15 Pentecost 2023
Matthew 18:15-20
15 “If your brother or sister sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If you are listened to, you have regained that one. 16 But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If that person refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church, and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a gentile and a tax collector. 18 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. 19 Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
We’ve skipped from chapter 16 to chapter 18. We’ve missed the transfiguration story, the pivot at the center of Matthew’s Gospel, in which Jesus is revealed to three of his disciples are the expected “Son of Man”, the cosmic figure sent to save the world.
There are also some healings and a fascinating bit on paying taxes.
But that is not what we’re preaching today.
If you want to open to Matthew 18, you can read while I’m talking and I won’t be offended.
Much of chapter 18 is about stumbling. The Greek word is skandalo, and yes, it’s the root word for our English word “scandal.” The New Revised Standard translates it “to sin”, and the King James Version translates it “to offend”. But the word literally means “to stumble”, and I think that’s the best translation.
In the kingdom of heaven, Jesus teaches, the humility of a child is the measure of greatness, and such humble persons, the “little ones”, who come to Christ are precious. It is the church’s responsibility to be very careful not to cause them to stumble. The world trips us up all the time, Jesus says, but woe to the one who does the tripping!
Jesus gives a fairly harsh command about self-examination and repentance. It is not enough to feel sorry about our sins; we must turn to God to have that sin removed, even if it feels like cutting out our eye or cutting off our hand.
The little ones who come to Christ, Jesus says, have angels in heaven that see the face of God, so don’t ignore or despise them! God is like the shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine who have never gone astray to chase the one who has, and rejoices when he finds it.
The whole chapter is about the favored status of the humble, whom Jesus calls the little ones, and about the problem of sin within the ranks of the church, particularly for them.
Essentially, Jesus is saying, if the church gives the most attention and care and welcome to the ones the world gives the least attention and care and welcome, the will of God will be done on earth as it is in heaven, and the world will be saved. Just focus on the ones the world despises, and you’ll save them all. Ignore them or despise them and you will be subject to God’s judgment.
I think of ordinary folks who are visiting here because they feel the world has left them behind, or has betrayed what they thought they believed in. People who really need to feel a blessing, people who really need to feel forgiveness, people who really need to find a way to grow and live and have peace and joy. People who are grieving, people who are suffering the breakdown of relationships, people who are experience a long illness or difficult health crisis, people who are warehoused in jails and prisons. And yes, actual children, like little Wrenlee who we blessed last week, or any of our other children, that are looking forward to even more dramatic crises in our shared future.
We need to find the beauty of soul that the way of Jesus produces, not because it saves us, but because it saves others. When the disciples saw the man born blind, they asked Jesus what he was being punished for, and Jesus said he was born blind to show forth the glory of God. Jesus saw in the least of the people the greatest potential, and simply taught that they are the objects of ministry. It’s the work of the church.
But here’s the dilemma, right? I am not able to walk blamelessly. Not anything like it. I cannot seem to refrain from stumbling. It seems to happen all the time. Jesus just doesn’t seem to understand human nature. And so, now I finally turn to the text we heard this morning.
The earliest copies we have of Matthew read “If a member of the church sins…” and only later versions read “If a member of the church sins against you.” I like the second one, and I suspect that’s why translators like it. But I don’t think it’s what Matthew wrote. I think Matthew is talking about holding one another accountable.
The reason I think this is not only that earlier copies say so, but because next week we’ll be preaching on the rest of this chapter, which actually covers what to do when someone sins against you. Come back next week for that sermon.
We, the Disciples of Christ, have a lot of individualism in our DNA. We are an American-born, American-bred movement, and we believe in the individual capacity to make a decision and to discern for himself or herself what the Scripture says. We believe in every congregation’s freedom to order their own affairs. But over the last two hundred years we have progressed in our understanding of scripture and of history. Individualism is fine, but in the end, from a biblical point of view, we are far more than a voluntary association of like-minded individuals. We are the church of Jesus Christ, his risen body in the world.
And deep in the heart of this identity is Jesus himself. It’s our relationships to him that make us one, not our opinions or our doctrines or our lists of sins. And relating to him is how we relate to God. And the connection we have to the risen Christ and to the Father is through the Holy Spirit dwelling within each one of us, and among us, in our relations to each other and to our community.
We are accountable to each other for the sake of the little ones, so that they may be blessed and inspired, and cared for in times of desperate need.
And so it is that Jesus lays out this very famous instruction on the problem of a fellow member of the church committing a sin. And before we go through it, I’d like to give you a heads-up about the key fact in the process that comes at the end of our lesson for today: Jesus says that when two or three are gathered in his name, there he is in the midst of them.
Tell your neighbor: “Jesus is here.”
If you come together in Jesus’ name with someone who has sinned, Jesus is there. But if you don’t, you’re just passing your own judgment. But, with Jesus we find that there are lots of scriptural resources that teach us how to confront sin. Gentleness, patience, grace and most of all, as Paul points out today, love!
Jesus is the key ingredient, because, when we gather in his name, he is there.
Say it again: Jesus is here.
And if that member is unable to take responsibility for what they have done, then we bring in that witness, but we must not forget that we also have to invite Jesus. Because if you are gathered in his name, he is there among you. And so you once again use the tools of the kingdom as you discuss the problem. If Jesus isn’t there, you’re just ganging up on an enemy.
Finally, if the sinner is still unrepentant, it must go to the whole church. The operative word here is “church”, the body of Christ, the assembly in Christ’s name, and love must still be at the heart of the process, because God dearly wishes to retain every one of us.
If all else fails, Jesus uses and interesting choice of words: “let him be to you as a Gentile or a tax collector.”
Now, of course, Jews of that time did avoid contact with Gentiles and tax collectors. But Jesus had dinner with tax collectors frequently, and he had some rather dramatic encounters with Gentiles and Samaritans. I think the point of the story is that you never really give up on each other. You just recognize that there is a distance and you continue to relate at whatever distance you are.
When Jesus is in our midst, and we act in agreement with him, there is no end to the power we wield. Jesus is the unblemished lamb that assures our salvation from the afflictions of the demonic in the world around us, and in association with him we are made clean. It’s his presence among us that brings God’s power and authority to bear, for God said to him “This is my Son, my beloved, with whom I am well-pleased.”
This is why it is so important for each one of us, and our congregation as a whole, to give such deep attention to him, to his story, his words, his deeds. It is a mystery of faith that I have found to be borne out again and again: if we tune our eyes and ears to Christ, we will receive his Spirit and his power. But if we turn our eyes on the world and each other, we will find ourselves in the outer darkness.
Jesus is here in our midst when we gather in his name.
Hallelujah!
Amen.
