The Life of the Reconciled

Matthew 18:15-20

There is a particular kind of video that brings a of gleeful pleasure to watch. It flies across social media, picking up likes and building momentum, and giving that jolt of satisfaction to its viewers that makes you want to pump your fist and say Yes! Or lean back with a hearty Ha! 

It’s the video where somebody gets what’s comin’ to them.  When the arrogant, unkind, thoughtless, or insensitive person gets put in their place, wow, is that satisfying! 

Justice. Is. served!

If there is something to be said for us in this day and age, it is that we’re down for some righteous retribution! We love us a good shunning! And it’s not that hard to do. We can collectively punish a despicable person or shut down a bad business with just the tipity-tap of our fingers on a little screen. 
This happens on the personal front – delete, block, erase – and on the international front—line em’ up, hit send, and the drone does the rest. 

They came at you?? Don’t let that stand. End them. 
Someone hurts you? Bye, bye! Move on. They’re not worth it. No longer your problem. Put the nail in their coffin - make them fodder for the frenzy, grist for the mill. Did you hear what he did? Did I tell you what she said? Can you believe it!
 
We even have word for it, a phrase that didn’t exist before our lifetime. We call it “canceling.”  We can cancel a person. Figuratively wipe someone out, erase them. Make them as though they are not here, were never here, as though they do not matter. They get what they deserve, and we got to dish it out. Sweet Justice. 
 
 So today’s scripture feels like it comes from another time, a different place. And it does. It comes from a different realm altogether, actually. It comes from the Kingdom of God. In God’s kingdom, justice looks different than we’d like it to.
 
Jesus’ view of justice doesn’t satisfy our thirst for retaliation. It demands suffering and co-humanity. God’s justice reinforces our belonging to each other instead of ending it.  
 
Jesus is talking here to the disciples. To the people whose lives are oriented toward God through Christ. They’re the ones brought into Christ’s life and purposes in the world. All these centuries later, we are a part of that same community. By coming together like we do, and being church like we are, we acknowledge that we belong not to ourselves but to God, and we declare that we exist not for ourselves but for the world. 
 
And this is such a powerful calling, Jesus says, it’s as though we stand between heaven and earth, bridging eternity and time, living in time for love.  We are incognito agents of the eternal Kingdom of God right here in our very own neighborhoods and families, on our streets, in our schools, at work; we are here with and for our fellow human beings. 

To live between worlds like this, to be brought into this work of Christ, is to stand in people’s pain and suffering and watch right here for the presence and action of God. And it is to simultaneously stand with God, and watch the life of the world with compassion that longs for its wholeness and healing. 

It’s to be a channel of communication; we speak to God about the brokenness and aching here and God listens to us, and we listen to God about God’s love and promise, sorrow and hope for the world, and we speak that into the world. We call this two-way communication ‘prayer.’ 

And when two or three of us are gathered, God is right here with us and we acknowledge and welcome God’s presence. We call that gathering together with God ‘worship’.

And when our hearts are in unison, what we say and do in the name of Jesus is as though Jesus himself were here doing and saying those things – and in fact, he is. We call that participation in Jesus’s work ‘ministry.’  

We are people of prayer, worship and ministry, in whom, and through whom, the living God is moving and speaking and working. 
 
So then, how could there be a place for building up resentment, letting division fester, cutting each other off? When righteous indignation says, You hurt me, I will never trust you again, have we forgotten who is our Lord? Have we made ourselves above reproach? 
Christ alone is the righteous one.

And the righteous system meant to dispense justice killed him. 

Who do you think you are? You think you’re a prophet? The promised Messiah?  You think you’re the king of the Jews? You’re over.  

The word of God made flesh who dwelt among us was erased by the world he came to save. His voice was silenced, his body broken, his existence ended by righteous retribution. Taking all human injustice and injury into himself, Jesus gets canceled.
 
We serve a crucified God. Our Lord is one on the cross who has been canceled. 

