Sermon: "Brought Back into the Fold by Forgiveness," September 6, 2020
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Matthew 18:15-20
Sermon: “Brought Back into the Fold by Forgiveness”
Preacher: Rev. Ryan Slifka
We all know that Jesus gives his disciples many teachings. Love God and neighbor, love your enemies, bless those who persecute you. But rarely does Jesus get very specific. In this week’s scripture passage, though, Jesus presents his church conflict resolution policy, which is pretty specific. When someone in the church sins against you he says, follow these procedures. If someone offends, or hurts, take these steps 1, 2, 3. A, B, C.
Step one: If someone in the church sins against you. If they do something intentionally or unintentionally that hurt you, that caused you harm, you go to them first, privately. And when you’re alone, face to face, Jesus says, point out the transgression. If that works, says Jesus, great. You’ve made a friend, you’ve regained someone for Christ’s kingdom.
But if that doesn’t work, take a couple other folks from the church with you. Take two or three people as witnesses. Witnesses to keep everyone honest. Someone to hear your accusation, and another to hear the other person’s side of the story.
But if that doesn’t work, then take it to the whole church. Of course, at this time the Christian community was pretty small. So it didn’t mean “take it to the annual general meeting,” or send an email blast. But more “take the issue to the dozen or so disciples that make up your congregation,” in the hopes of settling things.
And finally, if that doesn’t work. If one-on-one, three-on-one, church-on-one doesn’t work. Then you have no choice but to go to step 4. If this person still refuses, Jesus says, then that person is to be treated “like a Gentile and a tax collector.”
Gentiles, you’ll remember, are non-Jews. Meaning religious outsiders. And tax collectors are folks who squeeze money out of their own people to send to the Romans, the foreign occupiers.
So at first this sounds like, kick ‘em out of the church, cut ‘em off from community. But the thing is that in the gospels Gentiles and tax collectors are the very people Jesus was constantly seeking out. Gentiles and tax collectors were the people Jesus hung around with, people who he taught, healed and preached to. Regardless of their outsider status, disbelief, or the size of their sins. Even before they ever repented. So it’s not so much that they’re to be treated tossed out as pariahs, but as lost sheep to be sought out, continually. So they can recovered, and brought back into the fold of grace. iii
This is Jesus’ way of dealing with someone in the church who’s sinned against you. Like I said, the teaching’s very practical and precise. Four, clear steps that any of us can follow. And I heartily recommend each of us follow them.
Despite the fact that it’s so practical though, this formula also says something very profound in general about God. Each step has one final purpose in mind: Step 1: go to the person privately, try to win them back. Step 2: go to the person with witnesses, also with the hopes to win them back. Step 3: go to the person with the whole church—of course, with the purpose again of winning them back. And if none of those steps work, go to step 4, start from scratch with the good news all over again. With—you guessed it—with the purpose of winning the person back. Of forgiving, and restoring that person to community.
It’s the repentance of the sinner, it’s the forgiveness of the person who’s sinned against. It’s the healing of both lives, and the mending of this broken relationship. The end game in each and every step is reconciliation.
Jesus teaches his disciples to follow this model because this is God’s own model in dealing with humanity. Whether as victimizers, or as victims, God is in the business of bringing about our healing. From the very beginning, the Bible tells the story over and over and over of human beings who drop the ball, who screw up, fall short, and much much worse. And we reject God over and over and over again, too. And yet, in every case God calls a new person, or sends prophet after prophet, and eventually comes in the flesh himself. Not to write us off. But to get us to turn away from the ways that bring us hurt and pain and death, to bring us back into that same loving relationship, the joy of salvation.
This teaching of Jesus mimics Jesus in that he comes to us, face-to-face, to turn us around. In Jesus Christ, the eternal God holds up to us a mirror. One in which we’re able to see the truth about ourselves. In him, we see a cross. In the cross, we see the worst of humanity, the worst in us on full display. There we’re shown our sins, and our shortcomings. But it’s not to shame us. Nor to hurt us, maim or destroy us. Ultimately, this mirror is held up as a way to seek us out, forgive us, and to restore us in our relationship with God, and with each other.
The end goal with God is always reconciliation.
