Let's Talk
Matthew 18:15-20
by Jim Westmoreland
Did you ever put a bite of food in your mouth and realize after you had taken it all into your mouth that it was too hot to eat? I suspect we have all done that. We used to play a game as kids, called "hot potato." You didn't want to get stuck holding the potato. Well, we probably don't have to read this week's test twice to realize it is a "hot potato!"
I am indebted to a sermon by The Rev. Dr. Elton Richards called "Tell It Like It Is!",(1) which was delivered on "The Protestant Hour" in 1996. This text makes us uncomfortable and we may think, shame on Matthew for such sloppy editing! Shame on Matthew for putting words into the mouth of Jesus! This grievance manual inserted in Matthew 18 is an intrusion! Such guidelines for conflict resolution may be necessary in the workplace but not in the church.
I can hardly believe Jesus could have uttered these words. The text concludes with the excommunication of an impenitent offender urging the church to treat that one as a Gentile and a tax collector. In his ministry Jesus reached out to and embraced such people and much to the consternation of the Scribes and Pharisees, he even ate with them.
Moreover, the placement of this passage is jarring. It separates two of the most graceful and expansive stories in the Gospels. It is preceded by the account of the seeking shepherd who leaves the 99 in the fold and begins his search for one who was lost. It is followed by the story of Peter probing the limit of forgiveness with Jesus, "Lord, how many times should we forgive? Seven? Help me set the boundaries!" "No, Peter; 70 x 7. The number is unlimited. Put your calculator away."
While this text on processing grievances may have worked for Matthew's church, it would be hard to recommend today. Groups that use this passage to keep their group pure and holy tend to slide into self-righteousness and abuse both Jesus' spirit and His words. Perhaps you know of people who have been run out of a church and Matthew 18 was used to throw the book at them. In a polarized society where we are often defined by our differences, in a climate of anger and violence, it is tragic when the Bible is used as a weapon to clobber others.
The church discipline recommended in our text assumes a close knit community of committed people of faith. Few churches can claim that in our age of radical individualism. People hardly talk with one another, especially when they have differences. We sit in silence and growing anger until we finally confront them like a pit bull dog. Having said "we tried," we are apt to solve our differences by going to court. The erosion of community is well documented today. We talk about being a family of faith, but we are busy doing our own thing. Robert Putnam, a few years ago lamented the 40% decline in league bowling. People weren't bowling because of more individual activities. I suggest that bowling is symptomatic of the decline of our unwillingness to associate and be a part of a group. We don't have to look hard to realize that trust in public institutions is declining. Volunteer organizations are hurting. Talk shows often build their themes on private distrust, anger, frustration and do nothing to enhance community. In such a climate do we really believe that we could bring individual members before the congregation for dialogue and possible discipline? Hardly!
Richards, a Lutheran pastor, cautions us. "Let us not be too hasty, however, to label Matthew 18 as something applicable only in the early church."(2) How might God be speaking to us through the text today? Perhaps its placement immediately following the story of the shepherd seeking the lost sheep is a necessary corrective. There is always a temptation to idealize ministry in terms of rescue outside the fold. We leap over the sheep we know so well to focus our mission on the lost in the far countries of this world. Perhaps by searching for the one, we can overlook the homework necessary to deal with the ninety-nine presumed to be safe in the fold. Living so extensively could be interpreted as escape today. Mission is on our door-step. We need to live intensively. In his letter to the Romans, Paul offers this advice, "Do good to all people, and especially those who are of the household of faith." An integrity is demanded at home. Mission is from the inside out. Live intensively! Forgiveness and reconciliation are to be realized in the immediate and concrete: in "this family," "this workplace," "this community of faith."
How easy for us to forget that ministry of reproof, rebuke, admonition and exhortation has also been given to the church. Listen to the words of Paul to his young assistant Timothy, "preach the Word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke and exhort."
Paul speaks about a ministry of exhortation that can only be given and received in a community of faith that is grounded in the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ. So it is that Paul urges us to speak the truth in love. Love is the anesthetic that makes the surgery possible, the pain bearable, and the truth receivable.
