Standing Under the Scriptures
September 14, 2008

Dear Fellow Voyagers,

Our readings for this Sunday are:

Genesis 50.15-21: Joseph affirms his forgiveness of his brothers’ sale of him. It is here that he says, “You meant it for evil but God meant it for good."

Matthew 18.21-35: Jesus affirms that forgiveness is to be without limit and that, further, it is required of us if we ourselves are to be forgiven.

Last Sunday, in Romans 13.8-14, we saw firstly Paul’s view of love of neighbor. We had no difficulty with his contention that it fulfils the law, that while loving one can scarcely violate the commandments against adultery, killing, stealing, and coveting; for these involve harm to the neighbor. In connection with “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (which is also in Jesus’ Summary of the Law), we paused to consider what love of self involved. In today’s culture it seems to be a matter of self-affirmation and of self-indulgence even. But these traits put us into a relationship of competition rather than harmony with our neighbor. Further, they flatly contradict what we say about ourselves in the Eucharistic Confession and Prayer of Humble Access:

“We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness… “

“We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table… “

On both accounts, if we go with the culture’s view of what loving oneself entails, we have a problem. If, however, we consider that the basis for self-love is not what we are in ourselves but in what God has done for us and infused into us, the problem is resolved. For then we can regard our neighbor as in the same situation that we are: unworthy in him- or herself but infused, at least potentially, with God’s grace through Jesus’ death and resurrection. And then we can unreservedly love him or her as ourselves. This approach, or one resembling it, is the one that Karl Barth took to the question, as I discovered in my recent reading of the Church Dogmatics.

There is still a problem: loving our neighbor is not something we can will ourselves into doing, we can do it only as it is given to us to do. This would apply also to the behaviors that Paul urges in the preceding sections of Romans, among them blessing those who curse us, feeding our hungry enemies, and even, in the section (13.1-7) we passed over, paying our taxes. How then is it given to us to perform them? We supposed that the latter part of the reading bore on this. For it has to do with the imminence of our “salvation” (the coming of Christ) and the sense of excitement and exaltation that it engenders. It concludes with the exhortation to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” It is in putting on Christ, in being open to his coming not just as individuals but as a community, that we are enabled to behave as Paul urges.

Our Gospel reading (Matthew 18.15-20) deals with discipline in the church. And discipline and structure and law present problems for us moderns, who are more disposed to do away with such things. But I would still hold that they are essential. My reasons are autobiographical as well as doctrinal. As reflected in the Prologue to my book, which I circulated some weeks ago, my childhood was virtually devoid of structure. This was because my parents were incapable of providing it, my father on account of his near life-long total deafness, my mother of having been obliged to be the caretaker for her own invalid mother during most of her own childhood and thus denied a normal growing up. My lack of structure was reflected in my near-expulsion from Sunday School as a behavior problem, which I mentioned in last week’s notice. It was I believe the main cause of the devastating depression that I experienced in my adolescence. What eventually gave me structure was wartime service in the army and a career in the Foreign Service, one of the most tightly disciplined and structured organizations around. The appeal to me of a liturgical and hierarchical church can be seen in the foregoing. I would agree that structure can be overdone and that this may account for its rejection by some. Further, I would say that all organizations in some degree stifle as well as call forth creativity. This is the organizational paradox. But it does not deny the need for a balance to be struck.

And as we saw last Sunday, our Matthew passage does strike a balance, more than may be readily apparent, as well providing for transcending the paradox. To begin with, verse 15 might better be rendered “If your brother sins,” without the “against you,” thereby removing the suggestion of a personal rather than a community issue. The brother (or sister) is to be admonished privately at first so as to avoid humiliation. (I would specify that the admonisher must be willing to acknowledge his or her own sinfulness, that it is as great as or greater than that of the one admonished.) Only if this first effort fails are one or two witnesses to be brought in, still without publicity. Telling it to the church (verse 17) is to be resorted to only after this too fails. And even the final stage, treating the offender as “a Gentile and a tax collector,” is not as final as it may seem. For the church reached out to Gentiles, and Jesus himself associated with tax collectors.

We may still regard the procedure as punitive, and in some communities that have implemented it literally it may have been. Those employing it certainly ought not to be judges in their own case. But we would do better to think of it as actually for our own sakes, as a means for bringing us back when we have gone astray, as individuals or a community (or as a church). But the end of the story is not yet. We need to consider also the truly remarkable verses which follow.

“…whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (18). “… If two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven” (19).

This grant of power could scarcely be more sweeping. Yet it is in fact limited by the final verse (20) in our reading:

“For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

We noted the importance of in my name. Only when we are gathered in Jesus’ name and not our own, in spirit and in truth, is such power available. And it is for the accomplishment of his purposes, not any of ours. This applies no less to disciplinary procedures listed in the first part of the passage. Only when they accord with Christ’s will are they valid. And if they are so to accord, we must put on Christ, just as in our Romans passage Paul exhorts us to do. Herein we saw the link between our two passages.

Faithfully, Fr. Ted