Matthew 18: 1-7; 10-22* (NRSV Updated Edition)
At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.
“If any of you cause one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of things that cause sin! Such things are bound to come, but woe to the one through whom they come!
...
“Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven. What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.
“If your brother or sister sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If you are listened to, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If that person refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church, and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a gentile and a tax collector. 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. Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if my brother or sister sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.”
* Note that the actual lectionary text is vv 15-20 only
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"The beginning of the discussion is, “who is greatest amongst you?” In other words, who are the people who are going to be in charge, what's it look like to be running this show? And Jesus takes, not as in some translations, a child, but a small servant boy, a young servant boy, and puts him in the midst of them and says this is the criteria for it. In other words, you're not going to be great except in as far as you become like this one and learn to listen to this one. Of course, servant boys were not considered proper authorities on anything - they were scarcely talked to, they would not have been noticed. ... Jesus is saying, the criterion for what counts as behaviour is a servant boy. And guess what, if you scandalize such people then you are destroying yourselves.
"So the next section is about how not to scandalize one of these little ones because the criteria of his own presence ... is going to be that of the servant boy, whom he very carefully puts in the midst of them. And I bring this out because in our gospel today at the very end of his passage, he says, “For where two or three are gathered in my name I am there among them.” In other words, he repeats exactly the same phrase: I am going to be amongst the decision-making group as a servant boy, the kind of person whose voice wouldn't normally be heard, who just gets on doing things and [looking] after people, who's present and should be present in a non-scandalized way that's the criteria that's at work here.
"Ok, immediately thereafter Jesus tells them not the parable of the Lost Sheep. ... So here is Jesus teaching something very specific about how the business of authority is going to be exercised. It's going to be exercised in favour of the one that went astray, the lost one. The whole purpose is not to be shoring up the good; the whole purpose, even to the extent of leaving the vast majority, is to go after the one who seems to have gone astray, finding, them - that's the cause of rejoicing.
...
"What I'd like to propose to you is that what Jesus is offering [in vv. 15-17] is actually the mechanism ... to avoid a lynching. So the first tip: if another member of the church sins against you go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. Now I'm old enough to have been enough situations where I know that this is really really difficult thing to do. It's easy to get into a fight with someone but it's really difficult to take sufficient distance from what has gone on when someone has offended you to work out what's really going on between you and to be able to stand up, without the need to go and search for backup, to gossip to other people about what's happened, to try and present yourself as having been victimized by this person.
"It's tremendously difficult actually to be in a place of peace in yourself where you can go and say to the other person calmly, and not because you want to rub it in that person's face but because you really want to recreate friendship with that person, “Do you know you did this to me? I really want us to get beyond this.” It's an incredibly difficult thing to do, it requires a huge amount of that peaceful calm in your own life. ... It's a hugely important thing, but what is really important about it is what it's not doing. You are preparing yourself because you want to bring back this other person, you want to resolve this, you want this person to be on the same insider basis with you as everyone else.
"And it's only when that's failed, when you've spoken to that person alone so that there's no risk of you humiliating them so that they're not having to keep up appearances before anybody else - you have not told anybody else you, are not whipped up by gossip opinion against that person so that they need to defend themselves - it's only when you've done that and it's failed that you then need to go and talk to two or three witnesses. ... [By doing this], you are exposing yourself to the person who has been offended, you are exposing yourself to other people putting you right and saying, “Actually, I think you're misinterpreting what he or she did or said to you I think that there's a more innocent explanation that you should perhaps get off your high horse and see what's really going on here.” In other words, by all putting yourself through this exercise you're running the risk of learning something.
"And so then if thereon [the witnesses] agree with you and if therefore it seems clear that what you say is true they're prepared to back you up, for it's gone slowly enough so that the person who is being to be confronted has not been pushed into a situation whereby they're feeling paranoid and defensive - if all that's happened and still, that person says actually no, I didn't do that or I was right to do what I did, then before taking any action and before entering to get more gossip and trying to whip up popular opinion, then you talk to the whole of the community and see whether that they too can be won over by an account of events in such a way that they too could work out with you how to bring the person back on board.
