Proper 18, Year A
Grant us, O Lord, to
trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud
who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make
their boast of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and
reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Children,
how's everyone getting along together this year at school? I hope you've made
some new friends? Are there any annoying kids in your classes? When I was a
teacher, I remember the first few days of school being filled with discussing
what we used to call, "community guidelines" or "classroom
rules." I bet that you could name some of them for me … Things like: listen
respectfully, say you're sorry when you hurt someone, raise your hand, be kind…
After going over the rules, we would always
have to talk about the consequences of not following the rules. I bet you know
those, too. Things like: First, you get a warning. Then, you might have to stay
after school, or get a call home to your parents. Do students and teachers still
go over guidelines like this at the beginning of the year in your classrooms? My
problem with those classroom rules was that the teachers always kind of pretended
that the rules you discussed were your idea, when everyone really knew that
these guidelines were there to make things fit the way the teachers wanted
them. It just didn't seem like an honest exchange.
You
might have noticed that Jesus has something to say in today's Gospel lesson about
how to get along in community. Unfortunately, over the centuries, the Church
has tended to interpret Jesus' words like classroom rules, meant to keep the
leaders in charge. We need to look at Jesus' words more closely, so that we can
see what he might really have been trying to say. While we're doing that, I'd
like to invite the children among us to write or draw a picture of people at school
treating each other in loving ways, and people treating each other not so well.
We'll do something special with your work in a few minutes.
As
they draw, it might help the children, and us, to look at our behavior through
the lens of the new bestselling book, Radical
Candor, by Kim Scott.[1]
This book describes some of the ways that we fail in dealing with one another
in community. Sometimes we engage in "obnoxious aggression." That's
the child who punches you on the playground, or the boss who shouts that the
project you just spent all week doing is totally worthless. At the opposite
pole, you have "manipulative insincerity." That's the teenager who cleans
the kitchen before asking her mom if she can borrow the new car. Or the
politician who tells you whatever you want to hear to get your vote, never
intending to do any of it. Then there's my favorite—the one that we Christians
really like to use. It's called "ruinous empathy." That's when you
stick to polite affirming discussion because you're afraid of ruffling
feathers. That's when we don't speak up when our friends are telling racist
jokes. Or when we buy peace with others at the price of utter silence on
anything of importance to our lives.
The
right way to communicate, according to Scott, is through "radical
candor," speaking the truth with love and forgiveness and real personal
caring. This is not the "radical candor" of Donald Trump tweeting out
in vulgar language exactly what he thinks of some woman's figure. This is the
kind of radical candor that Jesus uses, when he tells the woman at the well
that he knows and understands even the parts of her life that she has chosen to
keep hidden from him. This is the kind of communication that Jesus asks for in
our Gospel lesson. And, not surprisingly, it is the way in which Jesus, and God
the Father, reach out today to us. We
know what God does when we mess up, when we disappoint God, or when we turn
away from God. We know that our ever-loving God comes after us, with the
individual care and single-mindedness of a shepherd out searching for his one
lost lamb. And God forgives us and rejoices in our renewed relationship with
God when we are found. That’s what Jesus shows us in his life and death, and
that’s the story that Jesus tells the disciples right before the passage in
Matthew that we hear today.
All
too often, we take today’s text on getting along in community as an easy
formula to apply in order to shame backsliders and to prove that the majority
interpretation of things is the correct one. These verses have justified many a
real witch-hunt or excommunication throughout the history of the Church. We
also tend to use it as a formula for getting what we want out of God in prayer:
"Oh, there's two or three people gathered together praying for this thing,
God, so you better make it happen!" But that’s not what Jesus is getting at
in today's Gospel. Jesus is trying to show us a gentle and humble pattern for
relating to one another. When Jesus gives us, as a community, the authority to
bind and to loose, for example, it is not meant as a heady power trip for the
Church. It's instead a caution that everything that goes on in our communities
has deep and lasting consequences. Love of neighbor is not something that we
can merely dabble at.
Adding
on to Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase in The
Message, I would modernize today's Gospel of "radical candor" by
saying, “If a fellow believer hurts you, go and tell him in person—don’t send
him a text. If he listens, you’ve made a friend. If he won’t listen, don’t
huddle at coffee hour with your friends and complain and whisper about him. Go
to see him again in person, but take one or two others along so that the
presence of witnesses will keep everyone honest, and try again. If he still
won’t listen, tell the church. If he won’t listen to the church, you’ll have to
start over from scratch, confront him with the need for repentance, and offer
again God’s forgiving love.” Remember, although Jesus says to treat the
offender “as a Gentile and a tax collector,” we all know that Jesus himself
never gave up on either one of those groups.
Personally,
if I were editing Matthew's Gospel, I would turn this whole passage around to
begin with the last verse: that where two or three are gathered together in
Jesus’ name, Jesus is there among them. Whenever we gather, whether it is
around the altar, in Sunday School, in Collins' Hall, or even in our favorite
of all church gossiping places, the parking lot, Jesus is among us. Jesus, the
one who cried from the Cross, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do,”
he is with us, guiding us, taking our concerns seriously, holding us together,
covering us with that "armor of light," that Paul writes about. Can
you imagine an encouraging Jesus beside you as you risk sharing your views with
someone who disagrees? Can you imagine a
protecting Jesus standing between you and the bully who's trying to shout you
down? Can you imagine a forgiving Jesus holding you up as you forgive a bitter
enemy? Children, I would like for you take your drawings, and surround the
situations that you drew with the golden-yellow light of Christ. Fill in all of
the cracks with light, the light of truth and love that can hold together the
most broken of things. Give your work to your parents to help them through
their week. The way that Jesus is asking us to relate to one another is far
from easy, but we’re never doing the hard work of being a community on our
own.
[1]
I am indebted for the discussion of this book to a chapel sermon by Dr.
Susan Garrett at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary on September 8, 2017.
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