Sermon given by Pastor Kirsten Klepfer on Sunday, September 7
Building God’s Realm (Again and Again)
Romans 8:8-10; Matthew 18:15-20
Many of us have been in on the ground floor of some organization. We have been there when the idea was formed, the energy was high and it was just beginning to move from possibility to reality. And one of the things you do in this stage is make decisions about how you will function as a group. Some of these decisions are practical and mundane…we’ll meet every other Thursday. Some are of deep importance because you want to know that how your group functions reflects your shared values and beliefs. How will decisions get made? How will we resolve disagreements? Who can be a member and who can’t?
On the other hand, when you join a group already going, you step into a system where those questions were asked long ago. Things may not be exactly the same as when the group formed, but almost always it is a reflection of those who were founding members – whether in big or small ways. When you join such a group, your decisions are different then if you had been a founding member. Now, you might join because you share beliefs with people in the group, but you may not like the governing structure at all. You might feel that you have power to try and change those things you don’t like, or you might feel the crushing weight of rules so entrenched even Barack Obama and John McCain – self-appointed standard-bearers of changing entrenched systems – could do nothing about it.
As Christians, of course, we are always in the second category. Whether we are born into Christianity and continue to choose this path, or whether we have come to it later in life, we are stepping into something that is already going – and has been for quite some time. And we accept, if only tacitly, the long-standing processes and values and beliefs that govern our religion. For example, we have the scriptures which are, in part, a record of how the early church formed, how it acted and what rules and laws were most important to them. We have the scriptures and by virtue of being Christian, we are to some degree subject to them. And many of us have had to struggle with thing reality more than once.
The early Christians were the lucky ones. They had a clean slate and the fresh start. But before we get too envious and pine for the opportunity to just throw out the bible and start all over again, even the early Christians were finding out it wasn’t quite that simple. It’s true that they got to set up the rules that govern how Christians come together, treat each other and interact with the world. This is what the author of Matthew’s gospel and Paul are both doing; laying down rules – like how to resolve disagreements about behavior – and spelling out the bottom line: love your neighbor as yourself.
But, in reality they were somewhere between starting something completely new and being in the midst of a thousands year old religion with sacred scriptures that they willingly subjected themselves to their whole lives. They were Jewish. And, contrary to what we sometimes think, they did not begrudge this. They were simply trying to figure out what the Jewish faith meant in their particular time in history; namely they are answering the question: “What does our religion look like now that we have experienced this person named Jesus and this resurrection event?”
These two passages are written from the point of view of those in this new and old position. And both are dealing with the Jewish laws and commandments – or in our language, they are wrestling with how to apply their own scriptures to their lives and how to use in them in the life of the community; much like every church in every time and place. Jesus, in Matthew’s gospel, gives us a process for doing this, and Paul gives us the ultimate rule to guide us.
And in listening in on their conversations with the earliest Christians, there are three main points that I think can help us as we work to apply our own scriptures to our lives today.
· First, the law – or in our language, the bible – is not static and cannot be universally and uniformly applied.
· Second, figuring out how to apply the bible to our lives and world requires the entire community. Or, as one friend put it, Matthew’s gospel can be summed up in one warning: Don’t try this at home.
· Third, it’s hard.
So, let me flesh those out a bit. First, scripture cannot be universally or uniformly applied.
The text that Dennis read describes a situation in which there is a concern that a member of the community has broken a commandment – a law in the Torah – the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. And the first thing we notice is that there is a process for resolving this. The confrontation happens not just to punish the offending individual, but because the community must discern whether or not this individual has violated the law.
Matthew offers a process for figuring out how Christians should relate to the mandates of the Torah by using traditional terms: he used the terms binding and loosing. “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” He echoes a practice of the Jewish community where rabbis “bound” the law to a specific situation when they determined that a commandment was applicable to a particular case, and they “loosed” the law when they determined that a word of scripture was not applicable under certain specific circumstances.
Matthew and Paul believed in the Jewish law because they believed that rightly applied it was the key to bringing about God’s realm. This is why once they understood that Jesus was the fulfillment of the law, they understood that Jesus was the one that brought the kingdom of God near and planted the seed that they would then grow. The law was a good thing in and of itself. But Jesus – the fulfillment of the law – pointed out that something had gone wrong with its application.
For example, Jesus found it necessary to bind the law about adultery in a new way in his time. The law said adultery was a sin, but he said even looking at another with lust was just as serious. On the other hand, Jesus loosed the law demanding no work on the Sabbath when he healed the hand of a man on the Sabbath. The religious folks were frustrated because they believed the Sabbath to be a clear, static law. But Jesus declared that the commandment, while certainly an important Jewish law, was to be loosed in this situation, declaring that doing good work was more important in that case than the law about Sabbath.
Some believe that once a community decides what the values are and the corresponding approved and taboo behaviors, then that is what governs. They are set. If they come from scripture, the argument goes, they are immutable. Instead, these passages along with the life of Jesus suggest that it is all much more dynamic than that; much less immutable.
