Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost (A—Proper 18)

September 10, 2017

Text: Matt. 18:1-20

            This morning our Lord Jesus teaches us about faith toward God and love toward one another.  Or, we might say, He teaches us about faith and the fruits of faith, for though we are saved by faith alone, faith is never alone.  Faith always produces the fruits of love, of repentance for our own sins and forgiveness for the brother or sister who sins against us.  As we pray in the Lord’s Prayer (the prayer of faith!): “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  This is also a prayer in which we call upon God as “Our Father.”  Because that is the posture of faith, that of a child to his Father.  So what does Jesus say?  “(U)nless you turn [repent!]  and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3; ESV).  That means you’ve gotta stop trying to be adults!  Repent of trying to be in charge of your own faith and Christian life.  Repent of your failed attempts to determine what is right and what is wrong for yourself.  And repent of your failed attempts to judge yourself righteous over against your neighbor whom you have judged to be wicked.  Repent of your endless quest to justify yourself.  Repent of your ceaseless striving to save yourself.  Recognize yourself for who you are:  A mere child! Helpless!  Trapped!  Trapped in a mess of your own making, that of sin and death and condemnation.  But then remember that you are not an orphan.  Your Father has claimed you for Himself by the blood of Christ.  You are God’s child.  He helps you.  He saves you.  He declares you righteous, not because of anything you have done, and certainly not because you’re better than your neighbor, but because of Christ, His righteous Son.  God is the Judge, not you.  He determines what is right and what is wrong for you, because He knows what is good, and desires that good for you.  And so also, He is the Judge of your neighbor, not you.  Just as He has pronounced you righteous in Christ, so also has He pronounced your neighbor righteous in Christ.  And His verdict trumps yours.  So turn.  Repent.  Believe what God says.  Trust Him to save you.  Trust Him to provide what is good.  Receive His gifts freely given without any merit or worthiness on your part.  Be a child before your Father in heaven.

            That is what we all are: Children of God.  God has made us so in our Baptism into Christ.  Jesus purchased us with His own blood and death for this very purpose.  And so now our Lord teaches us what we are to do for one another as brothers and sisters in Christ, to help each other through our sojourning in the wilderness of this fallen world.  We are to receive each other.  “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me” (v. 5).  That is, we are to love one another, care for one another, provide for one another’s needs, encourage each other, console each other, admonish one another, and most especially we are to speak Christ to one another.  In other words, we are to edify one another with the Gospel.  And we are to bring each other, especially our children and family members, to Christ’s Church.  Woe to us if we cause a fellow Christian to sin, to stumble, to fall from faith in Christ.  It would be better to have a great millstone hung around our neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea than to cause one of these little ones who believe in Jesus, a fellow brother or sister in Christ, to sin (v. 6).  Temptations will come.  That’s just life in this fallen world, a world full of sin and unbelief.  But woe to the one through whom it comes (v. 7)!  Beloved, let it not come from you.  Though you are not the Judge, you are to watch over your brothers and sisters and yourself, that you not fall away from Christ through some temptation of the flesh.  Watch over the members of your body: Your hands, your feet, your eyes.  Let them not lead you into transgression.  When they do, cut them off! …  Well, don’t literally mutilate yourself.  It wouldn’t actually help.  If you did that, you’d just be a handless, footless, blind sinner, but a sinner you’d still be.  That’s the point.  Your heart is really the problem.  That’s where the sin is.  So don’t go cutting off body parts.  Jesus is calling for something more extreme: Death and resurrection.  Die to yourself.  Crucify the flesh.  Deny yourself the sinful pleasure.  Turn from it.  Repent!  And then ask God not only to sanctify your hands, your feet, your eyes, but your mind and your heart.  Ask Him to transform your mind and your heart into the mind and heart of Christ.  And plead the same thing for your neighbor.  And know that that is precisely what God does for you in your Baptism, and in His Word and Supper, as He gives you Christ to wash away your sins of hand, foot, eye, mind, and heart; as He bespeaks you righteous and fills you with His living Word and Spirit; and then feeds you the risen and living Body and Blood of Jesus so that His new life is in you.

