My summer vacation this year was memorable in more ways than one. It was the hottest summer I have ever experienced. It was a summer in which small things taught me about life. And unexpectedly, it was a summer of more than one kind of fight.

The first was with cicadas. My mother’s apartment is surrounded by trees. Every morning, from before dawn until late at night, hundreds of cicadas filled the air with their cries. They were sometimes loud enough to drown out the television. I confess I found them irritating.

Then I learned something that changed how I heard them. A cicada spends between three and seventeen years underground. It feeds quietly on the sap of tree roots in the darkness. Then, for one summer, it emerges. It sheds its old shell. It lives above ground for just two to four weeks. Its song belongs to that short and precious season of life. After learning that, I could no longer hear only noise. I heard a creature crying out with the little time it had been given. In that particular fight, I admit I lost. And I am glad I did.

The second fight was with my sister. This summer I spent more time with her than I had in many years. We walked through the open market near her clinic. We ate freshly steamed corn from the new harvest. We sat together in the quiet of her waiting room. It was there that I discovered something that undid me. My sister loves corn. “I love the corn,” she said. “They are so delicious.” I stood there, suddenly overwhelmed. How did I not know this? She is my only sister on earth. What else do I not know about her? How many ordinary and beautiful things have I missed, in the twenty-eight years we have lived apart?

But not every moment between us was so tender. One Wednesday afternoon, our conversation suddenly became a blame game. Her voice rose. I could not bear it. I answered sharply, walked out, and took a taxi back to my mother’s apartment. By the time I arrived, my sister was already there. She apologized for raising her voice. I apologized for speaking sharply. I apologized for failing to express my gratitude for all she had done for me. We talked, and the relationship was restored. I am grateful it happened that way. Otherwise, we might have wasted several precious days in silence, each of us nursing our hurt, defending our pride, and waiting for the other person to move first.

A preacher observes something important about conflict. One of its great dangers is our fierce desire to protect ourselves at any cost. We take refuge in wounded pride, rather than risking the relationship. That difficult truth lies near the heart of today’s passage. At first, Matthew 18 may sound like a church procedure manual. But when listening closely, we find something far more human and far more demanding. Jesus is not simply giving the church a grievance policy. He is showing us what it takes to keep a community truthful, safe, and alive.

“If another member of the church sins against you,” Jesus says, “go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.” Go. Do not wait. Do not complain to someone else. Do not punish the person with silence. Speak honestly. Listen carefully. Give the relationship a chance to be restored. If that does not work, bring one or two others as witnesses, not as a mob but as a community of discernment. If that fails, bring it before the whole church. And if the person still refuses to hear, treat them the way Jesus treated Gentiles and tax collectors. With persistent, patient, costly love. This teaching reminds us that reconciliation cannot be forced. A community cannot pretend that trust exists when truth and accountability are continually refused.

The goal throughout is never to win. The goal is to regain the person. This is the same logic as leaving ninety-nine sheep, to go after the one who is lost. It is the same logic as the father, running down the road to meet his returning son. The whole movement of the passage is toward restoration. And it is costly, because it requires the injured party to be the one who moves first.

There is a story from a congregation in Toronto. Two men in their sixties, both devoted Christians, both pillars of the church. They held strong opinions, and those opinions repeatedly collided over church decisions. Sometimes over matters as small as where the piano should be placed. Small disagreements became accumulated grievances. Eventually, both men left the church, in disappointment and anger.

A decade later, they happened to meet in a grocery store. When they saw one another, they reached out, took each other’s hands, and they embraced. They spoke about how stubborn they had been. About how something as small as the location of a piano had cost them a community they deeply loved. The affection had not entirely disappeared. It had been buried beneath years of pride and silence, waiting for someone to uncover it. How different might their story have been if one of them had found the courage to go first?

Paul understood the stakes when he described the church as a body. No part can say to another, “I do not need you.” When one member suffers, the whole body suffers. Conflict between two members is never only between two members. It moves through the community, like pain from an injured limb, radiating through the whole body.

And yet Jesus does not leave us to do this difficult work alone. “Where two or three are gathered in my name,” he promises, “I am there among them.” He says this in the context of confrontation and reconciliation. Not pleasant worship, but hard, courageous conversation. That promise is not for when things are easy. It is for when we sit across from someone we have hurt, not knowing what to say, trying to find a way back. What makes us Christian is not that we never disagree. We will disagree. We will misunderstand one another. We will sometimes speak carelessly and sometimes fail to listen. What makes us Christian is what we do with the friction. Whether we let it drive us further apart or use it to find our way back to one another.

This calling is especially important for us at West Point Grey United Church. We are a close-knit family church, yet beautifully different from one another, in culture, language, background, experience, and perspective. In intercultural ministry, we enter a “third space,” a shared place where no single culture must disappear, and no one culture controls everything. It is a space we create together, by listening, learning, changing, and receiving one another as gifts.

Today is Welcome Back Sunday. And there is much to welcome back. We enter a new season, with new leadership, renewed programs, preparations for our Fall Fair, and fresh possibilities for ministry. New people, new relationships, new beginnings are emerging among us. And in the middle of it all stands the promise Jesus made to his disciples: I am there among them. He is walking into this season with us. Encouraging us. Holding us together.

We are called to community with one another, to act like the family we are. Not somewhere distant, waiting for us to get it right. But here, among us, now. The way my sister and I sat together, over freshly steamed corn, discovering each other again, in something as small and ordinary as a shared meal. That is what this family looks like. Not perfect. Not without its raised voices. But present, together, and willing to come back to the table.

May God give us the courage to go first, so that by grace, we may regain one another. Amen.