Matt 18:12-20
I have always enjoyed puzzles, whether they are jigsaw, crossword, numerical or logic, I enjoy puzzles. Finding a way to fit together separate distinct pieces, which on their own may or may not make sense, but when combined create a new picture, idea, or solution is a challenge. I enjoy finding new meanings and looking at ordinary things in new ways. As one works with puzzles, there are wonderful “Ah-ha moments” that happen along the journey, times when something clicks and you see there is a bigger picture waiting to be discovered within the smallest of parts.
For me, in many ways, the Bible is like a puzzle in the best sense. It is made up of thousands of pieces of different sizes – verses, chapters, books – that really rely on each other to create the whole picture of God’s Word. Now we all have our favorite pieces – verses that on their own speak to us, have a color and a beauty that makes sense to us just as they are by themselves. Then there are other pieces that are not as appealing, pieces that on their own are rather ugly and hard to understand, that are disturbing or that really make us uncomfortable. I think it is interesting that the more we study and the more we work at piecing together God’s Word in our hearts and our minds, the bigger and bigger the picture is that can be formed. When we add surrounding pieces to our favorites or to the ones we’d rather avoid, it can and really should alter their flavor, their appearance and our understandings, sometimes drastically. What can confront us one day may comfort us the next and vice versa.
This morning’s Gospel is a puzzle piece that I didn’t care much for when I begin my studying last week and it still disturbs me in some ways. When I read it through the first two or three times, I thought - I don’t want any part of that! The original lection for today was just verses 15-20 and it sounded harsh and judgmental – a seeming call for a quick way to get rid of whomever we consider to be problem people. Some of the surface ideas here scare me to death and make me want to really squirm. Whenever a scripture makes me feel like this, I know I’ve come across something that I really need to pay attention to. If I approach it with the right frame of mind, it can become a challenge, a puzzle to work on with a solution that can speak a new word to me for the place I am in at that time.
So as I started trying to unravel the mystery of these puzzle pieces, I did what I was taught in seminary…look at the immediate context for clues and the wider context for more clues. Well, I find this whole 18th chapter kind of disjointed and over-the-top, especially if it is broken up into its little pieces. A quick run-down of the pieces: there is the offering of a child as the ultimate vision of who is the greatest in the kingdom. Talk of the “little ones” and how they should be protected. But, Jesus doesn’t stop with this sweet little picture. He continues with a surprisingly grotesque series of pictures of failure in this area of personal responsibility by saying that if one hurts of these little ones, then they’d be better off drowning in the sea or plucking an eye out or cutting off a hand. This is followed by the persistent sacrifice of a shepherd to find what is lost which leads into our verses today about conflict management and seemingly excommunication procedures within the church. Within this Jesus uses a racial slur and a stereotype, calling the unrepentant to be looked upon as Gentiles and tax collectors within the same breath as God’s blessing earthly decisions and Jesus’ promise to be with us when we gather in his name. Then, finally we have the call for unlimited forgiveness that rounds out the discourse. It is really very dizzying, to me, trying to fit these pieces together in a coherent form.
Here is where I think the most important piece must be held up and used to link all the others together. I told you earlier that this chapter starts with a question from the disciples that really sets the tone, and that the rest of it is Jesus’ response or answer to the question. That great menagerie of images and hyperbole that follows is Jesus’ reaction to a question that must have confounded him. After all the time together, after an entire ministry that focused on the least, the outsider, the disdained, and after countless examples of turning cultural expectations upside down and inside out, the disciples are still trying to get ahead of one another, still trying to justify their positioning, still focused on themselves and their own egos. “Who is the greatest?” they ask.
So, Jesus begins with a simple, straightforward answer: The greatest are the least, the “little ones”. He pulls a child to him to illustrate, not only someone who is least in the eyes of the society and culture, but one who is least in physical stature, in maturity, and maybe even in faith. “Little ones”, are not just children to Jesus as we know from his other teachings and actions, a “little one” is anyone who is the outsider, the overlooked and the unseen. That paints a pleasant and comforting picture, this piece I like. But of course, Jesus doesn’t leave well-enough alone. He stretches out his answer by including a fierce warning to those of us who may consider ourselves as “big people”, as insiders and mature followers in the faith. If we claim that role, then we better not step on any little ones on our way up, we better not cause them to stumble, to be hurt, to be cast further aside. When we hold power over another, we are accountable for how we use or misuse that power, whether it aids our own selfish ambitions or whether it is used to lift up those with no power at all, which in turns gives glory to God.