Just this past week a member of our congregation shared a story with me that I think gets to the heart of the meaning of this teaching.iii
It was the story of a woman who led a women’s prayer group every sabbath day at the wailing wall, one of the holiest sites in Jerusalem. There they would chant the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead. Facing the wall, they would mourn Israelis who died in fighting. Then they would turn from the wall, and they would also pray for the Palestinians who had died, too.
One day a group of students from a local rabbinical school—Rabbis in training—stopped to spit at and curse this group of women for praying for Palestinians. One student in particular became more and more hostile and hurled insults as she continued to pray.
Eventually, she stopped and spoke to the man, face-to-face. “I know exactly how you feel,” she said. “I have felt the same way too, with my heart filled with hatred and wanting to kill.” The crowd fell silent as she continued. “Six years ago in a suicide bombing I lost my 14 year old daughter... I wanted to kill anyone, to make someone suffer for my loss. I didn’t care who, and for months I lived like that. And then I slowly realized that I had become just like the people I blamed and hated. I was becoming inhuman and incapable of love and kindness or simple courtesies. I despised myself. And that’s when I realized that there are only two kinds of people in the world. There are those whose response to everything that happens is rage, hate, violence and disruption, getting even and taking it out on someone else. And there are those whose response to everything that happens is love, forgiveness, to seek understanding, reconciliation, peace-making and realizing that we are all the same—we ache the same way; we wail and grieve the same way; we love the same things—life, our families, our God, our country, our grandchildren. And I had to decide which group I belonged to: those who hate and kill or those who love and make peace.
I decided. Now it is time for you to decide—which group will you belong to? Which kind of power will you serve and obey? Will you be filled with hate or love, revenge or making peace? You decide now.”
There was another moment of silence. And then the man who was most aggressive in the group moved and spat full into her face, turned and walked away. She was shocked at first. But then slowly gathered herself and moved back to pray again at the wall.
And as that happened, the rest of the rabbinic students separated themselves. Some spat on the ground and left. But others joined the women at the wall. Side-by-side. Praying the same prayers, mourning the dead.iv
This woman was confronted in her own anger and hatred, one, sourced in her own grief, that buried her life in brokenness. But she found healing in her own forgiveness. In confronting the anger of these students, she held up a mirror to them. A mirror of their own grief, their own anger, their own sin, not to destroy them, but to offer them the same forgiveness she experienced, and to show them a new and different way. Like in Jesus’ teaching, and God’s whole way with us, her end goal was reconciliation.
Though none of them gathered would have said so—being Jewish and all—I am absolutely convinced as a Christian that this was the presence of Jesus, the Risen Lord, the one who brings repentance, forgiveness, and healing to all creation. Some refused to listen. Like Christ, she was spat at and rejected. But some did listen. Some listened, they had their hearts opened. They were regained… brought back into the fold.
So the questions for you today are these: Who has sinned against you and is in need of your forgiveness? Who have you sinned against, who is in need of your repentance? And as you look into this mirror, may you see the face of Jesus, the face of God shining with mercy and forgiveness. Which group now will you belong to? Which kind of power will you serve and obey? Will you be filled with hate or love, or will you let Christ, this time, bring you, and them back into the fold?
You decide now. Knowing Christ gives you, gives us all, a more excellent way. Amen.
i Question 85 in the Heidelberg Catechism: “Such persons, when promising and demonstrating genuine reform, are received again as members of Christ and of his church.” See M. Craig Barnes, Body & Soul: Reclaiming the Heidelberg Catechism (Grand Rapids: Faith Alive, 2011), 210.
ii “Treating someone as a Gentile and Tax Collector is often interpreted as exclusion and shunning. But in the Gospel they are the objects of mission. Disciples are to include them in the assembly (9:9-11; 28:18-20). The community follows the shepherd’s example (18:10-14).” See Warren Carter, “The Gospel of Matthew,” in The New Interpreter’s Study Bible, gen. ed. Walter J. Harrelson (Nashville: Abingdon, 2003), 1779.
iii Special thanks to Alison Mewett for sharing this.
iv Originally quoted in Megan McKenna, Matthew: the Book of Mercy (Hyde Park: New City Press, 2007), 159-60.