14 Pentecost A (lectionary 23A)
Texts: Ezekiel 33:7-11; Matthew 18:15-20
sermon by Rev. Robert Klonowski
Faith Lutheran Church, Homewood, IL
September 6, 2020
You Don’t Just Let It Go. You Go, to the Other
The lesson we read this morning from the prophet Ezekiel, and the Gospel lesson this morning as well – they are about the importance of telling the truth. If God gives you a true word to speak to someone in your life, you gotta say it. And when someone in the community – your church, your neighborhood, your household – offends against you, you go to that person, and you face up – together! – to what is the truth.
But you gotta be careful with this. Because while I know that you have a monopoly on the truth, while I know that you know exactly what God is calling us to do, well, it may be that the truth is a little more nuanced and a little more complicated than you necessarily know. And so Jesus gives us Matthew 18 here, which may be the most important insight into human relationship in all of human literature. Let me tell you why I see it that way.
The first year I was married, our first apartment was only a mile-and-a-half from the ancestral Klonowski home at 50th & Paulina, the house in which my 82-year-old grandmother was still living. I was a student then with a flexible mid-day schedule, so occasionally I went over and brought Grandma lunch. Kentucky Fried Chicken, which she loved. Only later did I learn that probably wasn’t the best idea for an older lady living with high blood pressure.
She asked me how was my new married life. Oh, I allowed, it was going well, but we fought occasionally over some things, I couldn’t believe how petty they were. I would pick a fight over how to roll up the toothpaste tube. Ah, she waved that away impatiently. Your marriage hasn’t even started until you disappoint one another. Well, I told her, then our marriage has got up a good head of steam already, because for sure we’re doing that all the time!
She pinned me to the back wall with a level-eyed look: No, she said; I mean something for real. Until real disappointment happens, your marriage hasn’t even started. It’s not even interesting, yet.
The proof of any relationship is how you handle it when you disappoint one another. Any relationship – a congregation, a nation, your family, your friends, your marriage maybe – anybody can handle those relationships when things are going along easily. The proof comes, when you seriously disappoint one another. When maybe you betray one another. You got a relationship like that in your life right now? Or two? Then what Jesus says this morning is just for you, isn’t it?
Jesus was speaking here to a young church that would know sin and brokenness within the community. If someone sins against you, you go and hammer it out, just the two of you. Notice that he doesn’t say, go to 6 other people and let them know how the one person is wrong, the way we handle it all too often! Notice he does not say, email everybody you know and marshal around you a whole host of allies, so you can go to war over this and win! Nope: You go to that one! Rather than gathering allies for war, gather yourself to encounter the other and seek justice, truth, and peace.
If that doesn’t work, make it a matter for a larger community in the church, first two or three others, then maybe the whole church if you have to. Get the perspective of some others on the matter, for the Spirit is indeed at work through the community, and the community can help you find truth – what the community binds on earth will be bound in heaven; what the community looses, forgives, on earth will be forgiven in heaven. If that doesn’t work, well then let that person be to you – shunned as an outsider – as a Gentile, or a tax collector, says Jesus.
And we are astonished at such harsh words from Jesus – let ‘em be as a Gentile or a tax collector? – until you think about it for a minute. How was it that Jesus did treat Gentiles and tax collectors? Were they not among the very first to hear his redeeming and welcoming word?
And then think about: this is chapter 18, of which gospel? That would be the gospel of … Matthew. And Matthew … was a tax collector. Coincidence? I don’t think so! Who better than a tax collector, who himself had known the redeeming touch of Jesus – who better than a tax collector would know God’s gracious, reaching response to those of us who try so hard to put ourselves beyond the pale of grace?
Like the early Christian church, you have yourself experienced human sin and brokenness. This could be about any community of which you are a part, right? Maybe you’ve been around Faith Lutheran Church long enough to experience tensions with others, to be disappointed with others in the Christian community. Or maybe you’ve been in your marriage long enough to know disappointment with one another. Or maybe you have known with other members of your family experiences of real betrayal.
But life in Christian community, like life in marriage, only begins to get serious when you learn how to disappoint one another, and how to do it well. That’s what Matthew 18 is about: when we disappoint one another, how do we do it well, in a way that takes seriously the brokenness … note that Jesus does not tell us to just let it go, as common wisdom would so often advise. No, this is all about the importance of the truth, of what’s real, so he doesn’t say let it go; he says go to the other, and that is so different. He says, take the brokenness just that seriously.
So while it’s rather obvious, and while I have pointed out, that Matthew 18 takes seriously Christian brokenness, I’ll end by pointing out that Matthew 18 takes equally seriously the gift that is relationship, community,– especially community in Christ. I mean, think about what Jesus is pushing us to go through for the sake of restored relationship, community: If the relationship is broken, then first go yourself. Then go with a couple more, then the whole church, then let that person be to you a continuing target of your Christian mission – man, that’s a lot of work, a lot of investment, that Jesus is expecting of us on behalf of a person who – pardon me, Jesus, but isn’t this the person who in the first place sinned against me? That’s what Matthew 18 is about: the God-given gift that we are to one another, the community, is of such value in God’s sight that you never throw another person away. You invest, you go back, again and again. And again. And again.
I forget that sometimes. Once when I forgot it, a friend of mine who is a person of deep faith reminded me. This was after I spent a considerable amount of time with her griping about the brokenness, of my relationship with someone in the church. She heard me out, patiently. But then she lifted a hand like this and said, “With that person, with that issue, let me tell you something: Love, in every conversation with her. Love, in every e-mail message. Love, in every single interaction. Bob, you gotta be absolutely relentless on this one.”
You be relentless, for the sake of community. Relentless – go again and again! – to lift that word of justice and honesty and the truth. Relentless, in investing in the other. You be relentless, for the sake of community. That’s what Matthew 18 is about.