            It is vital, though, in your dealings with your brothers and sisters, that you also recognize your own sin and weakness, your own need for Christ to transform your heart and mind.  Otherwise you will despise one of these little ones, your fellow Christian, which Christ warns you not to do (v. 10).  Yes, your neighbor is weak.  Yes, your brother is a sinner.  Sure, your sister is a gossip.  Indeed, your brother is full of anger and lust.  So are you.  Repent.  And then be patient with your fellow Christians.  God certainly is.  So patient with them that He continues to look upon them through the lens of Jesus’ Blood and righteousness.  So patient with them that He continues to care for them by the ministrations of the holy angels who simultaneously see the face of our Father in heaven.  So patient is He, that when your neighbor strays, He does not do what you think He should do.  He does not abandon your neighbor to the wolves and the robbers and the perils of the wilderness.  He does not give them what they deserve.  He goes after them.  He always goes after His lost sheep.  He leaves the ninety-nine on the mountain to go and find the single stray, the sinner who has fallen to temptation, the sinner who has been wounded by unbelief, the sinner who perhaps even has sinned against you, but who has sinned against God infinitely more and worse.  Still, God forgives.  Jesus forgives.  Jesus died for your neighbor.  Jesus, our Good Shepherd, goes after His sheep and brings it home.  And He and the angels rejoice (v. 13), for “it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish” (v. 14). 

            What God has done for your neighbor, He has done for you.  You are the sheep that has gone astray.  You wandered off on your own path, thinking you could take care of yourself, thinking there were greener pastures that the Lord was withholding from you.  You forgot your utter dependence on God.  You forgot you were His helpless child.  But He finds you.  He always finds you.  He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up into death for you, how could He possibly let you go without seeking you out and bringing you back to the fold?  That is grace!  You don’t deserve it.  But Jesus deserves it.  And His deserving counts for you.  That is what He wants for you.  And that is the will of His Father in heaven.

            And so now God would use you whom He has made His own, not to judge and condemn your neighbor in his sin, but to win him out of it and be Christ’s hands in bringing him back to God.  This is such an important teaching for the Church, what our Lord here tells us about dealing with our neighbor who has sinned.  “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone” (v. 15).  You don’t trumpet it in the streets.  You don’t go and tell your friends the latest juicy details.  You don’t “just have to vent,” “confidentially, of course,” about your neighbor’s sins and weaknesses.  And you don’t hold it all in and let it boil up in anger and hatred in your heart.  If a brother or sister in Christ sins against you, or if you know about a sin they have committed, you go directly to that person.  Show them the error.  Work it out.  Do it gently, respectfully, in love, in humility, recognizing that the whole thing begins with your own self-examination and repentance, removing the log from your own eye so that you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your neighbor’s (Matt. 7:1-5).  The goal of this, of course, is to win your brother or sister, to forgive them, to restore the relationship to yourself and to God, that the offender not perish in his sin.  Who knows?  He might repent!  That’s what we want!  It may be, of course, that he does not listen to you.  In that case, you are to take one or two others, trusted Christian brothers or sisters who have likewise examined themselves and confessed their sins.  Perhaps the pastor and the elders, or some other mature Christians.  The goal, again, is repentance, restoration, and forgiveness.  That is what God has called us to do for one another.  If, even then, the brother will not listen, will not repent, then you tell it to the Church.  And the Church begs the brother to repent.  But if he will not listen to the Church, Jesus says, you are to “let him be to you as a Gentile or a tax collector,” an unbeliever (Matt. 18:17).  Not that you are to shun him or abuse him.  Not at all.  So many churches have abused this passage.  How is the Church to treat an unbeliever?  As the object of her mission.  As one to whom she is to proclaim Jesus and His forgiveness.  To be sure, the brother in this case can no longer be considered a member of the congregation.  He can no longer commune.  By his refusal to repent, he has removed himself from the fellowship of the Christian Church.  But notice that the excommunication of which Jesus speaks is done always in love, never in anger, never out of spite or revenge, always with the one goal of our brother’s repentance and restoration, always to win him back to Christ.

            And if he repents, you forgive him.  You forgive him immediately and unconditionally in the Name of Christ.  At whatever point in the process your brother recognizes his sin and repents, you forgive and you rejoice.  No matter what he’s done to you or said to you.  No matter how hurt you were.  That’s what you do.  Forgiveness is a fruit of faith.  It hurts, because you have to die to yourself.  But you can do it, and you should do it.  Because that’s what Jesus has done for you!  He died for you!  He died for your neighbor!  Forgiveness requires death, and Jesus fulfilled the obligation. Jesus paid the price in full.  For you.  For your neighbor.  For all sins.  For all sinners.  The handwriting against us has been wiped away in the blood of Jesus Christ.  And what God has declared forgiven, you don’t get to bind to your neighbor’s charge.  But more on that next week.  In the meantime, rejoice!  For God has freely forgiven all your sins, even your failures with regard to your neighbor, the stumbling blocks you’ve placed before him, your failure to call him to repentance, your grudges and your failure to forgive.  All of that, even that, is covered by the blood of Jesus Christ.  You are forgiven.  You are loosed.  You are free.  Like a child in the house of your Father who loves you.  Make yourself at home.  Yours is the very Kingdom of Heaven.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son (+), and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.