The gospel story of Jesus is all about God doing a new thing. In Matthew and Luke we hear the story of the Incarnation – God coming to live among us as a human. But God did not come in the form of a warrior king with power and might; instead, God came in the form of a vulnerable baby, weak, needing the parental care of Mary & Joseph, and eventually growing up into the man known as Jesus. And as we read through Matthew about the life of Jesus we hear stories of temptation, healing, teaching, calls, and conflicts. Then we get to Chapter 13 where Jesus begins to do something new – he begins teaching in parables, specifically parables about the kingdom of heaven.
The parables lay the groundwork for showing what the kingdom of heaven is like AND that the kingdom of heaven is here among us if we open our eyes and hearts. These kingdom parables and the things that follow are focused on the new community Jesus is trying to establish. From ensuring everyone is fed and cared for to remembering that we'll sink without Jesus with us to paying attention to what spews from our mouths, Jesus is showing us what this new community can and should be.
But as we saw last week, following Christ and working to establish this new kingdom isn't without difficulties. Jesus himself said he would be put to death, to which Peter objected and the stone on which the Church would be built became a stumbling block to Jesus. We were told that we must take up our cross if we were to become his followers. And we were reminded that if we are to follow Christ then we must FOLLOW him to where he leads and not try to lead him to where we want him to go.
At the beginning of Chapter 18 the disciples want to know who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. In response, Jesus brings a child into the circle and says, “Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest, and whoever welcomes a child in my name welcomes me.” He goes on to tell his disciples not to despise the little ones and then he tells the story of the shepherd going off to find the lone lost sheep and that it is God's will to not lose a single little one.
This all leads into today's gospel passage where Jesus is talking about sin and reconciliation.
For all of our talk about loving our neighbors, living in community, being part of the body of Christ with him as our sure foundation, the truth is that we still exhibit very human traits and behaviors. We tend to place our own wants before our neighbors' needs. Community is there for what we can get out of it. We too easily remove people not like us. Greed, lust, envy, and other sinful acts destroy foundational principles. Church, unfortunately, is not always apple pie, ice cream, and smooth sailing.
Knowing that things in community can get messy, Jesus gives us a process for reconciliation. It is persistent. It is time consuming. And it follows specific steps.
If a member of the Church sins against you, meet with them in private to explain how you have been hurt. If they refuse to acknowledge their part, take witnesses. If that doesn't work, bring it to the church body. And if THAT doesn't work, treat them as a Gentile and tax collector.
These are hard things to do. It's hard to confront someone. It's hard to remain calm and be a non-anxious presence. It's hard to work toward reconciliation. It's hard to continue being in the presence of one who sinned against you. It's hard for us to work through a process that is focused on restoration and not revenge.
This process is what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, which was led by Abp. Desmond Tutu, did. They focused on restoration, reparations, and restorative justice, not revenge. That takes hard work. It requires one party to acknowledge their sin and then want to repair the damage, and it requires the other party to refrain from focusing on revenge.
But if, in the end, there can be no reconciliation, no restoration, then we are to treat the offender as a Gentile and tax collector. Which, on its surface, means that we are to treat them as outsiders and traitors, as people we shouldn't associate with.
In today's gospel Jesus gives us a blueprint for handling conflict in the Church. In an ideal world this would work every time. But we don't live in an ideal world and we aren't ideal people. We get blinded by pride. We think admitting errors and sin is weak. We hate confrontation, so we just let it drop. It would seem that treating them as Gentiles and tax collectors, as outsiders whom we should ignore, might be the way to go.
But on closer examination that's not the case. Earlier in this chapter Jesus talked about welcoming the little ones. This could refer to children, but it could also refer to people new to the faith. So it has a double meaning: little ones in body and little ones in spirit. Both of these people have been considered outsiders and both have been pushed out and/or ignored . . . like Gentiles and tax collectors.
If we think of the Gentiles and tax collectors like little ones or the sheep that went astray, then we can follow Jesus' example and reach out to them, offering them a new community in which to live.
This isn't just Jesus doing some new fangled thing by working to include outsiders and not giving up on them. This is a God thing as well. We heard it in the reading from Ezekiel: As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from their ways and live.
To treat a person as a Gentile or tax collector is to leave the door open. It's to remind them that there is a place for them in this new community of Christ. It's to welcome them as an equal partner on this journey of discipleship. It's to sit with them and eat with them. It's to recognize that they are created in the image of God just as we have been created in the image of God.
We may not be able to follow through on these steps of reconciliation. We may have difficulty with people who have sinned against us – sometimes rightfully so. We may harbor hurt feelings and be wary around their presence. Life is messy and not always easy. But one thing we should be able to do is to leave the door open to possibilities. We should be willing to leave the door open to God doing a new thing.
And maybe being willing to leave the door open for God to do a new thing is the most important thing we can do.
Amen.
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