I Look at Him and He Looks at Me
“If your brother or sister sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If you are listened to, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If that person refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church, and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a gentile and a tax collector. Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
Introduction
For several weeks now, we’ve heard a series of scenes from Matthew’s gospel where Jesus, speaking to the disciples, describes the kind of church he is building. We’ve heard about the importance of having a little faith, the leadership of this new church, the universality of the church’s mission, that powerful question of “Who do you say that I am?” and the revelation that following Jesus into this new community will require carrying a cross the whole way.
We find ourselves in the middle of a long learning process for the disciples. They’re hearing all about the sort of community—an assembly, a congregation, a church—that Jesus is building and that they are going to be responsible for. But we also find ourselves in the middle of a long process of reflection for ourselves as the members of that church in this place and time. Jesus’ project was a success and all of us who gather here at St John’s, day by day to pray and study and celebrate the sacraments are living proof.
We are called to get behind Jesus and follow, carrying our crosses the whole way along. Of course, any time there are humans involved in a shared project, conflict will arise. Some of us don’t even need partners, we can generate plenty of conflict with ourselves. In today’s gospel passage Jesus outlines how Christians ought to resolve conflict and heal hurts. Like so many other moments in Jesus’ teaching ministry, his directions are not what most people expect. This passage contains two verses in particular that are often quoted out of their context with dire consequences.
What Are We About?
The fourteen verses prior to today’s gospel passage give us important context for how this conversation about conflict and reconciliation came up. The disciples ask Jesus about who is the greatest in heaven. He responds by telling them that they’ve got it backward. They need to approach the kingdom with the humility of children. Jesus describes some of the stumbling blocks and hazards that lie along the path to the kingdom. Jesus then gives them the parable of the good shepherd who leaves 99 sheep on the mountainside to go in search of the one who is lost. This sets the scene for today’s passage in an important way: We are given a strong sense of the values that are appropriate in the kingdom of heaven. The values that are appropriate in this church that Jesus is building.
Today’s discussion about conflict and reconciliation isn’t just about how to govern ourselves in community, though it is some of that. It’s drawing our attention to what we should be concerned about while we are living and when those conflicts arise. We should be most concerned with the care and protection of the most vulnerable in our community and with reconciliation, or healing, of what is broken. If our activity is not in aid of these goals, we should probably be taking a hard look at the activity and asking if it necessary.
Restoration Not Retribution
Everything Jesus has to say in today’s passage is about reconciliation between hurt parties. He mentions expulsion as a very last resort, but even that is not what we probably first read it as being. (More on that later.) There is no discussion of retribution. This is not Hammurabi’s “eye for an eye” code of justice. This is something quite different.
First, when someone is hurt, the one who did the hurting needs to be informed. This principle is not new; it has been around since at least the book of Proverbs. So often, when we are hurt by something, we assume that the other party did it deliberately and knew what they were doing as it happened. So often, this is not the case at all. We cause hurts without realizing, either because we’re not paying attention, or we didn’t know that we were pressing on a sore spot for the other. Regardless of the reason, people cannot attempt to fix what they do not know is broken. The hurter needs to be informed about the hurt.
If the hurter won’t hear of it, then the hurt one is encouraged to come back with more voices who have seen what happened. If they are still not convinced, then the whole congregation is involved. Unfortunately, Matthew does not go into detail about what the process of reconciliation looks like once someone accepts that they have caused hurt. For this, we must look elsewhere.
There are plenty of processes from various parts of the history of the Judean people in the Old Testament. However, as we consider how this passage applies to our lives today, I can highly recommend Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s 2022 book On Repentance and Repair for some insight into what this process might look like. She holds up the Jewish tradition of how to enact reconciliation as an alternative to the problematic and often ineffective processes that we see in secular, Western cultures today.
Our secular systems seem to focus on shame and suffering as metrics of successful justice. We may eschew corporal punishment in most cases, but we still want to see a pound of flesh extracted. When reconciliation is mentioned, it is often a thin bandage, performatively placed over a deep wound, avoiding the long, unpleasant work of confronting what really happened. It becomes an opportunity to cover up the hurt and shelter those who have hurt others without encouraging them to repent or reparation.
