Fiftheenth Sunday after Pentecost
“Getting Along” — Reflection by Rev. Brent Gundlah
First Reading (Romans 12:9-21/NRSVUE)
Gospel Reading (Matthew 18:15-20/NRSVUE)
You know it’s going to be an interesting day when you find out who your new boss is going to be from a headline on the front page of the Boston Globe’s business section. That’s what happened to me early one morning about twenty years ago.
My friend and co-worker, Gavin, and I were sitting on the train on our way to work; he was reading the Globe, as he did every single morning, and I had closed my eyes in a futile attempt to catch a few more minutes of sleep. When Gavin saw the news, he woke me up by swatting me with the aforementioned newspaper, so I could read it too. Sure enough, we had a new CEO, and what had started out as an ordinary day suddenly got a whole lot less ordinary.
I knew a little about him because he was a regular commentator on CNBC, and because I’d been reading his research notes for a while; but all of that information provided very little insight into what he was going to be like to work for. And so when we finally arrived in the office, my colleagues and I set about trying to learn anything and everything we could about him as quickly as possible.
A short while later, my phone rang — it was my next-door neighbor, John, summoning me to his office because he’d found something interesting. And, as it turns out, he had found something interesting — namely, a lengthy magazine profile of the new guy that had been published just a few months earlier.
In the interest of efficiency, John sat at his desk reading the left hand page, while I stood across from him on the other side reading the right hand page (as they say, teamwork makes the dream work). We each blurted out interesting bits of information as we found them: Cambridge and Oxford educated… Former deputy director of the International Monetary Fund… Always five steps ahead of everyone else in the room… A workaholic (as I recall, some anonymous source mused about whether he slept hanging upside down from the pole in his office closet like a vampire bat). “Well, this should be fun,” I said.
As soon as those words had left my mouth I heard a voice emanating from the doorway just over my left shoulder that sounded much like the voice of a James Bond villain; I thought I recognized it, but I wasn’t entirely sure who’s it was — for about a nanosecond, anyway. “You can’t believe everything you read,” was what that voice had said.
And suddenly I had a much better idea as to who was standing behind me, a theory soon corroborated by the incredible speed with which John stood up from his desk chair — it was like we were in the Army and a four-star general had walked into the room (I think John may have actually saluted him).
After he introduced himself (as if we didn’t know who he was at that point) our new CEO asked us what we thought of the article we’d been feverishly reading, and then proceeded to tell us what he believed they got right and got wrong. As he turned to take his leave after chatting with us for a while, he smiled a wry smile and said, “I think this is going to be fun, don’t you gentlemen?” I was kinda hoping he’d hadn’t overheard that part of my conversation with John. At the end of the day, I hadn’t said anything too awful, but I definitely would have conducted myself differently if I’d known he was there.
I can’t help but wonder if Jesus is driving at something similar in the speech he gives to his disciples in today’s gospel reading, which is a good one. His closing line here on it’s own would probably make a lot of people’s “Top Ten Quotations from the New Testament” list; “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them,” is what Jesus reportedly said (at least according to Matthew, because none of the other gospels writer mentions this detail).
It’s a really familiar verse among Christians — one that we sometimes hear used in church either as an apology or a way of making ourselves feel better; you know, like when we put on an event that ends up drawing a smaller than hoped for crowd, or when less people show up for worship than they typically would on a Sunday (during a three-day weekend, for example). No worries, though — there’s at least two or three of us here today, so we have a quorum. Rest easy folks, Jesus is with us.
It’s a lovely sentiment — and it’s also, in some sense, true — but after considering this statement in it’s broader context (which is a really good thing to do with any Bible verse), it’s unlikely that this is what Jesus meant for folks to take away from it. Anyway, now that we’ve considered the end of this passage a bit, let’s go back to the beginning of it — actually, let’s go back a little bit further than that.
If you happen to be keeping score, you may have noticed that we’ve skipped over a bunch of stuff in Matthew’s Gospel between last week and this week — including, but not limited to, Jesus’s wild trip up the mountain and back down again with James and John and Peter that’s come to be referred to by the church as the Transfiguration (that part of the story gets skipped now because it’s the reading every year on the last Sunday before Lent).
