We In today’s Gospel, my friends, Jesus immediately touches upon an experience that’s very common to people of every age and place in life.

From the school rooms to our workplaces, from our homes to the nursing homes, sooner or later some degree of conflict will arise.

It’s bound to happen.  It happens to us all. It’s just part of the human condition.  It’s the way we humans are hard-wired.

And sometimes those wires get crossed, and they short-circuit into a display of sparks that rival a 4th of July night sky-show.

Now our first instinct in such conflagrations is to fight fire with fire. Then we are into the “might-makes-right” contest, and the proverbial “Shoot-out at the OK Corral.” That means that when all the racket stops and the gun smoke clears, whoever is left standing wins.

This reactive extremism can take many forms, such as an immediate call to the police, which may or may not be helpful, depending on whatever else the police have to attend to at that moment, reporting a person to that person’s superior, cutting off communication with the offending person by not speaking to him or her, terrorizing the other person with cowardly, anonymous destructive actions.

And the list can go on and on itemizing the devious ways we humans have contrived to cope with conflicts that come into our lives.

But, you know, when you look at just about everyone of them, more often than not, they don’t resolve a problem. They compound it. 

Oh, at first, the fire may seem to be out, the sparks are no longer flying, and the tempers have quieted down.  But fighting a fire with a flame–thrower or a blow-torch, only ends up with a bigger fire in most cases.

And all fire-fighters I work with don’t arrive on a fire-scene with such artillery - unless of course their intention is to do a controlled burn in order to level a structure so that re-building can take place; but that’s something different.

So pulling out the “big-guns” first-off in resolving a conflict usually complicates the solution rather than simplifying the process,

Because now, there’s still the initial issue which triggered the whole dispute, And also the collateral damage of hurt feelings, a tarnished or maybe even destroyed reputation with one’s superior, having one’s name as part of an official police report, and so on.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus gives us the Christian approach to charitable conflict resolution.

He says: Look, if somebody upsets or bothers you, don’t complicate things right away by going to others about it. Go to that person yourself, and talk about it between just the two of you. See if you can’t come to some compromise that will be acceptable to you both.

Maybe the offender doesn’t realize that what he or she has done has upset you.  Maybe that person will be sensitive and caring enough to not want to be known or perceived by others as a source of pain.

Then, Jesus says, if that doesn’t work, find some one or two others that are feeling the same discomfort from the same person that you are, and together go to the offender and try oriented.  There is no complicating embarrassment to have to deal with regarding peers or superiors.

Only when steps 1 and 2 fail, does Jesus they say it’s OK to bring in higher authorities.

Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it?

Then why, we ask, isn’t this Gospel teaching tried more often?

It’s because we wrongly presume there’s a foundation there between people that isn’t.

It’s called an “alliance of trust.”

One of the best examples of this is that of an athletic team.  Oh, they might get into a squabble amongst themselves from time-to-time. But their underlying awareness that they need each other to win drives them to compromise, or do whatever it takes to resolve the conflict.  Otherwise, one or other moves out of the team.

I mentioned the firefighters earlier.  They, too, have that same team reliance that drives them to get over any internal difficulties they may experience,

And so do, and should, married couples, families, schoolmates, and neighbors next-door or across the street have.

But it’s this alliance-of-trust between the people with whom we most frequently live, work, and otherwise associate, that gets lost in a scuffle, or maybe never got established in the first place, that’s what leads to the immediate “fighting fire with fire” in handling a dispute, and all of the resulting complications that ensue.

So to avoid that happening, be friendly with those around you.  Carry it even one step further if you can, and make friends with them.

 Then you will have that foundational alliance-of-trust whereupon you can engage in Christian conflict resolution charitably.

Thank you.