So we see that our verses today are surrounded by the bigger picture of this whole chapter being a teachable moment for Jesus. This leads us to consider what is immediately surrounding our passage. The verses about the lost sheep come right before as we heard and just after today’s verses, next week’s lection, is Peter’s question about how many times do we have to forgive. Wow, the tone of the conflict resolution for me quite a bit when seen sandwiched between stories of relentless pursuit of one who strays and the call for unlimited forgiveness. Then, if we place these pieces upon and within the backdrop of Paul’s words about love from Romans and the Psalmists’ claiming to find true life within God’s law, this really alters the big picture even more for me.
So with all of that as background and preparation, we can look at the heart of today’s Gospel lesson and see it really is a set of instructions for how to bring reconciliation to people in conflict. This is probably what really makes me squirm because, for the most part, I do not like conflict. I think most people would admit to feeling the same. We were made for harmony and when lives get out of tune with one another, the resulting screech is hard to bear. Jesus understood this. And it seems his exaggerated response to Peter’s question about forgiveness following our verses shows that he knows we want forgiveness and reconciliation to have a quick and simple answer or resolution, although it never does. It takes time, effort, energy, humility and thus great risk to repair broken relationships. And as any rancher knows, mending fences is not something that is done only once, but it is a continuing part of daily life. So, too, is this true for us, for our communities and for the church. We need to not only be willing to mend our broken fences, but we need to look for weaknesses and try to do preventative maintenence before the gap ever is created.
I think one of the most radical parts of this text is to hear Jesus say that the mending begins not by the offender, but by the one who has been hurt. How often have we felt wronged by a person who has no idea they hurt us and how often have we not realized that we may have hurt someone else? No one likes to have failures and hurts pointed out and in our defensive society today there always seems to be a way to our excuse behavior or to not take responsibility for our actions. We are so great at the art of rationalization to the point that nothing is really our fault and those who cannot just deal with something bad are the real problem. That may be society’s view, but that is not God’s view and unfortunately, the church is mirroring our society more and more. So the idea of being accountable to one another, of pointing out when we have been or at least felt we have been wronged is lost in many churches and most communities today.
When one who is wounded stays secluded and silent, that wound cannot heal properly. It will fester and spread and if it doesn’t kill literally, it can kill spiritually. Jesus tells the disciples initiating reconciliation is not the responsibility of the offender…they may not even know they have committed an offense against someone. Rather, it is the responsibility of one who is hurt and if the wounded one allows the gap to widen and the relationship to become broken, then they are just as much at fault for the brokenness if not more so.
The key toward initiating repair, though, is not to air out our pains and hurts to everyone, but to privately go to other person, one-to-one. We are to go in love; go in humility, not with the goal of revenge or inflicting equal pain and not to belittle or to ostracize. Talk about counter-cultural. This is an example of Paul’s debt of love in action. Our pride may tell us we owe them a piece of our mind, that we own them the pain we have felt, but Paul says all we owe to one who has hurt us and to anyone else is simply love. This is not a warm, fuzzy emotion, this is a down and dirty, love-in-action treating of someone else the way we know God has treated us – with compassion and forgiveness. The passage for next week about the unforgiving servant illustrates this point.
If our one-to-one efforts fail, Jesus says to bring in some witnesses to help. Now, if our mindset is that of the disciples and we are trying to prove who is at fault and that we have the true power, then our witnesses will be our best friends who we have already triangulated into the situation and are on our side. I don’t think this is what Jesus means here. I think witness here could just as easily mean counsel, a neutral party that can help us sort through our tangled emotions and hurts and help both parties find a way toward reconciliation. If that fails, Jesus says the whole church should be brought into the discussion. Talk about a sticky-wicket full of the potential of misuse of power! When this verse and the ones following are lifted out of their context, they have been used as terrible weapons to self-righteously get rid of those who are different or difficult or disliked. Again, I don’t think that approach is what is meant, especially when we consider the other teachings of Jesus that surround these verses.
