Failure to Reconcile

12 June 2025   Matthew 5:20-26

“Go first and be reconciled with your brother.”  Matthew 5:24​

“Go first and be reconciled with your brother.” Sure. Swell. Easy.

But what if your brother doesn’t want to be reconciled? What if your brother who hurt you isn’t sorry? What if any attempt at reconciliation would hurt someone else? What if you can’t even remember your “brother’s” name?

Tina’s employer treated her in a way grossly unfair and publicly humiliating. The employer thought she had perfectly valid reasons for doing what she did, and would do it again. How do you reconcile with that?

Tom had an affair with Betty, and her husband Phil never found out. At least Tom thinks Phil never found out. Tom knows he injured both Betty and Phil, but if he tries to reconcile with them, he runs the risk of exposing something that could damage their marriage further, maybe irreparably. What does reconciliation look like in a situation like that?

You’re estranged from a parent, sibling or friend who has died. You’re estranged from a parent, sibling or friend who has ignored every attempt you’ve made at reconciliation. What kind of reconciliation is possible?

You remember someone you hurt many years ago, but can’t remember her name. How does reconciliation even start?

Jesus talks about “fiery Gehenna” as a consequence of failure to reconcile (Matthew 5:22). There doesn’t seem to be a lot of wiggle room.

Perhaps the best way to approach this is to remember that the same Jesus who warned about “fiery Gehenna” is the same Jesus who accepted the devotion of a notorious woman, who had slept with men whose names she never knew, who wept at His feet, and dried His feet with her hair: “Her many sins have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love” (Luke 7:47). It is the same Jesus who intercepted Saul on the Damascus Road, the same Saul who had conspired in the death of Stephen and was headed for Damascus to conspire in the deaths of many more. It was that same Saul who, as Paul the Apostle, declared, “Whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come” (II Corinthians 5:17). Saul’s situation on the Damascus Road, and the notorious woman’s, were just as impossible as the person who seeks reconciliation with someone who isn’t sorry, or who is dead, or who, for whatever reason, doesn’t want to be reconciled. The notorious woman never would remember the names of the men she had slept with. Even after his conversion many hated Paul, many more never trusted him. But the same Paul trusted completely the mercy of God: “For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord” (Romans 8:38).

The same Jesus who requires impossible reconciliations becomes the reconciliation Himself. He gives what he commands, then He commands what He gives.

So maybe we need most of all to act like people who have been forgiven. Maybe we need to start acting like healed people who are new creations, and whose destination is heaven. Maybe we need to act like people who trust that even touching the fringe of His garment is enough to heal. Maybe we need to be the people who trust that the merest word from Him is enough to repair our souls, who believe His love is that lavish, His mercy that perfect.

We bring Him our impossible things not so that He will fix them, but so that He will fix us. On Easter He showed His wounds to the disciples. He carries his wounds still, and so must we carry ours. His wounds are for the healing of people and nations: “By his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).In His lavish love and perfect mercy, he touches our wounds not to make them go away, but to make them instruments of healing for others, like His.