And so, we are the community of the canceled. Anyone canceled is brought in. We are the community of the failed, the community of the humbled. Here we are all unrighteous. And we are all in need of love and care, of grace and hope.  Now we are given Jesus’s life, made righteous through him. 

Where the world delights in retribution and severs ties easily, Jesus frees us for love, and binds us together as those already canceled, already dead, who no longer need to enact our own justice, or prove our own worthiness, or earn our own life.  

So, we can be in this together, this strange life shaped by communion, humbleness, honesty, forgiveness. Here we live toward each other in humility, as those who confess our unrighteousness. Here we accept the gift that meets us in one another, and let the justice of Jesus, who bears our brokenness, uphold us always in our belonging.  
 
Of course we will disagree. We have different experiences and perspectives; thanks be to God! And we will hurt each other by accident, or even sometimes on purpose, because we’re human beings. But we don’t get to cut off from one another. We didn’t make this bond in the first place; it’s not ours to break. This is not a self-chosen club of the like-minded, compatible and upright! This is Christ’s body, broken and given for the world, to reconcile the whole world to God.

So, when there is a conflict between us, we are bound to work it out, Jesus says. In fact, the places of sin toward each other become the very grounds for grace! Our impossibility is where the Holy Spirit does what we can’t do. 
 
When someone hurts you, Jesus says, say something to them directly and in private, uphold their dignity and allow them to own their actions and apologize. And if they don’t share your desire to clear the barrier between you, bring a mutual support and try again, and if that fails, bring it to the whole community for help. Do not give up on each other. 

Because this grace, this love, can only be known in community. It is not found in right-ness or strength, and it couldn’t be further from getting the upper hand or enacting revenge. 

The justice of Jesus is all people upheld in their belonging to God and each other. 
 
Here is how you share in me, Jesus calls us, go sacramentally, as broken for one another, a gift to each other in your humility and forgiveness. Where the world avoids discomfort and ends the relationship, be honest about pain, and humble about mistakes, and forgive generously. Here is where Christ meet us with new life, with justice that restores us into the belonging of God to one another.  And here is how it works, reconciliation is the very shape of our life together, because it's the action of Jesus in the world. And if you confess, you will find new life here, but if that disgusts you, it will send you running. If you cannot receive this gift, it will feel like a curse. 

Which brings us to this line- if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax-collector.
 
In a Way of Fear way of reading of this line, which lifts up righteous indignation, and glorifies payback, we assume this means excommunicate them. Some mid 20^th century bible translations even actually say that. Cut them off. Cut them out and don’t give it another thought - they’re dead to you. They’re not worthy of your attention. Cancel them. Ghost them and move on.
 
But that is actually the opposite of what this means. 

Because who was Jesus always in trouble for hanging out with?  Who did he come for?

Jesus says so himself, “I did not come for the righteous, but for sinners”! Sinners, outcasts, Gentiles and tax collectors, misfits and ne’er-do-wells were his favorite—Matthew himself was a tax-collector. 

It’s just that for Gentiles and tax collectors, belonging to God and others is not their lens. Their answer to “What is a good life and how do I live it?” is not spoken in the language of prayer, worship and ministry. They did not center their lives on obedience to God or loving their neighbor as they love themselves. They specifically do not see themselves as servants of God, people called to lay down their lives for others. 
 
‘Tax collector’ and ‘Gentile’ here is shorthand for people who are not bound by up in a covenant life of promise with the God of Israel revealed in Christ. They are either living overtly, even corruptly, for their own gain, or they are casually oblivious to the deeper reality in which we are all held in God. They do not share the identity, calling and mission of a canceled Lord. Nevertheless, they are human beings; they belong to God and they belong to us. Just like us, they are in need of love and care, of grace and hope.  
 
So, Jesus says: if someone among you refuses to be reconciled, refuses to be reconnected, acknowledge that you are no longer living inside the same reality together. They no longer desire to share in the sacrifice and vulnerability of being shaped by and for love by the grace of God. So you must no longer expect them to participate in the work of staying connected in humility or being joined in mutual community anymore. You do not expect them to see the world as you do, and you now longer attempt to live in the same kind of shared life that you once expected to share.  
 