Once Jesus and company return to sea level after their alpine journey, Jesus heals a young boy that his disciples couldn’t seem to heal; he foretells his death and resurrection again; he talks about the power of a faith that is as small as a mustard seed; and he sends Peter off to pay the temple tax they owe before turning his attention to other important matters — which is the point at which we find ourselves in today’s reading.
Our passage is located right in the middle of the fourth of five discourses, or big speeches, that Jesus gives in Matthew’s Gospel; this one is known as the Discourse on Community or the Discourse on Church, though it’s not necessarily obvious from the get-go that this is what it’s actually about.
I say this because Jesus begins this speech not by talking about church in any obvious way but rather by talking about the need for his disciples to become like children. He then cautions them against being stumbling blocks to others, and then says some weird stuff about cutting off your hand or your foot should they cause you to stumble, before telling a short parable about lost sheep that goes like this:
“If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one who went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.” The end. It’s worth noting that Luke tells a similar story, but he focuses on the shepherd’s joy in finding the lost sheep; in contrast, Matthew chooses to emphasize the shepherd’s responsibility for ensuring that a stray sheep doesn’t stay lost — and this is an essential difference.
“Okay, but what does any of this have to with the church?” you might ask at this point, but then today’s passage makes this a bit more clear. Seemingly out of nowhere Jesus launches into a set of instructions on how to run a congregation — specifically, how to manage a one that is experiencing conflict. Here’s the essence of what he says:
If someone in church “sins” — by which Jesus means doing something that harms relationships with individuals or groups within the community — the offended should call the offender out on it, but privately, so as not to humiliate them. If they “listen” — by which Jesus means take it all in and make amends (which, it should be noted, is assumed to be a precondition to forgiveness) — that’s great. If they don’t listen, though, then try again — but this time bring a few witnesses. If they still don’t listen, then take the matter to the broader church. And if that doesn’t work, then “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector;” in other words, as painful as this might be, they probably need to leave the community.
But it’s important for us to understand that this part of Jesus’s speech doesn’t just come out of nowhere — it actually flows directly from the parable of the lost sheep that Jesus tells right before it — you know, that whole bit that says, “For it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little one should be lost.”
When Jesus talks about the disfellowshipped person being treated as a “Gentile and a tax collector” it’s easy to fall into the trap of interpreting this as “eternal outcast,” but that’s not what he means. Remember, Jesus welcomes and dines with and cures and cares for those kinds of people all the time; heck, he even recruits a tax collector — Matthew, to be be precise — as an apostle.
So what Jesus is actually saying here is that, even in those extreme circumstances where someone needs to leave the community for some period of time for the good of the community, the door to reconciliation should always remain open; and thus the sheep who’s gone astray is never truly lost.
This is all really good advice on Jesus’s part — which is why it’s the cornerstone upon which a whole lot of church covenants have been constructed over the years. In fact, it sounds an awful lot like our community covenant here at HUCC — which I encourage you to go read if you haven’t yet done so, or haven’t done so recently (it’s on the website).
But let’s be honest: all of this is a lot easier said than done. I mean, when two or three or more people gather — yes, even in Jesus’s name — conflict is virtually inevitable. In the heat of arguments and amidst the storms of strong feelings that can take place within communities, we sometimes forget how we’re supposed to speak and act — how we’ve covenanted to speak and act — and so we could all use a little reminder about that every now and again.
Which brings me back around to the story I shared at the start of this reflection, because I can help but think that the final line of Jesus’s speech here is meant to serve as that reminder. When he declares, “For where there are two or three are gathered in my name,” he not speaking generally, he’s talking specifically about the whole process that he’s just described.
What he’s saying is that during those times when things go off the rails and we’re trying to figure out what to do next, when the you-know-what hits the fan and we’ve gathered to discern how best to move forward in relationship with one another — he’s there with us, not only showing us love and support, but also holding us accountable for what we said we were going to do in such circumstances.
So what would you say and how would you act if you believed that Jesus were actually here listening and watching as you engaged in the life and work of this church? It’s a question worth asking over and over again, because if you’ve chosen to be a part of this community, then there’s a better-than-average chance you think he might be, in some way, shape or form.