May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my Rock and My Redeemer

There’s no way meteorologically speaking that you can tell we are in late September. Today is my father’s birthday and he would have been 104 today, had he not died when he was only 70. By the time his birthday rolled around each year, the leaves were falling, we went out with our jackets to gather chestnuts and we began preparing for another long Buffalo winter. But, despite our unseasonably warm Chicago weather, there’s still a way you can tell it’s September: it’s found in today’s epistle reading. September is always stewardship month in the Church, and it always brings with it the pastoral burden of having to remind parishioners that tithing and even super-tithing are concepts pervading the entire Judaeo-Christian faith, no matter how much we might wish to do away with them.

Why do we resist giving our 10%+ to the Church? Our reasons are plentiful. Why am I so well-acquainted with them? Because for decades of my life I used some of the same reasons myself. Here are ten of the most common ones:
1)  I don’t have as much money to give as I would like.
2)  I’m concerned that what money I have will run out.
3)  I want to be sure I leave enough money for my children when I die.
4)  I give to lots of other charitable and not-for-profit organizations.
5)  I had some unexpected expenses that made it harder for me to give this year.
6)  I think tithing is some sort of OT concept that no longer applies to us.
7)  I have so many other places to put my money that are more rewarding.
8)  I don’t like certain things about the church, so I don’t give much.
9)  I think there are others in the church who aren’t really doing their part.
10)I had to help out my kids or grandkids or friends this year.

I may even have left out some of your favorite reasons not to tithe or super-tithe, and I apologize. Please let me know what they are and I will be sure to include them next September. But, just to provide some balance, here are eleven reasons Paul gives in II Corinthians that we should tithe and, whenever possible, super-tithe. You might want to follow along in your copies:

1)  Verse 1: Giving is our response to the grace of God freely given to every one of us, just as it was given to the Macedonians. Can you imagine hoarding God’s grace? Every day we’re fed by His grace. Every time we gather together for our corporate worship of God, we’re fed by His grace. Every day that we’re able to crawl out of bed and see the sun, even when it’s too hot or too cold or just right, it’s by the grace of God. If our lives are so superabundantly saturated with the grace of God, how can we not give back in thanks and praise for His unstinting goodness to us? If we define “grace” as “unmerited favor,” then how can we not give freely and generously in return? We tip a good waiter anywhere from 15-22%, and we do the same for a cab driver! Does God really deserve less? Seriously, I’m certain there are persons in the Church of Jesus Christ who spend more per annum in tips than in tithes!
 
2)  Also verse 1: Giving is something we do by example both in Scripture itself and by the generous example of millions who have gone before us and enriched our experience of Christianity. Generous Lake Foresters built this church and other generous Lake Foresters several generations later renovated it and restored these beautiful windows. But the Macedonians in today’s epistle reading were responding to the desperate need of Christians in the church at Jerusalem who were suffering serious deprivation solely because of their Christian faith. Does that have some contemporary parallels? A delegation from the Diocese of Quincy will be going to Myanmar this week to help out and encourage those Karen Christians who have survived severe persecution and are in great need. We know about the desperate plight of Christians in the Middle East and in Africa. Now there are many more in such places as Puerto Rico, Mexico, Texas and Florida.

3)  Verse 2: Giving to God may be completely disproportionate to our actual financial means. The Christians in Macedonia were not a wealthy bunch. Paul says that they were suffering from “extreme poverty,” and that their giving was in the context of a “severe test of affliction.” Yet, he writes that they gave out of “their abundance of joy” and from “a wealth of generosity.” Their wealth was not measured by material prosperity, but by abundant joy. What should that say to us in 21st century America? There’s not a single one of us who is suffering from “extreme poverty,” no matter how we measure the present “poverty level.” By the standards of most of the world, we’re living in varying degrees of opulence. But are we living in an “abundance of joy” and in “a wealth of generosity?” It sounds to me as though those things must surely be the antidotes to “affliction” and “extreme poverty.” We need to be working on them. Just imagine the abundant joy of the widow whose two mites, according to Jesus, constituted all that she had!

