For Sunday
Proper 18A
Collect
Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
Reading
Reflection
It’s a strange choice the lectionary has made to clip this part (Matthew 18:15-20) from a bigger passage. And by doing so, we might miss the meaning.
Before this, Jesus tells the disciples the parable of the lost sheep. Then, after giving them this guidance for dealing with conflict, Peter asks how many times must he forgive: is seven enough? And Jesus is like, multiply that by seven before you’re getting into the right ballpark. So this lesson, which appears to be about keeping order in community is bookended by delight and unlimited forgiveness.
What I want to focus on, given this context, is the evolving character of relationship that Jesus seems to be offering here. And this, to me, seems much more the point than it is the prescription for discipline some would make it to be.
It speaks at the beginning of siblings and in the end of gentiles and tax collectors. Out of context, this might read the devolving of relationship or worse, a justification for shunning. Such a reading, however, seems out of step with Jesus in virtually every way, as Jesus actively welcomes such people.
This seems more like a reminder that we rely on our common relationship when dealing with our siblings. And when that doesn’t work, perhaps we need to defamiliarize before we can reconcile. In this way, Jesus seems to be suggesting that part of the problem in dealing with someone who has sinned and broken our common community is in our own sense of who they are.
To this, Jesus invites us to open up. That we might actually have more compassion for them if we saw in them, not brother or sisterhood, but that they, too, are an outcast from an unjust society. That maybe what separates us is that we see ourselves as siblings rather than people with common cause.