Audio version here
Ezekiel 33.7-11, Psalm
119.33-40, Matthew 18.15-20
What have you learned so far
during this time of coronavirus? Most of us, I think, have been on a steep
learning curve. People have learned new IT, gardening, or cooking skills.
They’ve learned how to home-school their children, or, more likely, have
learned that it’s pretty much impossible, and gained a new respect for their
regular teachers! Something I think we have all learned, though, is how
important community is, and yet how complicated it can be. We’ve missed each
other. We've missed the groups and
activities we used to do with others, including worshipping in church. We’ve
learned that community matters, knowing our neighbours matters. Those Thursday
evening “clap for carers” moments weren’t just about applauding the NHS and key
workers. They were the only chances some people had for human company. In many
streets, people got to know those who lived around them for the first time,
having lived next door for years.
The fact is that we need
other people. However much we value our independence, we can’t do without others,
seen and unseen, to support us, whether that is the emotional support of
friendship and neighbourliness, or the unseen support of those who provide the
infrastructure, the power, the water, the road system, the phone network, and
all the other things that we depend on. We
may like to think of ourselves as rugged individualists, ploughing our own furrow,
but our lives are woven together with the rest of the world, and it can’t be
otherwise.
Community is a necessity, and
it is a blessing, but, as our Gospel reading today hints, it can also be a
problem, because it’s made up of people who aren’t perfect, people who fail
each other, let each other down, hurt each other, through negligence, weakness
and their own deliberate fault, as the confession puts it, people like us, in
other words. During this time of Covid, along with the love and helpfulness,
there have been increased tension between people. In the “micro communities” of
families, existing strains or problems have often been magnified. In the wider
community, people have judged and criticised those around them for being too
lax or too anxious, as they see it, in the way they have behaved. Scapegoating
and stereotyping of certain groups has been rife, sometimes inflamed by the
media or political extremists.
It was no different for those
who lived through tough times before us – as most people have in one way or
another - people like those Jesus speaks of in our Gospel passage. The word
that’s translated – rather misleadingly – as “church” here really means simply
“assembly”. There was no church, in the sense we mean it, until after Jesus
ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, when Jesus’ followers
began to organise themselves into a new movement. The word Jesus uses,
ekklesia, could have referred to any gathering of people. so I think we can
equally hear his words as applying to any group, any community we are part of,
from a household or friendship group, to a church or neighbourhood, right up to
the great community of Creation. How do
we live together in all these groups, he is asking? With difficulty, is often
the answer. You could almost define a community as “a place where people hurt
each other…” because that’s one
think we can be sure will happen when we get together, however much we wish it
wouldn’t.
Jesus words to his disciples
acknowledge that. He doesn’t kid them that there’s any magic formula for people
getting along. He anticipates that they won’t, and he plans for that. What matters
is what we do when we fall out. What he says may seem obvious – try to sort it
out privately, one to one. Involve others – carefully – to help mediate if
necessary. If all else fails, you may need some measure of separation to
protect yourself and others. Reconciliation, like the tango, takes two! But
even then, we need to think carefully about Jesus’ advice to treat people “like
Gentiles and Tax Collectors”. After all, how did he treat these two
despised and outcast groups? He loved them. He welcomed them. He transformed
them if they were prepared to let him.
Jesus’ recipe for dealing
with community tensions may seem obvious in theory, but it’s often a challenge
to put into practice. It can feel far easier to gossip about people behind
their backs, look for echo chambers where our self-righteous anger is reflected
and amplified, undermine people with passive-aggressive sniping from the
sidelines until they realise they aren’t wanted and they go away. These days,
social media adds a whole new layer to this, enabling us to criticise and carp
without seeing the damage we do, but it is our human nastiness which is the
problem, not that of the internet itself.
“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”. Our
words, our actions have consequences far beyond what we imagine, for good, but
also for ill. We have power to help people heal and grow, or to crush and
destroy them.
Of course, it is always
complicated. There are times when, as I have said, we need to make sure we and
others around us are safe, and that does sometimes mean drawing a line. There
are times, too, when criticism is justified, when we need to call people to
account, as Ezekiel was told in our Old Testament reading, but that doesn’t
mean that those we criticise or need to guard against are less human than we
are, less worthy of respect and care, less beloved of God.
Today’s collect, the special
prayer for the day, reminds us that God was “in Christ reconciling the world to
himself.” Jesus didn’t just talk about reconciliation, he lived it. A greedy,
cheating tax collector called Zaccheus, who everyone else had written off as no
good, was transformed by the simple act of Jesus inviting himself to his house.
A Roman centurion, the oppressor of his people, who asked for healing for his
servant, was met with compassion, his request granted, his faith acclaimed.
Jesus wasn’t a pushover. He didn’t turn a blind eye to behaviour which needed
to be called out and challenged, but he looked into the eyes of everyone he
met, friend, stranger or enemy, and treated them as someone God cared about,
someone who mattered, a child of God, part of his beloved creation. He did that
even as he was being nailed to the cross, praying that God would forgive those
who were nailing him there, “because they did not know what they were doing”.
It’s a tough pattern to
follow, but, as we struggle to live in community with others, whatever form
that community takes, Jesus’ words are just as important for us as they were
for his first followers.
Reconciliation isn’t some grand
project. It is made up of a million tiny moments when are offered the choice of
looking into the eyes of our enemies and seeing the likeness of God looking
back at us, however faint or marred that likeness seems to be. It’s made up of a
million tiny moments when, however we may struggle to love people we can at
least pray that they will know that God loves them. As we do this, God’s
promise is that we’ll find that there is room for us all, and the healing and
forgiveness we all need, in the heavenly community of his kingdom.
Amen
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