4)  Verse 3: The Macedonians “gave according to their means;” no, writes Paul, “beyond their means,” and that “of their own accord.” This may seem to be a bit more of the same, though I hear it as a serious intensification of what came before. Paul will write several times in the verses that follow that he is not issuing a “command” (8:8), nor is he pressing anyone to give “reluctantly” or “under compulsion” (9:7). Rather he’s specifically commending the Macedonians for giving “of their own accord.” What if we really gave with that level of generosity, of our own accord, out of gratitude to God and awareness of the needs of others!

5)  Verse 4: What else? They viewed sacrificial giving as a favor, and they were “earnestly begging” Paul for the “favor,” the privilege, of taking part in the relief of other believers. This decidedly is several steps beyond our expectations and, sadly, beyond our experience. I can say without fear of short-term memory loss that no one has ever come to me “earnestly begging” for the privilege of giving money away. The very image of such a thing is almost beyond comprehension. Maybe Paul was exaggerating, but I doubt it. What comes next?

6)  Verse 5: Here we get the key to what this extravagant generosity was all about: “they gave themselves first to the Lord and then, by the will of God, to us.” This is extravagance beyond belief. Some of you remember long ago when evangelists used to speak to young people about giving their hearts and their lives completely to Jesus. Some still may make such an appeal. But the very concept of giving ourselves to the Lord is one that only rarely is seen in action. It’s too costly. It calls for a sort of extravagance in giving that goes far beyond what we consider to be the call of duty. But Paul says it’s actually “square one:” it’s the first step in giving; it’s the doorway to stewardship. First, we must give ourselves to the Lord. And if we do, what will follow?

What follows is discovering the will of God for our lives. This absolutely requires a lot more thought on our part, on the part of every single one of us. How often do we hear Christians moaning and groaning that they’re having trouble determining “the will of God” for their lives? They read books, talk to their pastors, converse with other Christians, even pray and search Scripture for answers. The answer is really simple and it’s right here in this passage about stewardship: if you truly, sincerely, genuinely want to know the will of God for your life, just back up and try step one: give yourself first to the Lord. Then says Paul, the will of God will follow in terms of giving yourself and your substance to others.

Does this sound too radical and extravagant? Is this Pauline hyperbole gone rampant? Or, in actual fact, is this a rather gentler way for Paul to say exactly what Jesus said in our Gospel reading a few weeks ago: "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.  For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it” (Matthew 16:24, 25). It’s really the very same thing. This is precisely what Paul means by giving ourselves first to the Lord, and then discovering and acting on His perfect will.

7)  Verse 7: Here’s a word from Paul about excellence. There’s a contemporary concept to be sure. We Americans are all about excellence: being first because we deserve to be first. And so Paul, were he to wander in here this morning looking for St. Patrick’s Church, would commend us for our excellence in such things as our faith, our speech, our knowledge and our earnestness. But then he might inquire as to whether we’re acting out all of that in what he calls “this act of grace.” I could be wrong, but I think this may be the only time in all of Scripture that something this specific is named an “act of grace.” It’s a really challenging concept. But in the next verse, verse 8, Paul is going to say that it’s by this act of grace that we may prove to others that our “love is genuine.”

There are few things that Christians talk about more frequently than “love.” It’s on our lips all the time. It was an identifying characteristic of the earliest Christians. But perhaps that’s the very problem Paul is addressing here. He applauds the Corinthians for faith, speech, knowledge and earnestness, but he’s asking for a demo, for a sincere act that puts love to work, for an “act of grace” that shows our love to be “genuine.” Talk is cheap. Action can be costly. Paul is asking for costly action. He asks that this be an area where we’re completely committed to excellence. That’s truly demanding. And it’s directly connected to giving!

