This Week: Proper 18A
Gospel: Matthew 18:15-20
There is a force in this week’s gospel that compels us to deal with it, regardless of whether we actually want to.
A force that says something about this just feels wrong. Or else, it feels too right.
- The text, Matthew 18:15-20 is given to us completely out of context.
- We’ve skipped ahead a chapter and a half.
- We really love thinking about other people’s sin (and fixing them).
And because of this, it is really hard to see what we’re actually dealing with here.
It feels like we’re being asked to focus on other people’s problems and making them fix them. Or else… something. Which seems to violate what Jesus teaches about judgement. Not to mention that bit about our dealing with the plank in our own eye.
So, it is either that or else, it feels exactly like a call to duty; to join in the heresy hunting expedition out in the world. To help fix all that’s wrong. Something many are all too eager to do anyway.
I strongly recommend getting a sense of the context before moving forward.
The immediate context
Jesus was just teaching about not being a stumbling block to the mission of God. Particularly to children.
Just as we have a lot of exceptions to the rule masquerading as the rule with love, we have the same problem with tradition.
Many want to suggest that we must be harsh with our children and bend them to our ways. Force them to comply. To teach them. Which is like hitting someone for love or waging war for peace. It may be what we intend to teach, but it isn’t what is learned.
What Jesus was telling his followers is that children are first in the kin-dom. Which means kids are in front of them in line. I can’t imagine Peter, James, and John like hearing that.
And our job is not to force our tradition upon children, either. But to help them find their way—without getting in their way. Unlike Peter, who just got in Jesus’s way.
Then he tells a parable of the lost sheep. Saying that it is a given that the shepherd would leave the flock to find anyone who is lost. Which I don’t think we would treat as a given. But Jesus implies that we should.
Helping a lost sheep is about helping a lost one, not maintaining control or imposing a cultural mandate. Examples such as sex and gender roles or public behaviors come to mind.
The wider context
Jesus is teaching about discipleship. They are following the master. And his attention has turned toward Jerusalem.
The instructions about his followers joining him by carrying their own crosses is an invitation to face death.
All of this means that we are following a Messiah that doesn’t see our role as policing each other. We aren’t policing anything! We are inviting people into relationship. In love, faith, and hope.
Policing behaviors is about placing a stumbling block in front of others, thinking it will prevent them from sinning. But this is the sin that transcends sin; the one that separates us and pulls us away from the project.
And as we’ll see next week, the purpose of this isn’t to make everyone behave themselves. It is in light of a God who will forgive everyone of anything.
The two mistakes we make
- We think this passage is about defining the contours of love around the idea of calling out sin.
- And we separate the nature of this passage from the essential concept of forgiveness.
And by making these two mistakes, we miss the underlying framework that Jesus is building for the children of God.
That we are about love—and not laundering meanness and calling it love.
And that we govern our lives by the principle of Shalom: which is about wholeness, restoration, peace, health, and justice.
Therefore, our focus shouldn’t be on how we talk to people about their sin. But on how we fundamentally need to deal with our concept of sin.
Dealing with sin
One main way our tradition deals with sin is as the particular actions and behaviors we engage in that go against the will of God. The other is in the state of separating ourselves from God by the way we treat one another.
How this usually manifests itself is in talking about those things we think of as sin. Given our culture’s focus on protecting property and a rigid sexual ethic around marriage and monogamy, most of our thoughts around sin involve stealing and sex.
So then, trying to fix people means apologizing and making them behave differently. Which is why this passage confuses us.
So….
We’ve got sin wrong, our relationship to other people wrong, and a predisposition to worry about other people’s mistakes more than our own.
With an ethic of Shalom, our focus is on justice and wholeness in our relationships and our communities. So it means restoring those driven out and healing those who are sick. That is our work. Restoring healthy relationships, connections, and physical health.
One last thing
The place I think people are most likely to get tripped up is in the “punishment” section. When Jesus tells the people what they are to do if the person won’t deal with their sin. And it shows our cognitive bias.
“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.”
This is often taken as an endorsement of shunning—as in kicking a person out of the church. Or, in a social media era, unfriending.
This interpretation becomes ridiculous when you read the very next passage. But more importantly, anyone following along for any amount of time should already get that Jesus doesn’t see tax-collectors as “others”. Their culture does. The culture Jesus is trying to inform to include tax-collectors.
We need to adapt our vision to include all of that information and forge a different template. One that doesn’t see this pattern leading to punishment, but justice and restoration. One that is in line with how the Kin-dom is supposed to look, not one endorsing Team Jesus against a corrupted world.
So with that in mind, I’m inclined to see this as naming the need for restoration—implying that the “sinner” is not really functioning as a member of the community anymore.
Which only sounds drastic if we think in absolutes and punishments rather than justice and restoration. It is not the end of the story—but opportunity.
It will begin with forgiveness and empathy. It will take love. And we should think that is far more attractive than locking more people up in a proverbial prison.