But you do not cancel them, you don’t write them off.  They are not ‘dead to you.’  They remain, as they have always been, a beloved child of God. Only now, rather than a conscious bearer of grace with you for others, they’ve become one pursued by God, one specifically for whom Jesus came.

Jesus is not saying to abandon the one who refuses to be reconciled. Jesus is telling us respect them as our fellow human being and expect no reciprocation from them. Instead of a fellow minister, an agent in God’s Kingdom, someone who, with you, is working with Christ for the reconciliation of the world, they are now those to whom we are sent. They are the ones we are meant to eat with at table, to listen to, to stand up for, to stand alongside, to show compassion toward. 

Their repentance is the Holy Spirit’s work to do.  Awakening in them awareness of their belonging to God and all others is God’s responsibility, not ours. 
 
This is not easy to hear for those of us shaped by empire and ego.  

It’s no wonder the very next part of the conversation between Jesus and his disciples is Peter asking how many times we’re expected to forgive someone who’s done us wrong. (Spoiler, Peter suggests a nice big number and Jesus responds with, essentially, Nope, you forgive infinity times). 
 
We are the community of the canceled,  the people of prayer, worship and ministry, in whom, and through whom, the living God is moving, and speaking, and working. We live between eternity and time, here, in time, for love.  

It works differently here. Having nothing to prove, and nothing to earn, and nothing to lose, having already died and been resurrected into Christ, we are free to live in the love from which we came, the love to which we will return, as recipients of reconciliation and agents of the eternal Kingdom of God. 

So we receive each other as gift, stand by each other in suffering, and remember together that God’s grace is always at work in us, and through us God’s grace pours into the world. 

The power of the Spirit of Christ does this.
Amen.

Either Way and Always

Jacob and Esau Embrace, by Robert T. Barrett

Episode 4: Isaac's Family - Jacob & Esau

Genesis 25-33 (especially 25, 29, 32, 33) 

There are those who are so devoted to something that they seem obsessed, willing to do crazy things, like getting up at 3:15 am every day to pray and sing Psalms for 45 minutes.  This is the first of the seven daily prayer times of the monks of the Abbey of Gethesameni  where Erin and I spent the week largely in silence and solitude (when we praying with the monks or passing notes at meals).  At 3:15 am, while the rest of the world sleeps, the monks file into the unrelentingly well-lit church to chant and pray, and then, in their long, quiet robes, slide out of the church into the cold, pre-dawn, starlit darkness. They’d pause their work and return for one more prayer time and Eucharist before I would be awake, happily joining them for prayers at the much more respectable hour of 7:30 am.

Many of these men have been in this Abbey their whole adult lives, living an exacting rhythm of work and prayer, mostly silent. They came there, and stayed there, seeking to worship God. This is the driving force of their lives, and they’ve given up everything else for this one goal. Last week, fifty or so guests left our own lives and phones behind for five days to sip from their deep well of silence and prayer.

On Friday, I did get out of bed and stumble my way to the way-too-bright church to chant with them at 3:15 am vigil. I made it through 15 minutes of struggling to keep my eyes open and my legs from folding under me. Then I couldn’t take it a second longer and would’ve sold my birthright for a pillow, so I snuck back to my bed for a few more hours of sleep. 

Today we meet someone with this kind of singular dedication, someone so important to the scripture story that his life takes up half the book of Genesis. At the beginning of today’s glimpse into his life, he is called Jacob, a name that, depending on how you point your vowels, means “heel,” or “cheater/usurper.” He is the second-born twin, who came into the world literally grasping onto his brother’s foot like he wanted to pull him back inside to be born first.  They fought so much in her womb that Rebekah had it out with God, who told her she had two nations wrestling within her and the oldest would serve the youngest, and indeed their descendants would go on to become the Israelites and Edomites.