8)  Verse 9: We are to perform this act of grace unreservedly because of the incomparable example that is ours in Jesus Christ: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you by His poverty might become rich.” What more can we say? Jesus gave up everything that was rightly and eternally His in order to make us rich. There’s the greatest “act of grace” in history. Our weak imitation of such an act gives all the perspective we need on what it means to give back sacrificially, to perform our own little acts of grace that, at their very best, pale by comparison to His. What are we giving? What are we sacrificing? What are receiving in return because of His great gift?

9)  Chapter 9:7: What sort of face should we put on when we are giving through an act of grace? Remember that Paul said the Macedonians were giving out of an abundance of joy. Now Paul says that “God loves a cheerful giver.”

Why does Paul always seem to add another layer that makes things more difficult for us? Why can’t we at least grimace a bit when we’re giving sacrificially? Because God loves a cheerful giver. Just as Jesus castigated the Pharisees who put on a sad face when they were fasting, Paul is suggesting that when we perform this act of grace that we call stewardship, we should be putting on a happy face because God loves it! In Romans 8:32 Paul asks, “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?” We know the answer: He does freely give us all things that we need, and He does so in abundance. And so, when we give back what already is His, we should be able to do it cheerfully, never “reluctantly,” never “under compulsion.”

10) Verse 8: “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.” Here’s a verse about abundance, and it doesn’t even specifically mention money! God can make His grace abound to us: how could we compare that to any material prosperity? Material prosperity is abject poverty compared to the abundant grace of God. When we have “all grace,” Paul says that we have “all sufficiency in all things at all times.” That’s a lot of “all.” It’s so much “all” that Paul can label it “all sufficiency.” Do we sometimes want more than “sufficiency?” Surely we do; it’s part of our human nature. Perhaps God understands this. But what did God say to Paul? Just a few chapters later in II Corinthians, in the very context of God’s not giving to Paul something that he earnestly and repeatedly requested in prayer, God told Paul what lesson was to be learned: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (II Corinthians 12:9) And there we have those two words juxtaposed again: “grace” and “sufficiency.”

11) Just one more for this morning: verse 11: “You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God.” We’re back to unbridled generosity, and we’re still hearing Paul’s comprehensive uses of “all” and “every.” Paul is a “no holds barred” sort of writer. He also is one who has allowed himself to be so immersed in the all-sufficient grace of God that he can’t stop writing about it. In fact, every single one of his epistles begins with the greeting, “grace and peace.” But look where this verse is going: it’s going straight to thanksgiving, a thanksgiving that’s ours when we participate in God’s grace by our own generosity. And see his final words in this chapter, verse 15: “Thanks be to God for His inexpressible gift!” Yes, his word for thanks is indeed our word for what comes next in this worship service: Eucharist.

And so I want to remind you once again that everything we do in worship points to this table, the table of our Lord Himself, where we remember His sacrifice. But what do we do first of all? What’s the VERY first thing we do every single time we approach this table, even before we place the bread and wine on the altar? First, we receive the gifts of the people of God, while I say, “All things come from You, O Lord, and of Your own have we given You” (I Chronicles 29:11, 14).

Then, when we’ve presented all of these gifts to Him, He takes them and, by His incomparable grace, enables us to say, “The gifts of God for the people of God: take them in remembrance that Christ died for you and feed on Him in your hearts by faith, with thanksgiving.” Here the gifts of the people of God become the gifts of God, and the bread and the wine, which earth has given and human hands have made, become for us the bread of life and the cup of salvation, the Body of Christ given for us and the Blood of Christ shed for us. Come and see, with thanksgiving!

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.

Last Sunday we dealt with the very difficult subject of how we as individual believers and members of the Church are to deal with a fellow-believer who is caught in sin. The process outlined by Jesus Himself was absolutely brilliant, but to our shame is frequently ignored. We emphasized the very great need for dealing with sin in the Church rather than sweeping it under the carpet and allowing it to fester until our witness is undermined.

