Text: Matthew 18:15-20New International Version (NIV)
Dealing With Sin in the Church
15 “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. 16 But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ 17 If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or 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 that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
Jesus never said these words.
You heard that right – this passage from Matthew illustrates the known fact that the Gospels were written decades after the events they portray; and in the intervening years, many things had happened in the early church that were then recorded in the Gospels.
Here’s some of what our old friend, William Barclay, writes about this lesson:
“In many ways, this is one of the most difficult passages to interpret in the whole of Matthew’s gospel. Its difficulty lies in the undoubted fact that it does not ring true; it does not sound like Jesus; it sounds much more like the regulations of a church committee.
“We may go further. It is not possible that Jesus said this in its present form. Jesus could not have told his disciples to take things to the Church, because it did not exist; and the passage implies a fully developed and organized Church with a system of ecclesiastical discipline. What is more, it speaks of tax-collectors and Gentiles as irreclaimable outsiders. Yet Jesus was accused of being a friend of tax-gatherers and sinners; and he never spoke of them as hopeless outsiders, but as always with sympathy and love, and even with praise…Further, the whole tone of the passage is that there is a limit to forgiveness, that there comes a time when someone may be abandoned as beyond hope, counsel which it is impossible to think of Jesus giving. And the last verse actually seems to give the Church the power to retain and to forgive sins. There are many reasons to make us think that this, as it stands, cannot be a correct report of the words of Jesus, but an adaptation made by the Church in later days, when Church discipline was rather a thing of rules and regulations than of love and forgiveness.
“Although this passage is certainly not a correct report of what Jesus said, it is equally certain that it goes back to something he did say…At its widest, what Jesus was saying was: ‘If anyone sins against you, spare no effort to make that person admit the fault, and to get things right again between you.’ Basically, it means that we must never tolerate any situation in which there is a breach of personal relationships between us and another member of the Christian community.”[1]
It’s all about relationships – first, our relationship to God, and secondly, our relationships to each other. Both of these relationships are inextricably connected; neglecting either one lessens the impact and the effectiveness of the other. On the other hand, overemphasizing either one has the same effect. They must both be in balance, as Jesus himself told the Pharisaic lawyer when asked what the greatest commandment was: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” (Mtt 37b-40)
The Epistle of James, also, has this to say: “What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” (James 2:14-17) Even thought the word “relationship” is not in this passage, nonetheless it is certainly implied by the use of the words “brother” and “sister.” These are names we give to two types of people with whom we share a relationship – and the message is crystal clear: You can’t have a meaningful relationship with God (faith) without a meaningful relationship with those around you; and a meaningful relationship with those around you can’t happen unless you actively take their part. What parent, for example, would say to a hungry child, “Be fed” without actually feeding that child?
Another word we use for “relationship” in the various circles we’re part of is “community.” In English, we use the ancient word “parish” to describe the group of people who belong to a local church, and those of us who are members are called “parishioners.” In German, however, the more-or-less equivalent word is “Gemeinde,” or “community.” We are members of the St. John’s Gemeinde, St. John’s community of followers of Jesus Christ.
In short: We’re all in this thing called “St. John’s Community” together. And what we do, how we do it, and especially how we get along in it, is of the greatest importance. None of us can do what Jesus calls us to do all by our lonesome. We need each other.
So I think Matthew can be excused (if not completely forgiven) for “rephrasing” something Jesus had said by way of “laying down the law” in this passage. For him, as for us, the unity of the community was of literally cosmic significance. Matthew’s Gospel was written somewhere in the years 80 to 90, and during this time, the Second Persecution of Christians under the Emperor Domitian took place. The following quote sums up what kind of man Domitian was: “The emperor Domitian, who was naturally inclined to cruelty, first slew his brother, and then raised the second persecution against the Christians. In his rage he put to death some of the Roman senators, some through malice; and others to confiscate their estates. He then commanded all the lineage of David be put to death.”[2] Keeping this in mind makes reading today’s lesson a bit more understandable – Matthew was trying to help his audience to literally keep the faith and remain strong in the face of brutality we can’t even imagine today. Facing outward horrors is made much more bearable if there’s inner harmony – which is why the crimes of those who transgressed might have seemed so deserving of harshness. “Desperate times require desperate measures,” you might say.
