Communing with the Enemy

Should you receive Communion if you have unresolved conflict with someone? The question may be even more pointed if that person is at the same Communion rail with you! One passage that's often quoted to say that you shouldn't is Matthew 5:23-24. Now I don't think that this applies directly to Communion, but in fact it applies to a much broader aspect of our life that also includes Communion.

The passage is from the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says:

²³So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, ²⁴leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. (ESV)

Maybe especially because Lutherans sometimes refer to the Lord's Supper as "The Sacrament of the Altar," we have applied this passage to Communion. But it says, "If you are offering your gift." In Communion we don't offer a gift; we receive the gift of Christ's body and blood. When do we offer gifts at the altar? That is an act of worship. Not just on Sunday mornings in church, either: Paul writes that our entire lives are to be an act of worship (see Romans 12:1).

So we can't live our lives in service to God if we have unresolved conflict with someone, especially a Christian brother or sister. That conflict will get in the way of everything, including Communion. The conflict must be dealt with. But how?

Jesus gives us some specific guidelines in Matthew 18:15-18, which can be summarized like this: Try to work it out just between the two of you (that is, keep it private if possible), but if that doesn't work, then involve a couple of other people to serve as mediators. If that doesn't work, then the sin is to be made public, and the individual is given one last chance before excommunication.

If that sounds extreme, it is. Before it gets to that final step, you would have to ask yourself, "Can I make a case that the person who has offended me is an unrepentant sinner, or is this just a disagreement in which I hold one opinion and they hold another, and despite how firmly we hold our opinions, neither can be definitively proven from Scripture, so we just have to agree to disagree?"

I suspect that most people never make it that far. If they say something to the person who has offended them and they don't get an apology, they feel justified in holding a grudge. They don't involve another person (whether the pastor, an elder, or a trusted friend), when that might be just the thing to emphasize to the offender how seriously they have been hurt and then elicit the apology.

Follow the steps that Jesus Himself has laid out, and God willing, you won't be communing with the enemy — you'll be sharing Communion with your sister or brother in Christ.