Today, in the verses that immediately follow last week’s Gospel, we have Peter asking Jesus how many times we are required to forgive a fellow-believer who sins against us. Note that it’s not a matter of the person merely offending us or disturbing us in some way; rather Peter is asking about the Christian who actually sins against us. Perhaps Peter was not really listening to what Jesus had just said. But this is one of the times when we definitely can let Peter off the hook by seeing that it isn’t quite the same issue over again. Peter is asking about something in the realm of direct interpersonal relationships gone awry, where the sin, the guilt and the blame are clearly at the other person’s feet and, very importantly, where the other person seems actually to be seeking forgiveness, and that, not even for the first time! Peter’s question is one that most of us have asked; and most of us are naturally disinclined to keep forgiving anyone for sinning against us repeatedly. We often forget that when Jesus taught us how to pray, He had us asking God to forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. And who among us would like God to place limits on His forgiveness of us?

Peter’s question often gets mistranslated as, “How often? Seven times?” What he really asked was, “Shall I forgive him up to seven times?” And Jesus gives an answer that, translated from Greek to English, could be either 77 times or 490 times. But who’s counting? In either case, the forgiving is characterized by extreme liberality. Again it’s important to see that this is not the same as someone sinning in a way that negatively affects the Church as a whole. It’s a private matter that has reached a level where it may be seriously bothersome but it’s not spiritually dangerous. Peter thought that up to 7 forgivenesses should be ample, but Jesus raises it to a number we would be hard-pressed to count, whether it’s 77 or 490.

And obviously that’s the point: we should not be trying to keep count. And why not? Simply because we serve a forgiving God Who has embraced us in His arms of love when our debt of sin was paid in full by His Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, on the Cross. The love of God, our forgiving God, is not meted out by measure in a miserly fashion. His forgiving grace is abundant and boundless. So should ours be as well. And, unfortunately, that’s much more easily said than done on our part. What’s the human formula? We are quick to say, “That’s twice. One more strike and you’re out.” Jesus says that something between 77 and 490 strikes will still require our forgiveness. And it seems clear that God Himself is not counting the number of our offenses when all of them are covered by the blood of Christ! No wonder that when we come to this table we’re in perpetual awe of what the broken Body and shed Blood of Christ have done for us!

There’s another person in our lectionary readings for today who presents us with some serious personal challenges, and once again it’s an interpersonal affair. It’s that person who would like to think that he or she is the spiritually stronger person; but Paul, in his irritating table-turning fashion, chooses instead to label such a person as the spiritually weaker one! Why is it that over and over again Paul comes up with standards that are 180 degrees away from our own? Paul puts the matter in terms of eating habits, dietary restrictions, or the setting up of certain days as more to be hallowed than other days. And Paul seems to be saying, “Eat whatever you like and treat every day the same.”
 
Isn’t that the takeaway we hear most often from people quoting this passage in Romans 14? It’s certainly one I’ve heard many times. ““Eat whatever you like and treat every day the same.” But is that really Paul’s focus here? Definitely not! It’s a conclusion that may fairly be drawn from what Paul wrote, but it’s decidedly not his focus. His focus is entirely on how such differences, how such personal preferences, or even how such matters of personal conscience affect our relationships with other Christians.

And there’s the rub! Herein lies a standard ploy of Satan, and it’s a highly successful one. Satan has many ways of pitting Christians against Christians in order to weaken or even destroy our fellowship and our witness. It’s just another thing at the base of why we have such an overwhelming number of divisions among Christians, each strongly and even intransigently held. We dig in until we feel compelled to hold our ground at any cost. We have to be right, and those who disagree with us must surely be wrong.