Rabbi Ruttenberg’s proposal is for a different system. A longer, more involved one, with a different, hopeful outcome. In brief: Once hurt is acknowledged, the hurter apologizes, does what they can to repair the damage, they reflect and amend their life so that they will not cause the same harm again, and only then is the hurt party invited to consider forgiveness and reconciliation.
It is important to Jesus, and later to St Paul, that conflict within the church be resolved within the church. Jesus is concerned that bodies outside the church will not understand the humility and care for the weakest and most vulnerable that is necessary in reconciliation processes. Paul believes that Christians are held to a different standard, espouse different values, and should reconcile their conflicts within their own communities. We can see this tension between Christian and secular values today when they butt up against one another. For example, in legal questions here in Canada about the Church’s expectations around the seal of sacramental confession and the civic courts’ expectations around mandatory reporting requirements.
I need to underscore, here, how this exhortation to resolve conflict “in house” has been abused in Christian communities. This is not scriptural dispensation to cover up wrongdoing, to ignore hurt, or to avoid the claims of the abused because they make us uncomfortable. This system that Jesus and St Paul outline is only effective when it is founded on the principles of humility, honesty, care for the most vulnerable, and a desire for the healing of all brokenness. If we cannot maintain these principles when we consider the resolution of conflict and healing of hurt then we have, to use St Paul’s words, already been defeated and would be better off being judged by the unrighteous and unbelieving.
Who’s In and Who’s Out
If all else fails and no part of the process can bring about even the beginning of reconciliation, then separation and expulsion are the last resort. Let these ones be as tax collectors or gentiles. This is a drastic move. We humans are inclined to draw lines that mark who is in and who is out. We are equally inclined to hastily move people to one side or the other, often based on mostly unexamined feelings about them. This sits better with us if we can couch the behaviour in legal or therapeutic or theological language, but it is a smaller-than-desirable number of cases where those are the real reasons. Often those words are window dressing on much more personal, much simpler motivations. Or, worse still, those words are an excuse not to do the hard work of reconciliation to which we are called.
There is a bit of tension at this point in Matthew’s gospel. Matthew is writing decidedly for a Jewish audience and has been clear that Jesus was sent for them. Jesus declares to the Canaanite woman that he was sent “for the lost sheep of Israel.” But Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus includes Gentile women. Matthew includes the visit of the Gentile magi, adoring and acknowledging Jesus as Lord. Matthew himself is a tax collector, but one called to take up his cross and follow Jesus. Perhaps this separation and expulsion is not meant to be permanent. Perhaps we are meant to learn from our expulsion—our time, as it were, in the wilderness—and return when we recognize the need for reconciliation. The need for salvation.
Would You Kneel Next to a Murderer?
For Christians, our need of salvation is the starting point. We acknowledge that we cannot free ourselves from the powers of death and sin on our own. We understand that God created us and loves us so much that Jesus was sent to live and die as one of us, not because God benefited from the experience, but so that we might be saved.
We also acknowledge that in this journey of following Christ, carrying our crosses, we will stumble and fall. We will cause harm. When this happens, we are not ejected from the community and cast forever into outer darkness amidst wailing and gnashing of teeth. We may need to sit out for a while, collect ourselves, and reflect on what happened. But God is always waiting for us to return so that we can begin again. As ever, God demonstrates the humility, care for the most vulnerable, and desire for healing that we are called to do.
Some time ago I was at an event where a young man gave a short presentation on reconciliation and forgiveness. He explained how he had come to be a social worker. Not the career he had envisioned for himself, but the one to which he now believed that God had called him. More specifically, he was a social worker for men who had served time in prison, been released, and were now trying to reintegrate themselves into broader society.