"In other words, this is a mechanism for slowing down a lynching. And if at the very end of the process the other person continues either to deny that they did something or to deny the intention with which they did it or to deny that the thing they did was wrong, under those circumstances, having given them every possibility, it then says, treat them as a gentile or a tax collector ... If anything, for me, the use of the word tax collector there is one of Matthew's clever ways of saying, “Remember what this means is, we go back to the beginning and try to find ways of bringing them back in.” Because that's what this is about. And he then stresses to them that there is no way beyond this mechanism - the un-scapegoating mechanism - there's no external reference: God is not an outsider to this process, God is to be found present in the *undoing* of the scapegoating mechanism, which is how he, Jesus, is going to be present to them, occupying the same place as that servant boy [at the beginning of the chapter].
"And he says, no, you're going to have to take responsibility for this whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven in other words, it's you who are going to advance in understanding of how to create insiders together as you learn constantly to find ways of letting each other off awful violent mechanisms of control and policing."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 23 in Ordinary Time Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MnbpZAWoKs)
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"Matthew’s gospel is replete with midrashim, explorations of Jesus’ teaching on forgiveness. It does not help us to have these general categories like ‘to sin’ where we are then left importing all kinds of baggage to fill it up. Rules and laws and what’s right and what’s wrong. Because everybody fills up this generic category differently, each group defines itself by what it is not; it is not ‘the other.’
"The Gospel shouts that God goes out to ‘the other’ indeed to the ‘enemy other’, you and me. Woven throughout Matthew’s gospel in so many ways from Emmanuel to the Father who cares for the creation, the sparrow, the lost sheep, you and I, God goes to the other. God does this going indiscriminately, wholly in love, reconciliatory in concrete action. ... God is not willing to let even one little sheep get away, God goes after everyone indiscriminately. Everyone counts, even or especially ‘the little ones.’
"Vss. 15-18 then proceed to describe a community situation where followers of Jesus are not exercising forgiveness. They are holding grudges and seeking redress (are they perhaps reflected in 5:25-26?). These are the ‘brothers and sisters’ who are ‘sinning.’ How should Christians handle those who say they follow Jesus but will not forgive, who justify retaliation?
"The process is ordered in a step by step fashion to ... achieve maximum reconciliation. It recognizes the possibility that there will be those who stubbornly insist on their rights, who will not forgive. If these folks, who say they follow Jesus (‘not all who say to me Lord, Lord…), will not forgive, then eventually they are to be treated as those who have not yet known Jesus’ forgiveness of themselves, i.e., as pagans and tax collectors.
"Nothing is said about shunning here. Nor is anything said about exclusion from the church. It may well have been that pagans and tax collectors were shunned in general but this is obviously not the way that Jesus behaved with them? To treat the ‘other as enemy’ is not what is being said here. Such a reading is incongruent with the entirety of Jesus’ teaching as Matthew presents it.
...
"A positive mimetic reading of Matthew 18 frees us to perceive the true connection between scandal and forgiveness. Forgiveness, both to seek forgiveness and to forgive others, is the one attitude and act that can transform rivalry. A posture of forgiveness as a community has great power. It just takes two. Why two or more? Because what is being modelled is the relational character of forgiveness and reconciliation. ... So too, if we chose to read the entirety of Matthew 18 with an emphasis on forgiveness, we will radicalize the church. We remind ourselves as church that we are not about exclusion, but that we are most certainly about forgiveness. A church where forgiveness reigns, imagine that! How beautiful it is when brothers and sisters dwell together in unity!"
- Michael Hardin, lectionary reflections from preachingpeace.org (website no longer available)
[For analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see also: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/proper18a/]
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