I lived nearly 30 years of my life in Skokie, from the time that it had a heavy preponderance of Jewish residents right up to the time that the population had become quite mixed and many of the Jews had moved to Highland Park or Northbrook. One of the frequently heard jokes in Skokie 40 years ago was that it was the rose capital of the world because there was a rose-in-bloom on every corner. But another commonly heard joke most often told by the Rosenblooms themselves was that there was a synagogue on every corner in Skokie, and no one from one synagogue would speak to anyone from another one. That was a Jewish joke and, as with most jokes, there was some underlying piece of truth to it. But, synagogue or Church, it’s not a joking matter.

My former rector from the Church of the Holy Spirit here in Lake Forest wrote this week in his Monday Matters blog about a large nondenominational church in the southeast that initiated a now much-copied idea: asking everyone in the congregation to think of one word that they would repeat over and over daily for a full year as a sort of mantra, making something of importance to them individually become a focal point that might actually change the way they would live that year. I thought of two such words that I would have to choose between, and most of you know me well enough to be able to guess exactly what those two words would be.

I decided that I would defer “chesed,” the Hebrew word for God’s lovingkindness, and choose for the first year the word “one,” basing my choice on the seven occurrences of that word in just three verses from Ephesians 4: “There is one Body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all” (verses 4-6). One: what an amazing concept. What an unattainable goal. We desperately need to be right, and that means that the others need to be wrong. And as long as we cling to that, we never will sort out who is the weaker brother, who is the stronger brother and whether in God’s sight it makes a particle of difference.
Clearly Paul chose two areas that were contentious in his day, food and sacred days, areas that were causing disputes and divisions in the church at Rome. What would he pinpoint if he were writing to the Church in the USA today? I don’t even want to go there. Frankly, I think we’ve expanded the list beyond comprehension. And while Paul had the apostolic authority to step on as many toes as he wished without the least fear of anything worse than an occasional stoning or imprisonment, most of you are at least secretly hoping that I’ll be a bit more cautious before I attack one of your favorite pet-peeves. This morning I would prefer not to bother you with anything that specific. What I want this morning is for every one of you to go away in self-examination, determining for yourselves whether your personal quibbles are worth the division they could cause in the “ONE holy, catholic and apostolic Church of Jesus Christ.” And then I want you to reconsider who it is that you’re labeling “the weaker brother.” You may think that this matter is not all that important, but you’d be dead wrong.
 
What does Paul say? “The one who eats is not to regard with contempt the one who does not eat, and the one who does not eat is not to judge the one who eats, for God has accepted him.” Therein lies the real problem: contempt is a very serious matter, and so is judging others in this way. But doesn’t this conflict with last Sunday’s message? Definitely not. The judging that Paul condemns here in Romans is not at all the judgment that Jesus condones in the Gospel. The difference? It’s whether we’re judging by God’s standards, which absolutely is a requirement, or are judging by our own artificial standards, which absolutely is forbidden. And it’s also a matter of whether in the process our attitudes become contemptuous and judgmental.

When it comes to such peripheral matters as what we eat or what days we designate as sacred, we’re dealing with what we call adiaphora, matters that are indifferent, rather than matters that touch the core of our orthodox faith. And all too often we’re caught red-handed at blurring that very important distinction. We turn the peripheral issues into central issues and lose sight of all that really matters. The result is a division of the Body of Christ that should not and need not exist. If we could eliminate that, then many of the differences between denominations would evaporate like the morning mists and we would come much closer to viewing ourselves as truly ONE in Christ.

What else does Paul say in this passage that’s of central importance for us? Here’s one thing: God “accepts” the very people that we reject! Paul says that God is able to “make stand” the person whom we make fall. He says that “each person must be fully convinced in his own mind,” not necessarily in our minds! How hard it is for some of us to accept that concept!

And it’s almost as though Paul is rubbing our self-centered condemnations in our own faces when he makes it a matter of giving thanks to God, one of the responsibilities that remains at the very core of our being. What did Paul label in the first chapter of his epistle to the Romans as step #1 in turning away from God? It was the failure to give thanks to God (1:21). Now Paul is saying that the persons we label as “weak” or “strong” are both giving thanks to God! Should we do anything at all to hinder their thanksgiving? Paul would say “may it never be!”