Reading further Jesus says that what is discerned as appropriate between parties on earth, God will bless those decisions in heaven. In other words, what happens in the church matters, what happens between members matters because when there is a rift, everyone feels the cold draft that follows. The church is to be called into the discussion, not to assign blame or take sides or be judgment, but to provide a larger network of support and love to all parties involved. Think about it, the church is in the business of reconciliation, of calling all to repentance. The church exists to help further Jesus’ reconciling the lost and the broken of the world directly to God. We do this part of our job description each week when we confess sin corporately and hear words of pardon. If we claim to accept that pardon while we still hold a grudge with someone across the aisle, we have not fully accept the pardon or the responsibility that comes with experiencing God’s grace.
This makes the harshness of the second half of verse 17 seem very out of place. I think Jesus words about someone who refuses any of the attempt toward reconciliation to be considered as a “gentile and a tax collector” is really a sharp and clever piece of irony that cuts two ways. If anyone other than Jesus speaks these words, then the powerful could rejoice – saying here is our way out, our way to rid ourselves of the “little people”, the ones we despise. Again, through the centuries people have done just this and failed to listen to who it is that speaks these words. We need to remember that the one who speaks these words is the one of whom it was said "Now the tax collectors and sinners were drawing near to him." And the people murmured against Jesus, saying, "This man receives sinners and eats with them." Jesus came to seek out the outsider, he died for Gentiles and tax collectors and sinners like you and me. There must be more here.
Jesus, concludes his conversation about how to deal with those who have offended us by saying - "Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them." Richard Fairchild writes in a sermon on this passage: “If we are going to be with Jesus - then we must be among the people he chose to be with - sinners, Gentiles, and tax collectors. We are not called to be among them as unrepentant sinners – nor are we called to be among the people he has called as judges – we are called to be among them as ones who owe nothing to anyone - but love.” [http://www.rockies.net/~spirit/sermons/a-or23sm.php]
I see this as a classic hook that Jesus uses many times, a double-edged sword that he gives us. Just as we think we have been given the easy way to cut through our problems, we realize we are cutting ourselves. Jesus spent his life and ministry focused upon the outsider, the other, the disliked and disenfranchised. To Matthew’s audience, Gentiles and tax collectors fit the same role that many today might give to Muslims and illegal immigrants. Jesus isn’t making this easier by including them into the conversation, he is adding an infinitely harder layer to our life. He seems to be saying that if our best, most heartfelt and loving efforts fail to repair a relationship, we are called to continually love and work to include the one who has strayed, just like the shepherd did. It doesn’t mean we forget or that we pretend we weren’t hurt, but according to Paul we still owe the offending party and everyone else we come across in our life, the debt of loving them as we love ourselves, of loving them as we know God loves us.
Rev. Fairchild concludes his message with the following: “If our efforts, and the efforts of the church fail to bring about change then we will do God's will and help bring healing if we remember what God has pleasure in - and treat those who have offended against us as we ourselves have been treated by God - with mercy and compassion. The rest is between God and them.” [Ibid.]
I think when we combine all these smaller pieces together, the bigger picture of this puzzling text comes into view in a surprising way at least to me. The whole chapter can be seen as a way of dealing with people whom we love but who may exasperate us. Deanna Langly, in an article in Christian Century, points out that Jesus doesn’t dismiss the disciples’ self-centered and self-righteous question. “He takes them seriously, listens carefully and then responds, not with a direct or literal answer, but with several teachings and with exaggeration. Jesus pushes the disciples to think, to listen and to be accountable to others for the power they hold. The exaggeration allows the disciples the opportunity to learn without being embarrassed and to listen without becoming defensive. Jesus points them back to the "children," the "little ones," "the one that went astray," "the one not listened to"”. I think the way she sums it up is the key for our understanding today. It is at least what I am carrying with me this week as I examine and reexamine the relationships in my life. Rev. Langly writes, “The kingdom of God is not concerned with "who’s the greatest," Jesus teaches; the kingdom of God is about using power to care for the least and most vulnerable.” [http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=3263]
This passage is still troubling to me in many ways, especially because of all the ways it can be misused and misapplied, but I find I have gained in some understanding and clarity through my studies this week. Still, I know, there is more to learn and understand as I continue to work to piece this understanding together with new insights toward which God’s Spirit directs me. Still, the over-arching puzzle of scripture and the overwhelming puzzle of simply what it means to live as a Christian in this world, I don’t think these puzzles will ever be completely solved until the Kingdom comes in its fullness. In the meantime, we are called to keep working, and especially to keep loving with compassion and forgiveness.
This is the debt we owe to our God and to our world. Amen.
James 5:13-20
