Readings (Track 1)

“If another member of the church sins against you…” Well, fight-or-flight kicks in. Fight-or-flight may mean:

• Watch for an opportunity to get even.

• Say nothing.

• Withdraw from the church.

Or some combination of all of the above. Not only are these responses we’ve been honing since the playground, they’re the responses that help maintain our sometimes precarious place as a species at the top of the food chain. And here is Jesus saying: “go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.” How do we make sense of this?

Let’s circle around it…

Two weeks ago we heard Jesus’ ^“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church…” (Mat 16:18 NRSV). On Jesus’ lips ‘church’ does not have an obvious pre-defined meaning; Jesus needs to explain what this ‘church’ is, what it’s for, how it will operate. Today’s lesson is part of that explanation. Last week we heard Jesus’ confrontation with Peter, and his words “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” “Take up their cross…” is an open-ended metaphor; Jesus’ words today give it some specificity, not in relation to the Romans, but in relation to other members of the church.

Now vv.15ff are counter-intuitive enough, dangerous enough if done badly, that Matthew prepares for them in vv.1-14. The disciples are called to humility, the humility of a child. Humility, notice, is relational. I can no more be humble by myself than I can play tennis by myself. Humility describes a particular way of living with others. The humble person does not engage in the game of increasing their status at the expense of others. The humble person is thereby free to welcome those like a child of “lower” status. And notice the punchline: “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”

Vv.6-11, using the metaphor of a stumbling block, call us to careful attention to the effects of our actions on others—and on ourselves. The others, described as “little ones who believe in me” are probably not simply literal children, but vulnerable church members. And then Jesus’ attention shifts to the ways we trip ourselves up. We’re called to a certain ruthlessness. Like a cancer that is harmless if caught quickly but fatal if allowed to grow, our sins too quickly move from things we control to things that control us.

Vv.12-14 take the careful attention a step further. It’s not just a matter of avoiding stumbling blocks, but of actively seeking those who are going astray. In Luke’s Gospel this parable serves to explain Jesus’ behavior, Jesus the Good Shepherd. Here in Matthew it’s describing the role of every disciple.

Vv.1-14 as a whole call the disciples to humility, attentiveness, and responsiveness. All the disciples; all the members of the church. It’s in that context, and perhaps only in that context, that vv.15-20 make sense. “If another member of the church sins against you…” then you are the shepherd who must seek out this lost sheep. A series of increasingly public steps are identified. The last “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” in Stanley Hauerwas’ words “is not to throw someone out of the church, but rather an attempt to help them see that they have become a stumbling block and are, therefore, already out of the church. Excommunication is a call to come home by undergoing the appropriate penance” (Matthew 165).

“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.” We tend to think of our relationship to God as one thing, and our relationship to any particular parish as another. Our relationship to God is a given; we look for a parish that will nurture it. Jesus appears to have something else in mind. It is as a member of a parish that we are able to relate to God. “On this rock I will build my church,” within the church those who believe will grow in the knowledge and love of God. The progression is not, if you will, God-individual-church, but God-church-individual.

This vision of the people of God as the context for our growth in the knowledge and love of God helps us avoid the most common mis-application of vv.6-11. We hear “If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away…” and fear that this is a call to self-surgery. Since Jesus is dealing with us not as isolated individuals but as members of a Body, the instructions assume that each individual is in serious enough conversations with other Christians, relationships of mutual accountability perhaps, so that the offending hand or foot can be properly identified. This is another reason why the local body of Christ needs to be diverse, so that these fellow members are not simply echoing a single subculture’s assumptions and perceptions.

The church plays this role not because its members are such splendid people. Today’s text has reminded us that it’s composed of people who have to be reminded to become like children, exhorted to stop putting stumbling blocks in front of others and themselves, exhorted to go out and seek those who wander. Explicit provision has to be made—up front—for one sinning against another. And in next week’s reading we encounter the sober truth that if the church is going to function, it will be because its members are prepared to forgive each other not seven times, but seventy times seven. What sets the church apart is not the splendor of its members, but its way of dealing with our frailty and cussedness. Today’s and next week’s lessons make it clear that beneath our preferred veneers we’re ornery varmints (badgers, if you like), and that our salvation lies in learning together how to live together with Jesus as our center.

Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, has a splendid book on the Christian life (The Wound of Knowledge) in which he talks about growth as a Christian as a process of decentering, learning to live without treating myself as my center. What today’s text adds to that perception: decentering happens not through an esoteric set of spiritual exercises but in the daily disciplines of humility, attentiveness, and responsiveness, particularly toward “the least of these.”

Is Jesus really serious? The vision of life in the church laid out in today’s reading is so foreign to our natural instincts that it is hard not to see the doctrines which divide the churches as a mammoth exercise in avoidance: if we can argue about the Pope, predestination, the Eucharist, we can put off dealing with Jesus’ vision of a very risky common life.

The church: an interconnected body of folk who are learning to be humble, attentive, responsive. There are opportunities throughout the week to test that vision. There are even opportunities during coffee hour. Let’s see if Jesus knows what he’s talking about.