Paul wraps up everything he’s saying in the last verses of today’s epistle reading, where he returns to the issues of contempt and false judgment: “But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you again, why do you regard your brother with contempt? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written, ‘As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to Me, And every tongue shall give praise to God.’ 12 So then each one of us will give an account of himself to God.”

Are you clinging to some judgment of your fellow Christian that’s according to your standards and not according to God’s? Have you imported something into your faith system that God Himself would regard as artificial, peripheral and inconsequential? Take care to judge yourself before you judge your fellow believer! Chances are good that there’s a lot of middle ground here that you’re overlooking. And Paul may be telling you to set aside some of your most revered sacred cows because, in that day when “we will give an account of ourselves to God,” we may find that our labels of “weaker” and “stronger” were not God’s labels at all, and that our contemptuous and judgmental attitudes are the ones that are far more reprehensible to God than the practices that we condemn in others.

Have I just effectively contradicted everything that I said last Sunday? I think not. I could be wrong. But I believe with all my heart and, to be honest, quite fervently, that we are every bit as guilty when we ignore what Paul is saying in Romans 14 as when we ignore what Jesus said in Matthew 18. Both Jesus and Paul are after the very same thing: keeping the Church of Jesus Christ pure. This means not being the least bit reluctant to call sin “sin,” to identify it as such and to deal with it directly and forcefully. That was last week’s sermon, and it’s the command of Jesus. He even gave us a perfect methodology for dealing with such sin.

But at the same time we’re instructed by Paul not to show contempt and not to be judgmental in the ways that we view other believers whose consciences allow them to do or even believe certain things with which we disagree but on which disagreement we have little or no Scriptural foundation. Sometimes it’s really hard for us to let go of such things. I may be offended by those who refuse to worship God exactly the same way that I do while you may be offended that I do those very things. I may find the music others use in worship to be abhorrent and you may find the same music to be ministering to your soul’s deepest needs. Some of us may have strong feelings about what clothing should or shouldn’t be worn to church while others may be convinced in their own minds that you’re looking on the outside appearance while God is looking on the heart. Our Seventh Day Adventist friends and most Messianic Jews believe we have made a grievous mistake to move the Sabbath Day from Saturday to Sunday, while we may feel that they’re mistaken not to honor Sunday as the Lord’s Day. Each of us has our preferences with regard to food and drink, and sometimes we may find ourselves trying to impose those preferences on others as though they had some sort of Biblical sanction.

In the end, “says the Lord, every knee shall bow to Me, And every tongue shall give praise to God.” “So then each one of us will give an account of himself to God.” And in that day, we may find that our God is a God of mercy and forgiveness, a God in Whom “lovingkindness and truth have met each other,” and “righteousness and peace have kissed each other” (Psalm 85:10).  How great would it be if we, both Jews and Gentiles, could turn today to such a God, allowing Him and Him alone to judge our hearts before His Holy Word.

God have mercy.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Each Sunday we read “The Summary of the Law” given by Jesus Himself. It includes, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Evidently the Apostle Paul was acquainted with this summary when he wrote essentially four times in three verses, “he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.” But in this morning’s Gospel reading, Jesus says, “If your brother sins... and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (Matthew 18:15, 17), that is, as a pagan and a corrupt IRS agent. Here again we encounter the seemingly “harsh” side of Jesus, the one that shows up more often when He’s addressing the scribes and Pharisees! Will the real Jesus please stand up?

Of course we know that this is clearly and unambiguously a “both/and” sort of thing and that Jesus is addressing two rather different things: our mandated love for one another on the one hand (“love your neighbor as yourself”), and, on the other hand, our response to an unrepentant “brother.” And before we take this any further, note that we are commanded to “love” our neighbor without “neighbor” being qualified in any way, whereas the person we are to treat as “a Gentile and a tax collector” is a fellow-believer, a “brother” (or, of course, a ”sister”) in Christ.