Jacob was aptly named. Shrewd and clever, he always had an angle, a play. There are those who see life as a constant battle or game to be won, and Jacob was one of them. 

Deep inside us all, where the most vulnerable and unprotected part of us lives in profound, wordless silence - in the deep, dark, soundless part of us far beneath the bright and noisy surface, most of us don’t actually trust we are loved.  We don’t really believe we belong. We don’t accept that our lives have value. So we try to earn it, maybe by striving to be good or humble, or by disappearing the parts of us we’re ashamed of. Or, we pad our lives with distractions and protections.  Or maybe, like Jacob, we scramble and struggle and fight our way through life, believing if we don’t grab our place, it will be lost. We will be lost. Falling back on our original sin, we don’t really trust God to be God, so we take on that job or ourselves. 

In the opening retreat talk on Monday, at one point Father Carlos looked at all of us sitting there silently staring back at him and gave us a jolt when he blurted, “What? Is the love of God not enough for you?”

For all Jacob’s insecurity about his own unworthiness, and his restless antagonism with the world, he is lasar-focused on one goal. Like those monks, (who are also riddled with faults and foibles, because every human is), Jacob’s life is set toward one thing: the covenant blessing of God to his grandfather Abraham. While he may not trust his own place within it, he absolutely believes the promise of God. He’s devoted to it, pursuing it so doggedly that he’s willing to lie, cheat and steal for it.  He longs for God’s blessing to the point of obsession, to the point of struggling nearly his whole life with other people and with God for something that God had already decided would be his and that God would bring about regardless.

To the more concrete Esau, this blessing is obscure and theoretical. After a long day hunting, food sounds better to him than some far-off blessing, some bigger story he is meant to carry on or future gift he is destined to receive.  And Jacob takes advantage of his brother’s weaknesses and tricks him. Like a kid selling the family Nintendo to his little sister, knowing it’s only a matter of time before she’ll forget and it will be his again (Andy), Jacob has a long-term plan. And when the time comes, with the help of his mother, he follows through.  The blessing Jacob is after is more important to him than his relationship with his brother, more important to him even than his dying father who bestows it. He believes, at this point, that in order to belong to God, he must violate his belonging to others. Jacob against the world! Jacob in pursuit of God’s blessing “which,” as one scholar puts it, “he can never possess as fully as it possesses him.” 

Perhaps the blessing has become an idol, and Jacob has forgotten that it is not something for him to acquire, but for the living God to bestow. 

The night before Jacob goes to meet Esau, what we don’t see in today’s telling, is that he sends his family with all his remaining possessions just ahead of him to camp on the other side of a stream and he stays, the text says, “by his lonesome.”  A stranger approaches and fights with Jacob, wrestling with him all through the dark night. In the thrashing, chaotic hours of darkness Jacob’s lifelong struggle is given a concrete form and foe. When the opponent sees Jacob will not relent, he strikes him on the hip, wounding him, and still Jacob does not let go.  

As dawn begins to break the stranger tells Jacob to release him, and Jacob says, “Not until you bless me!” The figure asks his name, and Jacob answers, a confession of his person, “I am Jacob (the Heel, the Trickster).” The man responds, “You shall no longer be called Jacob but Israel” - which means One who Wrestles with God - “for you have striven with God and humans and have prevailed.” And still, this one refused to answer when Israel asks for a name in return.  

At the end of the week at the Abbey, Father Carlos told me, “God doesn’t come to us unmediated. Only through other people can we know God.”  Jacob doesn’t know his assailant; in the darkness, locked in battle he cannot see the face. And when it is all over, we’re told, “Jacob called the place Peniel” - which means, ‘face of God’- “saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been spared.’” But though God has engaged him on his terms, he hasn’t really seen God, not yet. But God sees him. Instead of expecting him to be someone he is not, God blesses who he is. Like the parent realizing that when you say to the kids, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way” that one beloved child of yours will always, always, pick the hard way, God says, You, my child, shall be called, One Who Wrestles With God. 

