4 September 2011

“For mature hearers only”
Matthew 18:15-20
23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time / Season of Pentecost
4 September 2011


A classic Peanuts comic strip from the first day of winter many years ago, has Charlie Brown and Linus walking along on a dark afternoon – and Linus says to Charlie Brown, “You know, the days start getting longer from here on.”
Suddenly a bunch of the other “Peanuts” kids walk by, doing their usual teasing and insult-hurling at Charlie Brown. After they leave, Charlie Brown turns to Linus and says, “I’m not sure they’re getting longer, but they sure seem to be getting a whole lot wider.”
Immaturity … the immaturity of people … this does make our days “a whole lot wider.” And there seems to be more and more immature behavior going on … from petty partisan political bickering … to the ever increasing immature reactions of how people choose to live in our complex time.
Today’s scripture readings may be a turn off to many because they are unashamedly mature, in their speaking, their outlook, their world view. Maybe, like the old motion picture rating system, they should be rated M, for “mature hearers only.” Because they deal with a mature question, namely, “how do Christians treat others … and each other when there are problems in relationships?”
Of course, to get to that question, one actually has to admit that Christians can be and are just as sinful and misbehaving as everyone else. Which, of course, is true. The church is not perfect. Christians are not perfect. Luther called the church “a hospital for sinners.”
And the ‘medicine,’ if you will, which is put forth in these words … it doesn’t go down easy … in fact, it’s about hard work that make most of us so uncomfortable that we ignore it. We conveniently forget this part of Scripture, and so when we do have trouble, we stay clear of it like it was a toxic spill on I-5, choosing instead to do the avoidance thing … either ignore or remove the offending party or parties from our communities and our lives.
Now why is that?
Jesus’ words here in Matthew 18 are not difficult to understand.
Up to this point in his life, he had lived in family, small groups and communities of friends and relatives his whole life, in a much closer, interconnected lifestyle than we independent, self-assured 21st century Pacific NW Americans know.
He had to get along with others.
And so, he could advise his disciples about the same.
“If a brother sins,” Jesus begins in his own, original language of this passage … and almost immediately, there’s controversy. For the translation we have before us – If another member of the church sins against you – those words, “against you,” could well be a later addition to what Jesus actually said … meaning that, you only go and approach a person if they offended you personally, not if they acted up against or hurt or defamed someone else.
There’s a big difference between the two translations. Should we as Christians only be concerned about ourselves? No … we are called to look out for the well-being of everyone who is our neighbor; so much so that when we see someone else getting out of line in a situation which Conventional Wisdom would say “doesn’t concern us,” we are called to be concerned, because it affects another child of God.
So point one: be concerned … another’s misbehavior does affect you; we are called to care. Cross that “against you” part right out of your Bibles. Because in Christ, we are responsible, one for another.
But there’s more than just thinking responsibly here. Read on.
Go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.
But, if you are not listened to, take one or two others along.
If the brother refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.
Here we enter into the part of the Scripture which most of us would rather avoid. Direct confrontation of misbehavior. Conflict. Discipline.
This is where most conflicts between us … in the church, in families, in jobs and workplace, among friends … this is where they usually end up running aground.
We usually take one of two approaches.
Either ignore the problem and hope it goes away.
Or triangulate. Don’t go to the other person directly with the problem, but instead complain, manipulate, go behind their backs to two, three, or many more others.
Those of us who have gone through “Healthy Congregations” workshops or training know how destructive triangulating can be. But it is the most common way we go about dealing with conflict – with friends, at work, in families, or in a congregation.
Here’s an example. See if you can spot someone you know … or even yourself … in it.

Karen is a supervisor at a certain large airplane manufacturing company. Ray is one of the key employees in her work group. He’s expecting a promotion, because he’s been working there longer than anyone else in the group. But Karen doesn’t like Ray’s condescending attitude toward her or the other workers, so she promotes Janice instead – without ever explaining to Ray why.
What happens next? Ray undercuts Karen’s authority by spreading false rumors about how she’s stealing from the company … “She’s taking home titanium coffee mugs for free for her own use.” Karen tells Janice to “shut Ray up” and take care of the problem, without ever talking to Ray directly. Morale in her work group suffers, and some employees start looking for jobs elsewhere.

Triangulating. It’s like a virus to systems of relationship … whether they are work, school, between friends or in a congregation.
No, Jesus’ solution is the opposite of triangulation. He is in favor of dealing directly with things.
Go alone to the offender. If they’ve listened … really heard, enough so that they change their ways, great! But if not, take two witnesses.
Take two witnesses … this is the requirement of Jewish law; according to Deuteronomy, no one could be convicted of a crime without the testimony of two witnesses … take two witnesses and see if that helps.
Having two witnesses along also ensures humility, and prevents hubris … pro-humility, and anti-hubris on our part … having others along to “hear the whole story” keeps us honest … reinforcing us if we’re in the right, correcting us if we are actually the ones in the wrong … and then, encouraging us to admit our own fault, to repent, to forgive, so that relationship may be restored.
Take along two witnesses. Other ears, other minds can help clear things up.
But if, even after all that, things are still not resolved, then take it to the whole church … the whole assembly … the legal judicatory which is there to settle such matters.

