Sermon 9-6-26
15th Sunday after Pentecost Mt. 18: 15-20
I just finished reading a book called “The Development of Modern Christianity, Since 1500”. I thought it was a fascinating read, but that is coming from a guy who's favorite book is called “The History of Salt”.
Believe it or not, by the year 1500 AD there were only a couple of distinct Christian denominations, the Church of Rome and the Eastern Orthodox Church.
They had split up over a disagreement on who had the most authority, the Bishop of Rome or the Bishop of Constantinople. Then along about 1500 comes this priest, from a town in Germany, who thought the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, was worried more about power than he was about leading the faithful. The priest's name was Martin Luther.
That's when things start to unravel. Today there are thousands and thousands of Christian denominations world wide. Too many to count. The number keeps growing second by second. Every time a couple of church members have a disagreement, one of them packs up their toys and goes out and starts a new church.
In our Gospel reading today Jesus is giving His listeners advice on how to head off and resolve disagreements. Our ancestors in the faith and Mediterranean culture in general are prone to conflict. They knew, and know, those conflicts could very easily escalate into violence and blood shed. That could grow even further into a blood feud, pitting one family or group against another, until everyone was dead.
Jesus spent a lot of time in His earthly ministry trying to introduce His listeners to ways of resolving conflicts. He needed to. It seems like everywhere He went and everything He did made someone angry. And Jesus could became angry Himself.
In our Gospel reading last week He tells one of His dearest friends to “get behind me Satan”. In chapter eleven of this gospel He upbraids whole cities. “Woe to you Chorazin, woe to you Bethsaida. And you, Capernaum, you shall be brought down to Hades”.
He made a whip out of chords and drove the sheep, cattle and the men who were selling them out of the Temple. He turned over the tables of the money changers.
Jesus is God, but He was also a man. A man who lived dead center in the middle of an area where all the people are what sociologists call “agonistic”. I mentioned that earlier, they're conflict prone. Jesus the man would sometimes lose His cool, but He always calmed down, walked away and spent a little time praying to the Father.
This reading we have today could very well be one of, if not the most difficult passages to interpret in all of Matthew's Gospel. Professional bible scholars think Matthew might have paraphrased some of Jesus' strategies to defuse conflicts. There had always been ways those people used to keep their disagreements from becoming violent, otherwise they would have killed themselves off.
They might fume, fuss and threaten with no intention of ever carrying out the threat. Jesus tells them to turn the other cheek, that's a tough one. What we have in this passage is a three step method, you might call it “three strikes and you're out”, of solving problems.
Step one is a private meeting. Try to keep the problem out of the public eye. It's also the best solution. “If he listens to you, you have gained your brother”.
Step two becomes what would have been a legal matter for the Jews of that time. The situation is semi-private and follows the rules of their legal system from the days of Moses. Two or three witnesses, negotiators, are always required. Deuteronomy, Chapter19, verse 15 says, “a single witness shall not prevail against a man for any crime”.
Then, heaven forbid, step three is to take the case before the whole community. You might as well post it on facebook. The whole town now knows what is going on. Our reading says “tell it to the church”, but there was no church when Jesus was speaking. That is one of the reasons scholars think this is a paraphrase.
When Matthew's Jesus says, “Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven”, the Greek word translated as “you” is plural. That means all disciples have authority to settle conflicts between community members. The terms bind and loose were common to the Jews of that time. To bind means to forbid, to loose means to allow.
“If two or three of you agree on anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven”.
These words are not meant to be taken literally. They're two thousand years old, from an ancient culture, half-way around the world. They've been translated through four or five different languages before they made it to 21st century Americanized English.
Here's an example. Lets all agree, and pray to God that I win the Powerball jackpot. When that happens, I'll send each and everyone of you a glossy eight by ten of me holding a big fish. Don't count on the picture, we know it's not going to happen.
We must remember the basic law of prayer. God always answers our prayers, but in the way His wisdom and love tells Him is best for us. “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them”. One of the earliest interpretations of this saying was that the two or three are father, mother and child. Jesus is always there, the unseen guest in every home. How many of us would start a family argument with a guest in the house?
Amen.