But also, through blessing, injury, and new identity, God reminds Jacob-now-Israel in no uncertain terms that God cannot be grasped, controlled, or claimed; God does the claiming. Indeed, the unknowable Divine let him live, but now he must face the wrath of his betrayed twin brother who may not.  

When the sun rises, Jacob, limping from having tangled with the Almighty, goes forward to confront whatever may await him. But instead of the fate he deserves, he finds forgiveness. In on the open arms and weeping embrace of his brother, God is revealed to him. And Israel, overcome, says to Esau, “Seeing your face is like seeing the face of God.”

The love of God is enough for all of us, indeed enough for this whole world. If we really, really trusted the love of God, its enoughness would fill us up and spill out of us to everyone around us. It would sweep us back into our belonging to God and each other, wash away all fear and guardedness, coax our tender selves out of our dark hiding, and quench all of our hot striving.  But this trust! It’s hard! For most of us, nearly impossible. As impossible, perhaps, as willingly forgiving someone a terrible wrong they’ve done to us. We need God’s help as much with being loved as we do loving. We need God’s Spirit to hover over our dark chaos and breathe into us new life and speak over us with joy, It is good!  And some of us will need to wrestle it out.

But God will always work in and through our circumstances and our choices to return us to God and one another, because that is where God determined we all belong.  And God will always work God’s purposes for this world in and through broken and imperfect people.

Amen.

LNPC Bible-Read Journey:

Episode 1: Creation & Sin, Adam & Eve

Episode 2: Flood & Promise, Noah (conversation - no sermon)

Episode 3: Covenant & Calling, Hagar, Abraham, Sarah

As simple and alarming as that

 2 Corinthians 5:14-21

When we moved into our house 19 years ago, we found a stash of letters from the 1940s tucked into the eaves of the garage. They were short, unsigned and cryptic, mostly asking for money and promising not to write again, and in our minds we made up a sordid story a secret affair followed by years long blackmail. The truth turned out to be far more tragic. The man who had lived in our house his entire life had a photographic memory – according to our neighbor who knew him later in life who would ask the man directions to obscure places and he could tell her off the top of his head from having seen a map. During World War II he served as a CIA agent, and when he left the service, they did experimental electroshock therapy on him so he wouldn’t remember the secrets he knew. It worked so well he forgot his family, and his wife and twin daughters left him. He lived alone and reclusive for the rest of his life, every few years a letter arriving, asking for money, and promising it would be the last time. This isolated man hid these letters away in an unfulfilled yearning for reconciliation that never materialized.

I tell this story for two reasons. The first is that reconciliation is the longing within us all. To be in right relationship with God, one another, and with our own selves and the world we live in is what we’re made for. And when we are alienated from this connection, we cry out to be reconciled, whether or not we know that’s what we’re doing.

The second reason I tell this is that having one-sided letters, with gaps between them at that, invites imagining stories. But when the person writing is very long-winded and detailed, like the Apostle Paul, it’s much easier figure out what the story is. Today we read from 2 Corinthians, which is Paul’s fourth letter to the church in Corinth. The first and third are lost; the second we call 1 Corinthians. 

I find it a tiny bit delightful to imagine the other two letters  one day discovered hidden in the cranny of some ancient cave.  Because Paul, who is human, got pretty peeved with the Corinthian church. They’re this savvy, diverse and cosmopolitan group of folks who tended toward arrogance, petty squabbles and blatant misbehavior, after many of them met Paul in person at his first visit after planting the church some years before, their high opinion of Paul evidently plummeted. They insulted him and questioned his authority. Paul was the kids say, “butthurt,” (translation: dramatic, over-the-top, offended), and vowed in anger not to visit Corinth again. 

His missing third letter Paul called his ‘painful letter.’  So, maybe it’s good it got lost. Nobody wants screenshots going around of their text fight with their spouse, or to be caught on film throwing a tantrum at their kid in public.  Let’s just say, only two Corinthian letters ended up in the bible as the trustworthy and authoritative word of God. And we know that at some point – some think in the middle of writing this letter - the Corinthians apologized to Paul, ejected the troublemakers, and they were reconciled. 

