Victim or victor?

 

"If your brother should commit some wrong against you...." (Matthew 18:15-20)

Growing up in a household with five brothers, this line from Matthew’s gospel was the focal point for my reflection today.

"Mom!  Dad!  Do you know what Tom did to me!? "   When my brothers and I were younger we knew exactly what to do when a wrong had been committed against us.  It sounds a lot like social media and politics today.  There’s something almost enjoyable about clearly being the victim, knowing that retribution of some form is well-deserved.  There’s an order to things: first we tell everyone else what happened, then we wait for the guilty one to 'get' what he or she deserves. 

But Jesus leads us in a different direction.  He asks us to care deeply for the one who’s hurt us.  And the first thing He tells us to do is "to keep it between you."   We can't use this wrong as an opportunity to perfect our role as victim.  We aren't told to run down the reputation of the other, even if it's under the guise of "sharing the pain of our hurt" with a third party.

In a clear departure from our tell-all culture, Jesus asks us to be silent about the wrong against us, except to return to the person who hurt us and talk to him or her.   We’re invited to care for that person by talking, discussing the injury privately, trying to resolve our differences.  If the person doesn’t respond, Jesus says we may ask someone else to help moderate it, even bringing it to the Church.  Each of these steps is designed not to get our own well-deserved justice, but as a way of caring for the other person.

If none of this works, we’re asked to simply avoid that person.  We’re not asked to talk about that person or carry the injury or hurt for years.

Jesus’ direction seems to be asking us to behave in a radically different way.  We’re asked to take our role as victim and use it as a special way to care for the one who hurt us, transforming not only the injury, but ourselves.  As humans we’re bound to be at both ends of committing hurts.  Wouldn't this be a wonderful guideline for life when we’re the ones who inevitably will have hurt someone else?

In the end, Jesus invites us to prayer, especially to gather together for prayer.  Could it be that we’re invited to pray with and for the one who hurt us?  How different our lives and our world would be if we could accept such an invitation from Jesus!