Matthew does offer some practical advice about dealing with those who have sinned against you – first, confront them; if that doesn’t work, bring witnesses; if that goes nowhere, bring it to the entire community; and if that doesn’t work … and that’s where it breaks down. If you want to maintain your community, kicking people out of it isn’t going to help you at all. To quote Barclay again: “The first impression is that the person concerned must be abandoned as hopeless and irreclaimable; but that is precisely what Jesus cannot have meant. He never set limits to human forgiveness…It may be that what Jesus said was something like this: ‘When you have done all this, when you have given the sinners every chance, and when they remain stubborn and obdurate, you may think that they are no better than renegade tax-collectors, or even godless Gentiles. Well, you might be right. But I have not found the tax-gatherers and the Gentiles hopeless. My experience is that they, too, have a heart to be touched; and there are many of them, like Matthew and Zacchaeus, who have become my best friends. Even if the stubborn sinners are like tax-collectors or Gentiles, you may still win them, as I have done.”[3]
I think that the point of this passage is to show ways to regain those who are lost, not to pass judgment for breaking some code of conduct. It’s good to bear in mind at this point Paul’s words in Romans 3:23, “since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (RSV) I like to think that Matthew’s real purpose, in addition to helping his hearers to “buck up,” is to help create an environment where Christ’s presence brings forgiveness, healing, and joy.
Forgiveness, healing, and joy. These are the hallmarks of a Christian community. But I think that this passage is often misused, and with tragic results, to do things that have nothing at all to do with forgiveness, healing, and joy. How many times have we heard from others about the pain that they felt in one or another church they “used to be a member of”? Whether this pain was – at least initially – self-inflicted, which sometimes happens, or whether it was the result of the malice of others, the end result was still the same: Rejection. Hurt. Hard feelings. The total breakdown of a relationship.
In his blog post for this week, David Lose writes: “[t]his… passage is offered by someone who knows that relationships take work to maintain and that community is harder to forge and nurture than we might imagine. Because – think about it – going to someone with your concern or grievance is a lot harder than talking behind his or her back. Bringing others to listen closely to what is said takes a lot more courage than posting something on Facebook. And working out disputes as a community together rather than simply dispensing judgment can be really, really hard.”[4]
Rejection is easy; reconciliation is hard.
For me, this passage is not just academic. Like you, I have at various times in my life been on the receiving end of “being voted off the island” – not from a church, but from other groups I’ve been part of, and from people who were once friends. And yes, more often than not, that hurt a lot. But even worse were the times when I have been the rejecter, when I have broken one or more of those personal rules I told you about a few weeks ago and “cut the cord” on someone. These were not among my stellar moments, regardless of whether or not I felt justified at the time (or, in fact, even if I actually was “in the right”); because I have found that, whatever the reason, whatever the justification, the rejection of another at my hands was not worth the eventual regret and remorse; not worth the sense of loss that followed soon thereafter.
Happily, I can say that many of these broken relationships – especially a couple from the last year or so – were restored (even if a little negative residue might yet remain). Others, though, have remained unreconciled, and may remain that way for good.
And this brings me to those odd words about “loosing and binding” on earth and in heaven. The historical Church has gotten a lot of mileage out of that text, with results both good and bad. But I agree with Barclay when he says that this passage “cannot mean that the Church can remit or forgive sins, and so settle human destiny in time or in eternity. What it may well mean is that the relationships which we establish with one another last not only through time but into eternity – therefore we must get them right.”[5]
Community – authentic community – is hard, but so, so necessary. The world cries out for help, and we have been called – and equipped by Jesus himself – to respond.
Let’s include, not exclude. Let’s reconcile, not reject. Let’s help, and not hurt!
Let us be the community that God call us to be!
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] Barclay, William, The Gospel of Matthew, Volume Two, The New Daily Study Bible, Louisville, KY, Westminster John Knox Press, 2001, p. 218
[2] “The Second Persecution, Under Domitian, A.D. 81,” quoted from “Biblestudytools.com,” http://www.biblestudytools.com/history/foxs-book-of-martyrs/the-second-persecution-under-domitian-a-d-81.html
[3] Barclay, pp. 220-1
[4] Lose, David, “Pentecost 14 A – Christian Community,” “…in the Meantime,” http://www.davidlose.net/2017/09/pentecost-14-a-christian-community/
[5] Barclay, p. 221