 God’s love is what’s real, it’s where our hunger points, our longing originates, and our purpose finds its fulfillment.  But we’re so easily knocked off course from being connected, or reconciled, to God, our deep selves and each other. The desert mothers and fathers from the 3^rd and 4^th centuries were the first to unpack how everything we’d call sin can be grouped into two piles: either aggression or greed, that is, either “a reactive and excluding fear” or “the urge to consume and absorb.”   

If we view the world through resentment and rage, shaped around narratives of victimhood and blame, we will live guarded and hostile, alienated.  If we view the world through competition and self-advancement, striving for bigger and better, or more unique and singular, always trying to be somewhere—or someone—that we’re not, we will live hollow and famished, alienated.  There is no end to ways we can turn the ditches of aggression into yawning chasms, and the potholes of greed into slippery caverns of alienation. 

But, as Rowan Williams says, 

Love is what happens when you stop being aggressive and greedy, and stop to look with your whole self, from the centre of who you are. It’s as simple and alarming as that.

Love has room to flower when you stop either pushing reality away or making reality serve your purpose. In that space, love grows. God…whose life is the ultimate definition of love, has neither aggression nor craving in the divine nature. God is not afraid and God is not greedy. It sounds blindingly obvious, perhaps, put like that; but if we say that the love of God is, in the divine life, the same thing as the absence of aggression and greed, this ought to make us think that perhaps it tells us something of how love works and fails to work in us too. (Passions of the Soul, xxxiii).

God, in love, already claims us and is reconciling the whole world to Godself and each other.  But we humans are wobbly, weak, and easily distracted. And to complicate things, we live in what Williams calls, ‘an entire human environment where, bizarrely, mysteriously, saying no to God feels easier than saying yes.’

So we are to both take sin very seriously, and also have compassion for ourselves and each other around it. Walking this human path, we can’t not tumble into the ditch of aggression and faceplant in the pothole of greed, and striving to avoid them becomes just another way of stumbling into one or the other. What saves us is only God’s grace.  

This is what I kind of love about 2 Corinthians.  Whatever aggression or greed filled Paul's painful third letter, there’s plenty of both left over for this one. But even though he uses parts of this letter to prop himself up, he also admits to it. He keeps throwing himself back on the grace of God and letting himself be reoriented to the real, and then reorienting us there too.  We see him living in real time what he is also teaching: that we have died in Christ and been raised to Jesus’ complete connection to God and all others, and so even though we keep succumbing to these temptations, they are not ultimately what define us or direct our lives. 

It reminds me of the story told by desert fathers and mothers of frustrated demons shuffling dejectedly through the desert, complaining that they can’t draw the monks into sin, but neither can they force them to anguish over their sin. When they try, the “‘great, old men and women’” just say, “‘Of course I’m a sinner! So what! I rely on the mercy of God!’” (Williams, 16) and go back to seeking a reconciled kind of life, that is, praying, serving others, practicing living from and for love in ordinary, unimpressive ways.

So what are we to do? Paul demonstrates in his fourth letter the simple but profound prescription of the desert monks that left the demons shuffling dismally in the wilderness, once we recognize we’ve stumbled into sin we’re to be honest about it, hand it over to God, and get on with our lives. Literally, that’s it. 

We don’t wallow in it. We don’t dwell deeply on our division, examine extensively our fears of one another, ponder relentlessly our selfishness, or probe exhaustively how appalling we’re convinced we are. We have died to sin and been raised to new life. To act as though, by the might of our own understanding, the strength of our own efforts, or the force of our own egos, we could pull ourselves out of sin and alienation, is just to fall back into it.

Whatever exciting or bland ways ‘our reactive and excluding fear’ or ‘the urge to consume and absorb’ is being expressed in us in the moment, we’re to look honestly at it, give it over to God, then we simply get on with it, whatever it is that God would have us get on with. We pick up where we left off, practicing living from and for love in ordinary, unimpressive ways.