The teaching of Jesus in this passage falls under the heading of “church discipline,” something that’s so incredibly unpopular among Christians that it’s almost never employed even in the most heinous and obvious circumstances that cry out for some sort of response. To be brutally frank, I’ve been a member of various churches for my entire life since infancy, and never once in 3,744 weeks of Sundays have I ever seen church discipline carried out according to the formula taught by the Head of the Church, Jesus Christ Himself. Nor can I recall ever hearing a sermon from this Gospel reading. This is not something the Church made up in the Middle Ages that was gladly set aside in the Reformation. And it certainly is not something that addressed only a particular situation in the early Church that has become irrelevant.

We have in fact replaced the methodology of Jesus with new ones of our own design. Jesus lays out a completely clear 3-staged process for dealing with a Christian’s sin:

1. Go to him in private to show him his fault.
2. If he doesn’t listen, go again with one or two other persons.
3. If he still doesn’t listen, then and only then, “tell it to the Church.”

What do we do? Almost never does anyone do Step 1: go to the person in private. If we do that step at all, we’re unlikely to do it until we’ve discussed the matter with any number of other persons, even if we dress it up piously as a “prayer request.” The NT prefers to label this as “gossip,” no matter how we cloak it. There’s no Step 1 in the formula of Jesus that says to share it with others. And Step 2 clearly limits the sharing to 1 or 2 others before it goes to a wider audience.

Why does the Church fail miserably in the exercise of church discipline? Simple: it’s because we generally refuse to do Step 1 at all. And without Step 1, it’s hard to move on to Steps 2 and 3. It’s tempting to ask for a show of hands as to how many of you have been wounded directly or indirectly by the failure of the Church to exercise discipline in the way prescribed by Jesus. I suspect there would be an embarrassingly large percentage of hands raised. On the other hand, if I were to ask how many of you have been helped personally by church discipline offered according to today’s Gospel, there would be far fewer hands raised, if any.

If the problem lies in the refusal to do Step 1, why is that? There are two primary reasons. The first is that Christians love to hide falsely behind the proscription of Jesus in Matthew 7 (verses 1, 2), “Judge not, that you be not judged.” That excuse works only if we completely wrest it out of its context. Jesus is only saying that before we apply judgment to someone else, we need to be certain that we’re not guilty of exactly the same thing. This is very different from saying that we cannot call sin “sin,” or that we cannot help a believer who is found to be committing sin until we ourselves are 100% “perfect.” Raise your hand if you ever have known a person who is 100% perfect. And please raise your hand if you think you are 100% perfect! We need to talk! But admitting to being less than perfect should not deter us from addressing sin as sin and being ready and willing to help a brother or sister who is caught up in some particular sin.
 
The second reason we let ourselves off the hook is that we’re afraid of being labeled hypocrites. Yes, hypocrisy is a disease that riddles Christianity, just as it riddles all of humankind regardless of religious affiliation. It riddles those humans who have no religious affiliation at all; they just feel self-righteously and hypocritically good about themselves because they have no religion in their lives! Identifying sin and helping a fellow-believer to deal with it is only hypocritical if we refuse to acknowledge that we, too, are sinners saved by grace alone. Those persons who say that they will not accept Christianity because the Church is full of hypocrites need to buy mirrors.

There’s one other thing we fear here: it’s not just that we might feel ourselves to be hypocritical, but that we fear the other person will brand us as hypocrites. Put in different terms, we’re reluctant to exercise spiritual judgment for fear that we ourselves will be judged by the other person. Do you see what we’re doing? We’re acting defensively and turning everything upside down until, as often, it’s all about us instead of being about the other person. Yes, of course, there’s always the possibility that the other person will try to turn the tables and point the finger back at us. And we may even be right to feel that we deserve it.

