When the Knock is at Our Door

The goal was never to win the argument.

Law school does many things to a person. One of them is teaching you that almost any disagreement can be improved by better preparation, sharper reasoning, and a more devastating rebuttal.

Professionally, this is useful. At home, somewhat less so.

My wife will make an observation, something small, something true, and somewhere in my brain, court is being called to order. Exhibits are gathered. Precedent is recalled. Opposing counsel, who thought she was mentioning the dishwasher, finds herself under cross-examination.

I would like to say this happens rarely. The court records may not support that claim.

The problem is not simply that we like being right. The problem is what happens the moment we decide there is an argument to be won. The person across the table stops being the person across the table. They become the opposing side. And once opening arguments have begun, it can be incredibly difficult to remember that the person before us is not an adversary to defeat, but someone we love.

This Sunday, Jesus talks about confrontation. He gives what looks, at first, like a procedure. If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If that fails, bring one or two others. If that fails, tell it to the church.

A process with steps and escalation paths. The lawyer within finds this deeply reassuring. But the procedure is not the interesting part. The interesting part is the outcome Jesus names first, before any of the escalation begins:

If the member listens to you, you have regained that one.

Older translations put it more personally: thou hast gained thy brother.

Not the argument. Your brother.

Notice what is missing. He does not say: you have established the facts. You have secured an admission. You have made your case. You have been vindicated.

The person is the thing being sought. Not the verdict. The person.

Which raises an uncomfortable question for those of us with well-appointed internal courtrooms. What exactly do we think winning is? Consider the first instruction on its own for a moment. Go, when the two of you are alone.

Why alone?

Because Jesus apparently cares not only whether the truth gets spoken but how much damage is done while speaking it. A private conversation leaves room for dignity, for misunderstanding to be cleared up quietly, for repentance without humiliation. It also exposes one of our subtler habits. Sometimes, before we speak to the person who hurt us, we speak to everyone else first. We call it seeking perspective. Sometimes it is. Sometimes we are assembling a jury.

There is a difference between wanting someone to understand what they have done and wanting everyone else to understand what they have done. Only one of those is aimed at getting the person back.

Now, up to this point, you have probably been doing what I was doing when I first sat with this passage. You have been thinking about a particular someone. Someone who needs to hear something. Someone who has behaved badly. Someone you may, at some point, with appropriate prayer and preparation, need to confront.

The passage reads like a set of instructions, and instructions imply that we are the ones carrying them out. We are the one walking across the room. We are the one knocking.

But there is another character in this Gospel. The person who opens the door. And sooner or later, that person is us.

It is remarkably easy to admire Jesus’ instructions when we imagine ourselves delivering the hard truth. The passage becomes considerably harder when the knock is at our own door. Because someone, eventually, will come to us. In good faith and alone, exactly as instructed. They will say some version of: you hurt me. You were unfair. You were not listening. You have been angry lately.

And, in our heads at least, it’s time to “lawyer up”.

We explain context. We distinguish intent from impact. We introduce mitigating circumstances. We note, gently, certain inconsistencies in the other party’s account. In particularly advanced cases, we discover that their complaint is actually evidence of something they need to work on, and we begin, rather generously, to help them see it.

I have done every one of these. Some of them in the same conversation. Defending ourselves is almost always easier than seeing ourselves.

Here is the thing, though. If Jesus says the other person can regain us, then we must be the kind of thing that can be regained. The whole passage quietly assumes it. Somewhere in the encounter, reconciliation depends on our willingness to stop building the defense long enough to actually hear the person standing in front of us.

Not automatically agreeing. Not treating every criticism as a verdict. But asking honestly: is there something here I need to hear?

Even the collect appointed for this Sunday seems to know what we are up against. We ask God to help us trust him rather than become those who “confide in their own strength.” I usually picture that kind of pride as something obvious. Arrogance. Self-importance. A refusal to bend.

But it can look much more respectable than that. It can be articulate. It can have an excellent memory for dates. It can produce a very persuasive account of why everyone else has misunderstood the situation. Sometimes our own strength is simply our ability to explain ourselves so well that nothing anyone says can reach us.

Paul, in the epistle, says to owe no one anything except to love one another. It is worth noticing that love governs both sides of a hard conversation, not just one. Love shapes how I speak when I have to say something difficult. Everyone agrees about that. But love also shapes how I listen when the difficult thing is being said to me.

The first requires courage. The second requires humility. I am no longer sure the first one is harder. We tend to think difficult conversations demand courage from the person who starts them. Jesus may also be asking for courage from the person who stays in the room and listens.

Even Ezekiel, standing his lonely watch, is not posted on the wall to condemn anyone. God tells him plainly that he takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but desires that they turn back and live. The warning exists because turning back is still possible. The truth gets spoken because restoration is still on the table.

Which means that when someone comes to us this way, honestly, privately, at some cost to themselves, they may not be attacking us at all. They may be attempting something much harder. They are trying to preserve a relationship they could simply have let go. Someone cared enough to come. Someone risked the awkwardness. Someone chose a difficult conversation over the much easier possibility of simply letting the distance grow. There is grace even in the knock at the door.

In a courtroom, winning requires opposing positions. One side prevails and one side does not. The whole building is designed around that fact. It is a perfectly good model for litigation. It is a terrible model for a friendship, a marriage, or a family.

You can win the argument and lose the person. This happens all the time. You can also say the words I was wrong and discover, to your surprise, that nothing essential has been lost. The case collapses and the two of you are still standing there, closer than before.

There are arguments we win by proving ourselves right. There are people we win by becoming willing to be wrong. Not falsely wrong. Not surrendering the truth to keep the peace. Just surrendering the need to expertly defend ourselves at every single turn, as if the relationship were a trial and love were a verdict that could be appealed.

You have regained that one.

We usually hear it as the reward waiting for the brave person who goes. Maybe it is also an invitation to the person who answers the door.

Court is called to order. The defense is ready. It is always ready.

Perhaps the question this Gospel leaves us with is not only, whom do I need to speak to.

It may be: Who have I made it impossible to speak to me?