In one episode of the television show MASH, Major Margaret Houlihan, the head nurse for the unit, sits down to have a conversation with Sidney, an army psychiatrist. Sidney is doing research on dealing with stress in the military and has come to the 4077 Mobile Army Surgical Hospital to interview the doctors and nurses about how they deal with the stress of making life and death decisions on a daily basis.

Sidney asks Margaret how she deals with the stress of being a head nurse in charge of the lives of so many other people. "I just don’t let it get me."

"Come on," Sidney says. "You mean to say that it doesn’t affect you?"

"No, I wouldn’t permit it to get to me," Margaret replies.

Then Sidney asks her about how she deals with being the highest ranking female officer in the unit. Does that stress her out?

"I just don’t let it get to me. I wouldn’t permit it," Margaret replies.

Margaret and Sidney had been meeting in the tent where the other doctors for the unit live when she looks over and sees something on the floor next to Sidney. She then begins to freak out, yelling at Sidney to cover up what she doesn’t want to see. Her reaction is all out of proportion.

Sidney tries to figure out why her reaction is all out of proportion but Margaret continues to freak out until Sidney cover up what she doesn’t want to see. Immediately after, she returns to her calm state.

"What was that all about? Something seemed to really get to you there," Sidney states.

"What? Nothing got to me at all. I wouldn’t permit it," Margaret replies.

So something was obviously getting to Margaret, though she wouldn’t admit it. When we don’t admit that something is bothering us, the frustration and stress tends to come out in other ways. I truly doubt that anything that Margaret saw in the tent is what truly bothered her. But she didn’t want to admit that something was getting to her.

Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever been anxious or frustrated about one thing and you end up snapping at someone over something completely different? When we don’t confront what bothers or hurts us, that hurt or frustration will only end up seeping out in other ways.

Many of us in the church are uncomfortable with conflict. We want everyone to get along and be happy. Growing up in the South there is very much a philosophy of covering up any hurt or frustration you might have. No matter what someone has done to you, the last thing you wanted to do was confront them about it and address the hurt. I have seen women and men smile sweetly at someone they had a conflict with and act as though nothing is wrong at all. But you can always tell by that little glint in their eye or that small twitch in their smile that not everything is alright.

Addressing conflicts directly is something that Jesus called us to do. In this passage from the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus lays out steps for addressing disagreements or conflicts among the faith community.

Step number one is to confront the individual who has hurt you one-on-one. The person who feels like a victim has the onus of confronting the one who has wronged him or her. The hope is that reconciliation will be achieved and the relationship between the two of you will be repaired.

However, if step one doesn’t work you move on to step two. In step two you take a couple of people not involved in the conflict with you and you confront the person again with the hurt you have felt. The hope is that reconciliation will be achieved at this step and the relationship will be healed. At least with the other people there, you will have other people to hear what the conflict is between the two of you.

If step two doesn’t work then you call together the whole community and bring this conflict out into the open and seek reconciliation. If even that doesn’t work, we are told to "let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector." But what does that mean?

Some scholars think that since Matthew is writing to a mostly Jewish Christian audience that treating someone like a Gentile or a tax collector would mean to treat them like an outcast or someone who is no longer welcomed into the community of faith. However, if we look a little deeper into what we see of tax collectors and Gentiles in Matthew’s gospel, we see that tax collectors and Gentiles are not the outcasts of society. Jesus’ final commandment to his disciples is to "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you." So the Gentiles and tax collectors are not the outcasts from the faith community – they are the mission field.

So if someone refuses to be reconciled even after following all of the steps that Jesus laid out then you are still not done with that person yet. It then becomes your mission to continue to minister and strive for reconciliation with that person.

Now, let’s be honest here. The work that Jesus is calling people to do – this working for reconciliation – is far from easy. Karen Fitzpatrick put it this way, "Working for reconciliation is never easy, but it is also never optional in God’s vision of a peaceful world." Christ does not call us to bury our hurts beneath a veneer of "everything’s alright." Christ calls those who follow him to not be afraid to address what is not alright, whether it be a conflict with an individual or seeing injustice in the world. As followers of Christ, we are not to pretend that everything is alright when it is not. We are also not to just wallow in our own pain. As tough as it may be, we are to address our pain and with the help of others to work for true reconciliation.

As a way of healing from apartheid in South Africa, Desmond Tutu began a process of reconciliation. In this process those who had been injured and those who had committed acts that injured others came together and confessed to what they had done and how they had participated in apartheid.

The goal was not to mete out punishment for those who had injured others. The injured people did not come out seeking retribution on those who had hurt them. They came together searching for healing of a relationship. The healing of a relationship is what true reconciliation looks like. If you hear or read about accounts of people who participated in this process of reconciliation you will discover that it is far from easy and it still hurts but like Jesus commands in this passage, we keep coming back for the sake of the relationship. How can we have a genuine relationship with God if we cannot have a genuine relationship with others?

The movie "Dead Man Walking" was based on the experience Sister Helen Prejean had when she went to meet an inmate on death row with whom she had corresponded through the mail. Matthew Poncelet is facing his final weeks and days before he faces the death penalty. Sister Helen finds herself thrust into a system, which seeks to view the inmate as little more than a monster. The victims’ parents are more than happy to continue to view Matthew as a monster, but Sister Helen is not. Though she begins to be ostracized by the people she works with she continues to be a presence with Matthew. She hears his struggles with what he is facing and continues to work for some sort of reconciliation between Matthew and the victims’ families – even if that reconciliation only happens with Matthew.

Throughout the movie, Sister Helen continually gets asked why she is sitting with this man who has committed such an awful crime. Why is she spending her time with someone who will soon die? Why? Because as Christians we are called to work tirelessly for reconciliation. Even if someone has refused to listen to all of the people before, we are not to ever give up on them.

This movie is a tough one to watch. It is not a propaganda piece against the death penalty. The major focus of the film is not on the fairness or unfairness of capital punishment. When you boil it down the film is all about relationships.

Isn’t that what much of life is about – relationships? Our life isn’t so much about what we do as an occupation or what we earn. Our life is more about the relationships we have with others. If you go out to the cemetery and look at some of the stones – you don’t see how much a person accomplished but you see what relationships they had. "Loving Mother." "Beloved Child." "Faithful Father."

Life is all about the relationships and so is reconciliation. Reconciliation is all about saving relationships and working tirelessly for the peaceful world that Christ envisioned. The risk of not admitting that there is anything wrong is too high because the hurt and frustration will only come seeping out somewhere else. Though it will be difficult and we will want to give up – true reconciliation is what Christ calls us to work for both within and outside of the faith community.