God reconciled the world to Godself in Christ, and does not hold our trespasses against us, Paul says. Which is to say, God does not look at us with disgust or condemnation and neither is God convinced to love us because we are so impressive or interesting. God’s view is that we are inherently loveable. Like a new grandma stunned by her tiny grandson who does nothing yet but eat, sleep and poop, utterly loved for simply being and nothing more.  God holds us in love, and transforms us by grace to do the same for one another. 

So from now on we regard no one from a human point of view. When we’re resting in God's affection for us, it’s impossible to view others with hostility or fear. Instead, we find ourselves participating in the reconciliation of Christ, becoming instruments of God’s love, ambassadors of reconciliation. When we know ourselves to be held in love, we will love others. 

 So, we live our lives, in the moments we’re in and the people we’re with. We sin, we confess, we give it to God, and we go back to seeking a reconciled kind of life. Because to be in right relationship with God and one another is what we’re made for. It’s the longing within everyone, and the boundless gift of God in Christ, for us all.

Amen.

(I'm grateful for Rowan Williams' Passions of the Soul for the  direction of this message and insights about the desert fathers and mothers!).

In It Together

Devotion for Being Apart -
September 6

This summer, I will share new devotions from time to time,
and invite you to browse through devotions that have been posted on this blog.

Matthew 18:15-20

In this day and age, we do not assume the best of each other. We almost look for excuses to blame and condemn one another. We even have a proud term for the absolute cut off we do of others, we call it “canceling” people.  We feel almost no obligation to try to work things out – why bother?  If someone hurts us, we tell others – sometimes many others – before going to that person.  We build our case and get people on our side.  Often we never go directly to the person at all, we’d prefer it that way. Because it’s more important to us to be right and uphold ourselves, than it is to stay connected or to uphold one another.  

 So today’s scripture feels like it comes from another time, a different place. And it does. It comes from a different realm altogether, actually. In the Kingdom of God, we are all human beings, whose dignity and worth is not up for grabs, who cannot be abandoned or dismissed or canceled.  We all belong to God.  So we human beings belong to each other too, like it or not.

 
And not only that, but this particular community called the Church—this collection of souls who have died to self and risen to Christ, who are baptized into the life and death of the One who gave his life for us—we belong to each other in a particular way because we acknowledge that we belong not to ourselves but to God, and we declare that we exist not for ourselves but for the world.  
As God is minister to us, we are ministers – we exist as a community of care, shaped by love. What sets us apart is only our love and service to this world that God loves.  That is who we are, alongside each other.  
 
We are carriers of the love of God, choosing to be defined by Christ.  And this is such a powerful calling it’s as though we stand between heaven and earth. We exist in this world as representatives of God, incognito agents of the Kingdom of God right here in our neighborhoods and families, on our streets, in our schools and at work, and for our fellow human beings. 
 
In this identity and role, we speak to God about the suffering and pain here and God listens to us.  When we come together and ask God for something, God hears us and acts.  When two or three of us are gathered, God is right here with us. When our hearts are in unison, what we say and do in the name of Jesus is as though Jesus himself were here doing and saying those things – and in fact, he is.
 
So, in this kind of community, it’s important that we make it a priority to stay connected in healthy ways. It matters that we don’t build up resentment, we don’t let division fester, we don’t cut each other off or let pain and anger build.  We are citizens of God’s Kingdom; we cannot take the world’s approach to conflict. 
 
In this short life, a shared purpose defines us.  Agents of hope, bearers of love, strivers for justice, seekers of joy, we have an assignment here.  So it is essential to directly address hurt between us.  To be above-board and honest. Not to embarrass each other but to communicate when we’ve hurt one another, and give each other a chance to repent and be forgiven, to keep bringing each other back into the communal mission alongside one another. And not to give up easily either, to keep going at it, seeking reconciliation with each other for our own sake, but also for the sake of the whole world.
 