Second, we can only make such decisions about scripture in community.
God gave the authority to bind and loose laws to Jesus in his lifetime, and Jesus gives it to the church. He gives authority to the church, not just one individual. This is because discernment happens best in community. As he says, whenever two or more are gathered, God is there. The spirit moves between us – using each of our gifts and strengths in the discernment process. God, through Jesus, gives the church this authority not because Christians have shown themselves to be extraordinarily wise or faithful, but because when we gather, Christ dwells in our midst.
Granting authority to the church to decide how scriptures should be applied in specific circumstances also relieves the system of power imbalances. Differences are all but guaranteed to come up in any community – and of course the church is no exception. If some individuals are granted greater authority over others, then inevitably power will be the deciding factor in settling disagreements. Such a power based structure was not what Jesus envisioned – or more to the point – it has no place in God’s realm.
And this all fits my experience. Without the community, I am left to figure out on my own what the scriptures mean and how to apply them to decisions I make. And what I know is without community, I am absolutely lousy at this. It’s too small, it’s too private, and it has no relationship then to the community. For the big questions of life, community is not just a good thing, it is a necessity.
Finally, third: It’s hard. Basically, what we learn from Matthew and Paul as they try in their writings and letters to instruct the early Christians are two contradictory things: the scriptures must be properly bound and loosed if God’s will is to be discerned and obeyed, and the scriptures are often bound when they should be loosed and loosed when they should be bound, with the result that God’s will is not discerned or obeyed. It’s hard.
In other words, as people of God, we have the great responsibility to determine, in the day to day of our lives, how to love. And real love in the down and dirty world requires deliberation and sometimes tough choices. How we love or fail to love affects our relationships both to others and – because what we do here affects what happens in heaven – it affects our relationship to God.
And that’s hard enough. But add to that the fact that because the way to do that requires community, the implication is we must actually submit to the community; we must give it authority in our lives. And, well, we don’t do that. And by “we”, I mean pretty much anyone who is steeped in the western culture.
Luckily, we do have some help with this. We are given a bottom line, or a lens, in figuring it all out. Paul says that every commandment can be summed up this way: Love your neighbor as yourself. It’s a good test after decisions are made. Does it lead to me loving others in the same way I love myself – or in the same way I love my friend – or in the same way I love God? It’s hard, but we are not left without a compass.
I have been thinking lately more and more of how we should go about listening for God’s will in our lives and how the scriptures, tradition and laws should be applied in my own life; partly because I come up against walls when I try to figure it out on my own, and often I feel stuck when I think I hear God’s call to me but just can’t figure out what it means I should be doing today, tomorrow and in the future.
Many of you know I went to Ghost Ranch in New Mexico to attend a class that was discussing the possibility of starting a new kind of “religious order” where we don’t all live in the same place, but are tied together by vows that we would all take. The idea of religious orders is nothing new – think Franciscans, Jesuits, Convents and Monasteries. To be a part of these groups, you generally make commitments to one another and take “vows”.
The vows we came up with go something like this:
A vow to do radical peace and justice work in the world.
A vow to live in resistance to the dominant culture.
A vow to live in symbiosis with creation.
And, a vow to practice our faith in spiritual disciplines like worship, prayer and sharing our resources.
These vows appeal to me because they seem to capture much of what I feel God calls me to as a Christian. And what became clear to me during the week was that not only did I need a community to hold me accountable to the vows, I need a community to help me discern what these vows mean in my specific situation. And community is necessary for this, I realized. Partly because there is more wisdom in community than in one individual. But also, because when a community is involved we can all take greater risks and live more boldly knowing that group discernment factors in the ways others can support you and catch you if you fail.
It occurred to me as we were talking that week that what we were describing sounded an awful lot like church – the local congregation. At our best, we make vows to God and to each other, and then live those out in community. We allow the community to be not just our support, but to guide us and help us discern God’s will. We commit to a process that seeks to protect the weak and reflect the belief that wisdom emerges best in gatherings of the faithful. We remember what Jesus said: wherever two or more are gathered, I am there. Christ is here, in our midst, when we come together.
We can be guided by that, or we can return to our lives as individuals, solo fliers in life, apart from the power of Christ in community. But I don’t think that will ever lead us to lives filled with Christ and communities that reflect God’s realm here on earth.
This passage in Matthew may be referring to sins – to breaking of commandments. But, I think for us the question is less “are we breaking one of the 613 commandment of the Torah?”, but rather, “How can we help each other shape lives that are based on scripture and God’s Word?”
After all, it is our turn. It is time again – each new day – to do what those early Christians did, what their Hebrew ancestors did, what the church of our parents and grandparents did. And, we need each other. The world changes constantly. What it means to live out God’s will changes constantly. And it is very hard. But, fortunately, we have help. When we gather Christ is here. And when we seek to live out the scriptures and the Word of God, we have the voice of Paul ringing in our ears: “the scriptures are summed up in this word: Love your neighbor as yourself.” Amen.
