how we respond to each other when we fail one another.  That has to be at least part of the meaning of these almost inconceivable words, “whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.”  This isn’t Carte Blanche permission to do as we will and thereby bind God to bless it.  It is a commission to do as the risen Lord would and expect Him to bless it accordingly.  At no point should that will and its power be more heeded, in the writing of the church’s living history, than at the point of how we each handle one another’s failures.

So, as Cliff Temple celebrates her Centennial, what is more crucial than what will be written on the historical marker about our past is how well we are writing the history of forgiveness now.  No church exists for one hundred years without someone getting hurt.  Human failure that affects you will be a part of your story at Cliff Temple.  The only question will be how we choose to respond to those who fail us.

I had an interesting conversation with Paul Powell just a couple of weeks ago.  We were talking about church growth and how you do that when he said, “more and more of us are beginning to have conversations about how to grow healthy churches as much as how to grow numerically larger churches.”

That was Jesus’ concern, too.  Nowhere, in this passage, does He mention anything about what we would call evangelism or missions.  What He is obviously discussing is how to move toward a healthy history.  And, He defines that health as something that develops in the holy balance between accountability and grace.  Jesus has laid out very specific instructions about how to respond to other believers who fail us.  Instructions which are largely ignored by most.

We often treat relationships as though they were disposable.  One goes bad and we just move to the next.  Jesus Has called us to think of broken relationships as something with the potential of restoration.  “When another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault.”  Rather than just sweeping it under the rug or just disposing of the relationship, we should deal with what is killing the possibilities of its future life.

Behind all of this is Jesus’ not-so-subtle assumption that, when we sin, we do not do so in a vacuum.  In our most private moments, what we do affects each other in the community of faith.  We never have the right to just behave as we will simply because we think no one will ever know.  If one member of this church is spiritually ill all suffer.  If one relationship is broken we are all less than whole.  Therefore, for the sake of all, deal with what is fracturing the relationship.

There is a gracious genius to Jesus’ plan though.  He allows for the fact that some differences are best settled in private.  “Point out the fault when the two of you are alone,” He says.  And, there are good reasons for that.  Every indignation we suffer doesn’t have to be handled in such a way that strips the one who has offended us of their dignity.  That is why the apostle Paul later wrote that we are not to “repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought of what is noble in the sight of all.”  (Romans 12:17)  Give the one who has hurt you a chance, if nothing else, to tell their side of the story.  You may discover that the offense was unintended or that the one has hurt you didn’t know it.

I saw a friend of mine open a door coming out of a hotel stairwell once and totally flatten a young man who was walking down the hall and who didn’t see the door because he had his head down.  It turns out that he was a young Marine recruit on his way to boot camp and he was ready to start booting right then and there because he was so angry.  It took quite a bit of convincing to prove to him that the pain was totally unintended.  My experience has been that, more often than not, those who hurt me are more than willing to sincerely apologize and make it right if given half a chance or that there were mitigating circumstances of which I was not aware that caused a behavior totally unintended to hurt me.

Among my pet peeves (including people who pick their teeth in public) are people who take up more than one parking space.  One day, years ago, I was in a hurry to make my hospital rounds but couldn’t find a place to park anywhere in the crowded lot.  Finally I found one open spot.  But, as I started to pull in I realized I couldn’t because the car in the next space had been parked in such as a way as to take up two spaces.  For a moment, I thought about leaving an unsigned note on the windshield that said something like, “I bet people who park like you eat out of troughs, too.”

But, then I thought about it.  What if this was someone who had just gotten terribly bad news about a loved one and had rushed to the hospital to be at their bedside?  They probably weren’t able to think straight much less park straight.  Maybe they did eat out of a trough.  Or, maybe, someone they loved was in trouble.  The point is that I didn’t know.  So, I didn’t write the note.

It is true that, more often than we are aware, people who hurt us do so because they are in deep distress themselves and don’t often know how to handle their pain without causing others to hurt, too.  With rare exception, there is one more thing we don’t know about why a person has treated us the way they have that would change our perception of them if we only took time to listen before we judge.  Jesus said that we should grant people that dignity.

Jesus was defining a healthy church as one in which everyone is held accountable for the way their lives affect one another’s.  But, He was also saying that, the goal of accountability is a restored relationship.  Discipline to Jesus was not an end in itself but a means to an end.  Paul later allowed for the possibility that there are some people with whom it will be impossible to have a healthy relationship.  “So far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.”  (Romans 12:18)  I have had to learn the painful discipline of drawing boundaries and watching relationships die because another was not willing to live within them.  But, Jesus said that we should never close the door on the relationship until someone gives us no other option.

No institution, whether a church or a family or a business or a nation, can ultimately have a healthy history if no one is accountable to anything more than their own personal whims.  Our personal feelings are not the gravitational center of all reality.  But, no institution can long survive either if there is no dignified way for people who have broken the rules to find their way back.  Holiness in relationships is found in the delicate balance between accountability and grace.

So, two beautiful young people stand at the altar and take their vows.  Twenty or thirty or forty years later, whether they have written a healthy family history or not will depend on whether each partner remained faithful to their vows and whether each partner held the other accountable for doing so.  I would add that, if you don’t know how to live within boundaries or expect others to do so, marriage will not be a happy experience for you.  But, a healthy history also includes a willingness on the part of both to never close the door on the relationship, once it has been broken, until there is no other option.

The longer I work with people in church and especially with people in their marriages the more I am convinced that, when relationships go bad, there is almost always a long history of two failures at work.  At least one has failed to keep their commitment.  But, more often than not, the other partner has failed to hold the offender accountable.  There is almost always one who broke the rules and one who, maybe for years, was willing to look the other way.  But, just as often, the marriage dies because the couple lost the balance between accountability and grace.  Those who have had the most profound influence on my life have been those who held me accountable to the truth but also loved me unconditionally.

You heard Jack Ridlehoover speak this past Sunday and say many warm and affirming things about your pastor, all of which I can verify as absolutely true.  But, there is another part of the story.  Once, as a very young and immature youth minister, there was a time when I wasn’t pulling my share of the load on the staff.  So, he had me in his office for a “conference.”  I knew I was in trouble so I started trying to smooth him over a little bit.  I said, “I’m really grateful for the opportunity to serve on this staff.”  And, without blinking or hesitating he shot back, “well, you’re not acting like it!”  Needless to say, my smooth-the-boss-over ploy didn’t work.  But, his holding me accountable did.  We never had to have that conversation again.  And, several years later when Jack Ridlehoover was looking for someone to serve as the first pastor of Pioneer Drive’s new mission church, he called me.  And, he was able to do so because, when it mattered most, he held me accountable but he also loved me into a more disciplined way of living from which I benefit to this day.

I’m not concerned one bit about this church’s glorious past.  That history is written and finished.  It is the history yet written that alone concerns me now.  In our marriages.  In our lives.  In our church.  Are we moving toward a healthy history?

Well?