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This morning's scripture, especially the gospel, is somewhat unusual. It has to do with responsibility, individual and communal, for how we handle sin, forgiveness, and reconciliation. It is not a treatise on church administration even though parts of it sound a bit like something written by a church committee.
The gospel is unusual because, instead of talking about sin and forgiveness in parables and images, it has Jesus laying down a fairly specific procedure for dealing with community reconciliation. Matthew, who usually depicts Jesus as a story teller presents us with Jesus the giver of protocol. He's obviously writing for a first century church because he has Jesus giving this teaching before there was a church.
Matthew's Jesus hasn't made this reconciliation procedure up. He has adapted it from the 19th chapter of Deuteronomy which lays out the rules for giving evidence in court. According to the Torah, one witness is never enough to bring about a judgement for any offense. Judgement had to be established on the basis of 2 or 3 witnesses' testimony. Matthew adds the saying about 2 or 3 at the end of the passage to bolster the church's authority to bind and release-to make it as legitimate as that conferred by the Torah.
I found it interesting to look at the Rule of Benedict's Chapter 23 in which Benedict quotes this passage from Matthew in establishing his process for dealing with faults in the monastery. With some changes he follows Matthew's procedure, so it has a long, long history.
Time-honored as it is, it presents some really puzzling questions:
First - Jesus tells the disciples to treat stubborn offenders as Gentiles and tax collectors. Does he mean that the community should shun them? But didn't Jesus spent his whole ministry reaching out to Gentiles and tax collectors.
-Has he reversed himself here?
-Is he commanding in a sort of ironic, underhanded way, that the church never stop reaching out to the offenders as he never stopped consorting with Gentiles and tax collectors?
-Was this passage an addition, written by someone else, to pull back from Jesus' radical teaching?It helps to look, as it always does, to what comes before and after this reading. Right before it Jesus tells the parable of the Good Shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep to seek out the lost one. Immediately after it we find Jesus telling Peter that he had to forgive those who wronged him 70 x 7 or an infinite number of times. This is followed by the parable of the servant, forgiven a great debt, who refused to forgive a fellow servant who owed him a small amount. I think it's safe to say that Jesus hasn't reversed himself, that reaching out to those who have offended doesn't ever end.
Second - Perhaps you, like me, reacted to this gospel reading with the Question, “Does this mean that I get to decide that who is a sinner on the basis of who ticks me off? Rev. Alyce MacKenzie asks some good questions:
-Isn't it rather arrogant to assume that if I'm miffed at someone, they are wrong?
-Are repeated visits to the offender steps to reconciliation or harassment and bullying?
-Is conferral of heavenly authority on this severance from the community and seemingly blanket assurance of divine support of human decisions troubling?Perhaps the answers to her questions lie in Matthew's reminders, throughout the gospel, that we must keep in mind the need for constant humility and for leaving judgement to God, themes that we need to keep before us to help us avoid the constant possibility of self-righteous judgement of those whom we do not understand. A sly reminder of this lies in the story of Peter who wants to quantify the times he must forgive and who, very soon, is going to need unbounded forgiveness big time.
Third - Is Jesus' way of dealing with reconciliation effective? It's first step is going directly to the party who has offended. This avoids gossip and murmuring and gives the person a chance to explain her or himself. Robert Kegan and Lisa Leahy who consult to businesses say that the first resolution made by people in their workshops is, “If I have an issue with somebody, I’m going directly to them and not gossip about it.” And guess what? Nobody does it. Resisting this seems to go deep into human nature for many reasons.
Regarding Jesus' 2d and 3d steps - In my work with people over the years I have become convinced that exposing people's failings before others can be deeply destructive unless it is done very carefully and compassionately and the person is open to hearing what others have to say. And, perhaps most of all, we can't make ourselves forgive others. We can foster forgiveness, encourage it, but forgiveness is a grace that happens within us, not subject to our command.
So, being faithful to this morning's reading from Matthew takes a lot of inner work on the part of church/community members, work to transform our hurts into empathy for others who have been hurt, work to seek out and listen to people in the community who will tell us truths we don't necessarily want to hear, work to treat one another as Jesus treated Gentiles and tax collectors. In this way we ready our hearts to receive the grace of forgiveness and reconciliation.
Most of us agree that binding and loosing does not mean being moral arbiters of others' actions or attitudes. In the rabbinic Judaism of Jesus' time binding meant determining that a law applied to a certain situation and loosing meant determining that it did not. This is the stuff of theological reflection which goes hand in hand with communal discernment. Matthew's Jesus, in Chapter 16, gives Peter the power to bind and loose, but in this chapter, he gives it to the whole church/community, empowering them to be a discerning community. Like Benedict, he seems to be saying, “I set up some rules, but do what the Spirit tells you. I am calling you to be a discerning church/community, listening to the Spirit, the times, and one another. Whenever and however you gather to do that, I am with you.”