Listen to the words of Ernest Campbell ~ "a rebuke cannot be a way to build ourselves up by putting others down. It should not be delivered in passing. It requires the permanence of a community of faith. A rebuke should never be the first word in any relationship, nor should it be the last word. But it will, on occasion, be the right word."
Exhortation is becoming a lost art. A culture of silence is pervasive. Our cocooning lifestyles preclude the ministry of a community. Someone else's life is not our business. Even David Kaczynski has been criticized for turning in his brother as the Unibomber. He is defying our culture of silence says sociologist Jack Levin. "We learn from an early age that we don't tattle on family members." So our unwillingness to intrude masks our indifference. We become silent at any cost.
Elton Richards tells a poignant story about a fine teenage girl who destroyed her life doing drugs. He asked her peers if they were aware of her problem. Yes, they knew. They even knew the pusher who was her supplier; but they never confronted her or communicated her problem to anyone else. Was she killed by kindness? Surely there is a middle ground between playing God and playing possum!
What makes this passage so difficult for most of us is that we are totally immersed in an individualism that is foreign to the psyche of the people of Israel and to the psyche of the people of God as the Body of Christ. There was a sense of identity that extended beyond the decisions of one person. There was a corporate or group identity that was meaningful and influential. In our day family systems theory has helped us look beyond the individual. Peter L. Steinke, author of Healthy Congregations: A Systems Approach, argues that the congregation is best understood as a system and that the most effective way to nurture congregational health is by shifting the focus from single individuals or issues to the way the congregation functions as a whole. In this view groups like families and churches are seen as a system, a living organism that helps to maintain its own health.
A family has problems that it will not talk about. Is that a healthy system or not? In all the questions about the slowness of government response to Hurricane Katrina, should silence prevail, or is there a healthy way for society to raise questions and criticisms. Are there also unhealthy ways? I think there are unhealthy ways we can act, whether it is in government, our families or our churches.
Sometimes, what we need to talk about is not easy. It is usually not a good thing to start a discussion with blame and confrontation. We can easily become arrogant and overbearing with our accusatory "You" statements. You make me mad. You hurt me. You are no good. Hardly a way to have a conversation that leads to reconciliation, is it? We have learned that it is helpful to make what are called "I" statements. In the book, Leadership Effectiveness Training, Dr. Thomas Gordan points out that when we can identify something specific and how we feel in response to that, that it opens the door to a conversation, rather than an ugly confrontation.(3)
There is a need for us to learn to talk and be committed to talking when everything is not smooth. Listen to this long lost verse in Proverbs 27:15, "Better a frank word of reproof than the love that will not speak." How we talk to one another and our style and attitude make a lot of difference.
The love of God in Jesus Christ was willing to confront our sin and not avoid it. The Cross was not the easy way out. By it God has reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. Matthew 18 reminds us that in the community of the church, reconciliation often begins with talking about things that are uncomfortable. Is our approach to loving one another characterized by the sentiment "I care for you so much I won't say anything that might be awkward ... No, I care for you so much that you must talk." I am not advocating that we all go around telling each other what their faults are. This is not what this text is about. There is no surer way to divide a church. As a reconciled and reconciling community of faith, God in Christ, sometimes calls us to higher ground.
There is a time to talk and a time to be silent. Let us remember that this awkward instruction on dealing with differences comes between the parable of the lost sheep and continuing to forgive one another. In the context of caring for people who become lost and in forgiving each other as we sin, this is a pro-active solution. Don't be silent, let's talk. Amen.
Century Christian Church, September 4, 2005 - Sermon by Jim Westmoreland
www.centurychristian.org
1. The Rev. Dr. Elton Richards,"Tell It Like It Is!" a sermon delivered on The Protestant Hour, September 8, 1996 as the speaker for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. Richards retired as pastor of St. John's Lutheran Church in Des Moines, IA.
2. Ibid.
3. Dr. Thomas Gordon, Leadership Effectiveness Training, New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1977.