Yes, it may sound painful and messy, something we’d rather avoid, but what is going on here is that Jesus wants relationship to be saved at all costs. Reconciliation is of the utmost importance to him, and he wants to make sure that nothing is left undone in pursuit of mending relationship.
To Jesus, the community is the seat of the Holy Spirit – God’s Spirit creates the community of believers, God’s Spirit maintains the community of believers. God’s Spirit is manifest in the community of believers. To give up without trying everything possible to save that community – even if it’s just the community that exists between two people – this is quite like turning one’s back on the Spirit of God. It’s something that shouldn’t be done, ever.
In Matthew’s time, the infant Church consisted mainly of family groups of twenty or thirty believers … we can understand how important maintaining community would have been then. But in Jesus’ words here, we find no less importance for us today in the task of maintaining community wherever and whenever it is found.
And so, when we come to the third point of Jesus’ words to us today, we need to get beyond the knee-jerk reaction we may have, when we hear let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector … read beyond to hear the sobering truth that, when all looks lost in mending relationships, we must work that much harder to make them right.
Gentiles and tax collectors were the lowest of the low to the original hearers of these words of Jesus. They were outside the community of faith, unclean, and collaborators with the awful Roman invaders.
Yet, to whom did always Jesus go during his ministry? The Gentiles and the tax collectors. He sought them out when others wanted to cast them off as common trash.
And so Jesus’ words here hold special meaning for us. In a day and time when we might well throw away people and relationships rather than do the hard work of reconciliation and peace-making … Jesus says here, “No, you stick with these people and try to mend relationship with them no matter what.”
But … do not divorce this phrase from what follows.
Because pursuing reconciliation and relationship with others, no matter what, does NOT mean letting them off the hook for what they’ve done wrong.
Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
The fourth point … and perhaps the most importance … is that even as we pursue forgiveness and reconciliation, we still hold others accountable for their harmful actions. Our Christian love for our misbehaving brothers and sisters doesn’t give them a blanket “that’s OK.”
That’s when we are called to “bind ones’ sins to them” … to hold people responsible for their actions … we hold up a mirror and saying to them, “You are the woman … you are the man.” We call a spade a spade, a sinner a sinner, stand up in the face of wrongdoing and evil and saying “We’re not going to take it any more!”

Church consultant Bill Easum once wrote an essay titled, “On not being nice ‘for the sake of the Gospel.” In it he says,

Maturing Christians love so deeply that they will do anything, even not be nice, “for the sake of the Gospel.” Jesus was so compassionate toward others that he could not remain quiet when he saw people holding others in bondage. And for a bit of trivia, the origin of the word “nice” comes from the Latin “to be ignorant.” Perhaps when bullies hold people in bondage … in congregations, in communities, in any gathering of people … “niceness” is really pretending not to know the problems they are causing.

God does not call us to stay in dangerous, abusive relationships … whether that’s personal, occupational, in friendships or family, in congregations or even larger systems and organizations. We are called to hold others accountable for what they say, and do, that has harmed and continues to harm others, whether it affects us personally or not … because, as Jesus says, we are all part of each other, and what’s done to a brother or sister anywhere affects each and all of us.
Their stubborn denial, their refusal to hear the call to repentance and renewal of life is really bondage, you know … as in “we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.” So even though we might have to physically separate ourselves from them for a time … we continue in relationship with them through prayer, until that day when we can safely, and joyfully, be reunited with them.
It is all part of the radical hospitality of Jesus, his “doing the opposite” of what common sense and conventional wisdom would tell us or have us do, because he is ultimately concerned with relationship … the relationship between people, and the relationship between us and God. His “doing the opposite” for the sake of love … love which, as Paul states in our reading from Romans, does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.
Love … so much so that Jesus’ radical hospitality means going all the way for us, taking on the condemnation we all deserve for being “in bondage to sin and unable to free ourselves” … going down to death itself …. so that we might have life, and salvation, and health in all our relationships, with God, and with others.

Yes, working on relationships is hard … between friends, in families, at work, in congregations and communities, within and between nations.
But the One who calls us to live in these relationships, whose Spirit creates and fills these relationships and brings us together in community around him, expects no less. And he gives us the Word, and the Will, and the Way, to do it.

Faithful God of love, we gather the needs of ourselves and others, and offer them to you in faith and love. Shape and transform us by your grace so we may grow in wisdom, confidence, and maturity, until we have done all which you desire to bring your reign of peace, healing and wholeness to fulfillment, on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.