This is a special musical performance of One Step He Leads by the Faith Lutheran Church of Okemos, Michigan's Chancel Choir.

Come and learn from the Gospel of Matthew and what Jesus tells us about living life even when life does not seem fair. 

This is a special Sermon on Matthew 18: 21-22 by Visiting Minister, Erick Johnson.

This is a special performance by the Faith Lutheran Chancel Choir of When We Are Living!

A special musical performance of Chorale St Antoni by the Faith Bells Handbell Choir!

This is a special musical performance by the Faith Lutheran Church Chancel Choir of There's a Church Within Us by Schneider-Hustad.

There is an old story about two men who lived in a small village.  These two men got into a terrible dispute which they could not resolve.  So, they decided to talk to the town sage. The first man went to the sage's home and told his version of what happened. When he finished, the sage said, "You're absolutely right." The next night, the second man called on the sage and told his side of the story. The sage responded, "You're absolutely right." Afterward, the sage's wife scolded her husband saying, "Those men told you two different stories and you told them they were absolutely right. That's impossible -- they can't both be absolutely right." The sage turned to his wife and said, "You're absolutely right."

While that story is rather humorous, it is descriptive of life within community when people don’t want to face conflict.  Too often, disagreements and differences just simmer below the surface and people are never honest with each other.  And, as we think about life within the church, many people tend to think there should be no conflict within the faith community.  However, Jesus’ teaching in today’s gospel lesson seems to proceed on the baseline assumption that conflict in Christian community is normal and natural, and should be dealt with honestly, with compassion,  forgiveness and reconciliation.   And, from Jesus’ teaching today, we discover the community of faith is always called to bear witness to the forgiveness and reconciliation Christ is bringing into the world.

Today’s gospel reading has been a difficult passage to digest in the Western church.  In the western world, we have been deeply influenced and shaped by the Enlightenment philosophy of John Locke, so much so that the dominant understanding of the local church in the modern world has been that of a voluntary association of autonomous individuals.  This is especially the case in America, where individualism, with its emphasis on independence, self-reliance, and individual authority, is held in such high esteem.  In our culture, church is often a place of self-sufficient individuals who gather for worship on Sunday, as their calendar permits, then leave to do their own thing throughout the week.  But, at the time of the early church and in the community to which Matthew was writing, the faith community was a place of mutual interdependence, where each member was incomplete without the other, where the suffering of one was the suffering of all, and where the honor of one led to the rejoicing of all.  This reading from Matthew assumes a close-knit community of committed people of faith.  And, quite honestly, few churches today can claim that assumption as we live in an age of radical individualism.

So, as we approach this reading, we need to recognize these different cultural contexts.  And, in a polarized society such as ours where we are often defined by our differences, in a climate of anger and violence, in a context of individualism run rampant, we must recognize that this gospel reading has tragically been used as a weapon to clobber others.  Far too often this passage has been used to provide rules of engagement for combat rather than the rule of Christ to love, forgive and reconcile. 

As we all know, honesty, forgiveness, compassion and reconciliation are all too rarely the watchwords of our church conflicts.  Many times, anger, hurt feelings and lack of clear communication drive us toward either sweeping everything under the rug to keep peace, or openly hostile entrenched positions that lead to explosions with people permanently leaving the church.  But, Jesus says there is another way.

First, he asks us to use direct and respectful communication.  If we are struggling with something a church member has said or done, we are not to talk behind his or her back.  Nor are we to stage a dramatic public confrontation at coffee hour.  We are to take time aside, after the initial rush of emotion has subsided, and engage in dialogue with that person one-on-one.  If that conversation is not fruitful, we create a small group of all parties involved to discern and pray together.  If no progress is made, then we let transparency be our guiding principle and search for a solution as a whole church community, bearing one another’s burdens and seeking reconciliation.  Now, as we are well aware, some disagreements are so deep that even these steps cannot ease them, and so Jesus says, “If the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”  Well, with these words, we tend to breathe a sigh of relief.  Too often, we simply shun and push aside the supposed troublemakers and make ourselves feel comfortable again.  Hooray!