He told us how, when he described his work to people, including Christians, their initial response was that this was an exceptionally virtuous role. Helping reformed, rehabilitated men find their way in the world. But then they would ask about the kinds of criminals he worked with. Some of them were petty thieves or men who got into too many drunken fights. But some of them were murderers. Some of them were drug dealers who had enriched themselves by ruining hundreds of lives. Some of them had abused children in terrible ways. But they had been punished according to the rules of our system, so society should be ready to receive them, no?
Suddenly, folks’ opinions about this young man’s job changed. How could he live with himself, helping men like that get housing and jobs in neighbourhoods full of people who were, almost certainly, going to be their future victims? They were delighted by his work when it was an idea and scandalized by it when it meant they might have to reconcile with these men in their own neighbourhoods and communities. To put it in Anglican terms: Would you receive communion next to a murderer? That call to humility and care for the vulnerable and healing of everything that is broken suddenly got a lot more complicated, didn’t it?
Binding Up a Few Verses
Sometimes Matthew 18:18, where Jesus mentions binding and loosing things on earth and heaven, is quoted as a threat. If Jesus is giving the Church power to bind and loose, to forbid and permit, then it has enormous authority over its members. We see this exercised and abused in high control Christian communities who value power and authority over humility, care for the vulnerable, and healing. Here, in the context where Jesus says these things to the disciples, he is giving the Church the power to restore, reconcile, and heal. We are given the power and instruments to carry out the ministry to which we are called.
Similarly to verse 18, verse 19 is quoted outside of this context all of the time. Sometimes with good intention, as an encouragement to prayer and a reminder that God listens when we pray. But often these verses are quoted as another means of control. People are told that, if they are faithful in their prayer together, God will grant them whatever they ask. This is a despicable parody of the gospel, turning God into a kind of cosmic butler who dispenses an endless supply of wealth, power, celebrity, and luxury upon his favourite clients. In the context of this conversation about healing and reconciliation, we should recognize that the so-called prosperity gospel isn’t what Jesus is talking about at all. This is about becoming a community of Christ-followers who are marked by a life of constant prayer, seeking to gather together and bind up that and those which are broken and in need of healing.
I Look at Him and He Looks at Me
Quoted less often is verse 20. “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them.” Jesus standing in our midst as we pray is good. Very good, even. We are assured that the one who intercedes continually for us in heaven is present and engaged with our own prayers. But we should bear this in mind with a bit of caution when we pray, especially about healing and reconciliation.
When we acknowledge that Jesus is in our midst, we will see good things happen. We will also be confronted with the truth about what needs to change. Remember, not all hurts and wounds seem unpleasant. Some oppressive forces can feel quite nice and we convince ourselves that they really aren’t so bad after all. Praying for the healing of others is all well and good, but how do we respond when Jesus holds up the divine mirror and reminds us that we also need healing? How does it feel when Jesus confronts us—just as he routinely does with Peter and the other disciples—with the parts of our lives that make us most uncomfortable? If we are humble and vulnerable in our prayer, this will happen.
A Hard Teaching
This passage today is a hard teaching from Jesus, in only six short verses. In fact, if we keep reading, immediately after this, Peter approaches Jesus and asks how many times he must forgive those who hurt him. Seven times? Like the man who asks Jesus “Who is my neighbour?” Peter is looking for the loophole that makes this healing and reconciliation business easier. And who can blame him? Who among us has not wished for an easier way when confronted with a hard thing? Even Jesus, in Gethsemane the night before the Passion, asks the Father if there is no other way to do what must be done.
We might even go so far as to suggest that, in reading and praying through these chapters of Matthew’s gospel, reminding us of the principles Jesus laid down when he first announced the building of his new church, Jesus is confronting the Church with its own reflection. Who do others say that we are? Do we have even a little faith to walk where Jesus walks, even carrying a cross or on water? Are we prepared to welcome those who come to us seeking God, even if they are not who we expect? Are we a place of humility where the vulnerable are safe and the broken find healing?
These are difficult questions. These are difficult standards to live up to. But they are what Jesus hopes for his Church. They are what Jesus prays for his Church. Jesus lived, died, and rose from the grave to set us free so that we could be the Church he desired. If Jesus believes we can do it, who are we to believe otherwise?