Which brings us to this line- if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax-collector.
 
In a Way of Fear way of reading this line we assume this means excommunicate them– some

mid 20^th century bible translations actually say that.  Cut them off, cut them out and don’t give it another thought - they’re dead to you. Cancel them. 
 
But that is the opposite of what that means. 
Who did Jesus hang out with?  Who did he come for?  He says himself he did not come for the righteous, but for sinners.  Sinners and tax collectors were his jam—Matthew himself was a tax-collector.  Those on the outside are the ones Jesus showed love and care, for without expecting anything in return. 
 
Belonging to God and others is not front and center for gentiles and tax collectors.  Their answer to “What is a good life and how do I live it?” does not factor in obedience to God or obligation to love their neighbor as they love themselves.  They don’t see themselves don’t see themselves as servants of God, those who lay down their lives for others. They are bound by this covenant life; they are not defined by the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Nevertheless they do belong to God and they belong to us. Just like us, they are in need of love and care, of grace and hope.  
 
If someone among you refuses to be reconciled, refuses to reconnect after multiple attempts to repair the bond, you no longer consider them a coworker for the Kingdom.  If someone has caused harm, and refuses to see how they have hurt others and take responsibility for it, Jesus is saying, you no longer assume they have the same goals as you.  You do not expect them to participate in the work of staying in it together, or being accountable to the community anymore.  You do not expect them to see the world as you do, to seek reconciliation with you, and you no longer attempt to live in the same kind of shared life that you once expected to share.  
 
But you do not cancel them.  Instead you see them a beloved of God.  The kind of person Jesus prefers to hang out with, the one Jesus came for.  Rather than conscious bearers of grace, they’ve become grudging recipients of grace, pursued by God.
 
 Instead of fellow ministers, agents in God’s Kingdom, these are those to whom we are sent.  They are the ones we are meant to eat with at table, to listen to, to stand up for, to stand alongside. Jesus is not saying to abandon the one who has done harm and refuses to be reconciled. Jesus is telling us to treat them with care and respect and expect nothing from them.  They are now among the ones the Holy Spirit works on for repentance. That’s the Holy Spirit’s work to do.  Awakening in them awareness of their belonging to God and all others is God’s responsibility, not ours.
  
We are talking this year about being faithful now-  seeing God’s faithfulness with us today, right here.  God is faithful to us now.  Always.  And as we seek God’s presence and try to live a good life, we ask how we to be faithful right now in this life – with this person in front of us, this moment we are in, this situation we are living in right now, where we are, where God is. Right here.
 
We are ministers with and for each other, to and for the world, ministers of God’s love and care.  What happens between us matters – our relationships and connection matter.  We need to do the work to tend and preserve our connection.  It's so important because there is power here. Great power.  Power far beyond this earth’s limitations and brokenness.  The very power of heaven and earth. Power to bind together and ask for things from God. Power to advocate for the needs of the world.  We must listen to one another, because God listens to us.  We must do the work to stay connected, to stay in it together, because where even two or three of us are gathered, God is right here, among us.
Amen.
 
CONNECTING RITUAL:

Perhaps tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we can pray in this way, and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:

Ground me and root me in your love, God.
Make my belonging to you so palpable,
and my belonging to each other so real,
that I will long do the work to stay connected
with joy and faithfulness. Even when it's hard.

As a member of this community,
Give me the courage to speak up when someone has hurt me.
Give me the courage to repent when I have hurt someone else.
Give us the tenacity to pursue reconciliation,
and the wisdom to know when to stop,
entrusting us all into your hands, as your beloved children.

And may we do all this tending of relationships
because we remember the incomprehensible greatness
of the power of this bond: You hear us. You act when we ask. You call us to ask.
You bring us together to minister to the world. 

May we hold your love and healing of all ever before us,
as our purpose and our call.
Even as we remember that none of us can do any of this alone.
I need you.  We need each other.
You give us yourself. You give us one another.
Thank you, God.
Amen.