No!!  That is not what Jesus is saying.  We are not off the hook at all.  Why?  Because of how Jesus treated gentiles and tax collectors.  What can we learn from his words and actions toward them that we can then apply to our fellow church members?  When Jesus tells the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector praying in the temple, he emphasizes the Pharisee’s grandstanding pride and self-satisfaction versus the tax collector’s pained and private acknowledgement of his own sin.  To treat a fellow church member like a tax collector would then be to realize that beneath the outer façade, that person might be hiding a great deal of pain and regret over his or her own actions in the conflict.  Jesus says this tax collector went home justified and forgiven.  Could we not look for the hidden self of the person with whom we are in conflict and have our compassion awakened?  Could we not realize that we ourselves might be in danger of praying like the Pharisee, proud and certain of our own righteousness?

Jesus treated reviled tax collectors and sinners with mercy, with invitation, with hospitality and with love.  When Jesus tells us that we are to treat our most stubborn and contrary church members like tax collectors, he is telling us to treat them as he did, disciples who are God’s beloved children.  And, remember, Matthew himself was a tax collector!

And what about those despised gentiles, any of those we consider “other?’  Well, again we can look at Jesus’ example.  One of Jesus’ most famous encounters with a gentile was the healing of the despised Syrophoenician woman’s daughter.  He initially refuses her request saying the food for the children of Israel cannot be given to the dogs.  Her clever and persistent response, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table,” convinces him to change his mind.  Now, if Jesus, himself, can be persuaded to soften, become more understanding and change his mind about someone, can we not do the same?  Jesus was not afraid to really listen and be changed by what he heard.  We have the opportunity to do the same!

Jesus’ instruction to treat those with whom we disagree as tax collectors and gentiles opens to us a whole array of creative and surprising paths toward reconciliation.  All of this is so important not just because of the simple reality that there is no such thing as church without conflict.  It matters because of how Jesus concludes his instructions saying, “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.”  How we choose to treat one another when the going gets rough has consequences that far outlast questions like the theology of sexuality or that knock-down drag-out fight over the carpet color in the narthex.  We have the power to bind and loose.  With our choices, we can bind each other even tighter into our separate camps and polarized positions, or we can loose ourselves from our pride and our ever-present need to be right.  We can loose one another from assumptions and stereotypes and bitterness.  And, we can do as St. Paul says and put on the Lord Jesus Christ.  We can put on the clothes of Christ and be bound together with the unbreakable love of the crucified, risen Christ – a body tested, refined, healed and flourishing with new life.

I am sure many of you have played that popular children’s game, Follow the Leader.  It is a game that can provide so much fun and laughter.  However, the "game" gets quite complicated if the leader goes where followers don't want to go.  For example, if the leader begins crossing a narrow beam over a high crevice, or runs across a busy street, or squeezes through the entrance to a dark cave, these actions present challenges that are not fun, but daunting and dangerous.  That is when most of us would probably opt out of playing the game.

Today, Jesus is telling the disciples what it really means to follow him as their leader.  He is alarmingly blunt about what it means to follow him, and Peter does not want to go there.  So, Peter and the other disciples are given a lesson that is all about Following the Leader, Jesus style! 

Peter has just experienced a monumental come to Jesus moment where he responded to Jesus saying, “You are the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God!”  Jesus had just called Peter a rock and said that he would build his “called out” community, the church, on the rock of Peter’s faith.  Jesus has just made Peter a kind of deputy leader in the kingdom of God.  And, now, Jesus seems to ruin the moment they had all just experienced when he tells Peter and the others, "Look, the road to Jerusalem is filled with nails. They'll pierce me and put an end to me, but after three days God will reclaim my life."  

Well, only a short time before this, Jesus had given Peter the “keys of the kingdom,” a major leadership position, with the power to bind and loose.  And, as Peter now hears Jesus speak of what lies ahead, he has the audacity to seek to use his newfound sense of authority to bind Jesus!  Peter clearly had a certain vision in mind regarding what it means for Jesus to be the leader they had hoped for.   And, the things Jesus is now saying certainly do not fit his perception of the leadership they anticipated in a Messiah.  Peter takes Jesus aside and says, "Come to your senses, man. Don't you remember I just pronounced you the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of the living God? These things that you are talking about don't happen to God; and God forbid, they must never happen to you."  Now, what really goes unsaid is, "Because, of course, that would mean that they would also happen to someone who followed you. Someone like me."

Peter's perception of the Messiah’s leadership and his own importance as keeper of the keys is then abruptly shattered as Jesus barks back at him saying, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a scandal, a stumbling block to me, for you have set your mind not on divine things, but on human things."  Well, the rest of the air escapes from Peter’s self-important balloon as Jesus goes on to say, "You want these keys?  Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead.  You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am.  Don’t run from suffering; embrace it.  Follow me and I’ll show you how.  Self-help is no help at all.  Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self.  What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself?  What could you ever trade your soul for?"

Peter and the disciples were ready for a Messiah who was supposed to come and restore the Jewish kingdom by overthrowing oppressive empires and they saw themselves assisting in this effort.  But now, Jesus is talking about going to Jerusalem to suffer and die!  Jesus gives them an ad hoc lecture in God's plan for the Anointed One and the kind of kingdom he is ushering in.  And, following this kind of leader is just the antithesis of what they had anticipated.

Well, in our culture today, I have to say we are no different.  We are a people who are interested in winning.  We are people who want to be in charge and on top.  We are self-absorbed people who want to stay within the cocoon of our comfortable lives and not get into the thick of the need in this world.  We are people who live in a very self-centered culture, wanting to avoid the pain and messiness of life.  We do everything we can to avoid suffering and self-sacrifice.  Yet, Jesus tells us that if we want to gain life, life that truly matters, we are to follow him and do as he does.  He tells us we will gain life that truly matters when we follow him and sooth the pain of the sick, care for children in need, hammer nails in houses for those without shelter, share bread with the hungry, visit those in prison, help and assist people who have lost everything in hurricanes like Harvey, and deny oneself, letting go of our egos – letting our egos die.  

Like Peter and the other disciples, we face the chasm between Jesus’ call to discipleship and our own lives as part-time volunteers for the Gospel. Few Christians abandon everything for the Gospel’s sake. Most of us simply fit our Christianity into the open spots on our calendars.  But in this passage Jesus links the life of discipleship with his own path.  We are to follow his leading.  And, astonishingly, Jesus offers crucifixion to those who would follow him.  In a bold assertion of God’s boundary-crossing grace, Jesus takes as his logo the grim killing tool of the world’s superpower and says to us, “Take up your cross.  If you want to follow me, deny yourself; if you want to find your life, give up your life.” 

The gospel is an invitation to death before it bestows new life.  This is how God’s love will redeem and resurrect sinners from the futility of life devoted to profit and winning and the “all about me” syndrome that is so present in this world.  Because Jesus leads by dying on the cross, we may now give ourselves to him and die to the powers that possess and control us.  Following Jesus is about following him into the messiness and dysfunction of the world and onto the cross.  We do not control God or give Jesus the conditions to our discipleship; instead, we risk contamination and insecurity by releasing the need to protect our own lives.  

Following the leader, Jesus style, means living in solidarity with Jesus’ own way of life in this world.  Instead of binding Jesus for our own self-preservation, we must faithfully follow and bear witness to him, “even at the risk of losing our lives.”  It is precisely by participating in this way of being Christ’s body in the world that we find ourselves resurrected to new life.  It is hard to follow Jesus to this place, but he says he will make good on his promise.  Although new life, life that truly matters, will not be an easy life, Jesus promises that the day is coming when the “Son of Man” will appear in glory.  God has already acted decisively and ultimately in Jesus and, on that day, he will repay everyone for what has been done.  He will wipe away all tears and death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more.  The promise of full redemption for this entire world is unmistakable and certain. Thanks be to God!