But Jesus does not qualify His outline of the process in any way, least of all by saying, “Don’t go to your sinning brother until you are perfect, or until you have conquered your fearful reticence, or until you are certain that it will have the result for which you are hoping.” In fact, Jesus clearly is anticipating the possibility that Step 1, while essential, may be unsuccessful. That’s why he adds Steps 2 and 3.

I think we all would feel more comfortable with Step 2 if we didn’t have to preface it with Step 1. But let’s look at Step 2 in a more specific way: suppose you have gone to someone privately and that person has refused to listen. Can you think of exactly who are the one or two persons you would choose to join you on the next visit? Will they have to be perfect? What if they refuse and you only will have broadened the circle of persons who have been informed of your brother’s sin? How will you process their refusal? Is it that they prefer not to “get involved” in church discipline, or that they are rejecting you and your actions? Has it come back once more to being all about you?

I suspect there may have been some instances in the history of the Church where Step 1 has been left to a clergyperson, Step 2 has been skipped altogether and things have moved directly on to Step 3, the most comfortable step since it becomes a group action rather than the action of 1-3 persons. But isn’t it interesting that Jesus makes the group action the final step? There are really good reasons for that: why should we ever doubt that this is the right way to go?

What’s the entire point of Church discipline? It’s to bring the brother or sister in Christ to a place of repentance, to restore that person to full fellowship with the whole Body of Christ, to make that individual spiritually whole and healthy. Jesus understood that the best way to do this absolutely was not to drag the person in front of the whole church body, embarrassing the person, perhaps permanently damaging some interpersonal relationships and possibly losing the person altogether.

Then why do the last step at all? Because Jesus said to do it? That’s sufficient reason all by itself. But more to the point, Step 3 makes an unmistakable statement to the whole church body that sin must be identified as sin, not winked at, not overlooked, not ignored, not swept under the carpet, not allowed to fester until it’s infected the whole or has become an epidemic that severely damages the witness of the Church.

The Catholic Church may have led the way for centuries in trying to hide the sins of its people, notably including its clergy, and now there are priests who are afraid to wear the collar in public because they assume others are thinking, “There’s goes one of ‘those’ lecherous hypocrites.” I confess that I think about that frequently, acknowledging that I’m far from perfect and that my identity as a follower of Jesus is now more “public” than ever before. But the problem is that the Church has neglected to exercise discipline when such action was absolutely imperative. It’s still imperative.
 
Again we have a place where the Apostle Paul reflects on what Jesus said. In Galatians 6:1, he writes, “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.” Later on he writes even more strongly about a specific person in the church at Corinth who required more extreme measures: “When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord” (I Corinthians 5:4, 5).

I hope you were listening carefully to these words: “When you are assembled in the Name of the Lord Jesus... with the power of our Lord Jesus...” While this is Paul writing much later, it’s precisely the key to how Jesus moves directly from His words about church discipline to his statement first made to Peter and now repeated to the disciples as a whole, “whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 18:18). Whenever we exercise church discipline, we’re to be doing it in the Name and in the power of Jesus so that we may be instruments of God’s grace and forgiveness. And, as God’s instruments, we’re ratifying what is done in heaven.

And so, for the third time, this highlights the fact that what we’re doing is not “all about ourselves;” in fact, it’s not even the least bit about ourselves. We are God’s agents to help bring about awareness of sin, conviction concerning sin, repentance from sin and reception of the immeasurable grace of God’s forgiveness! If you see it in this way, then you personally are completely lost in the process. You almost stand outside of the process. This is 100% God’s action. You are His intermediary.

Yet Jesus says that if the person “listens to you, you have won your brother.” You are being used to restore a fellow Christian. What a privilege! And now the message is that you don’t have to be perfect, you don’t have to view yourself as a hypocrite, you don’t need to be held back by fear of a poor result, and you don’t have to measure yourself against public opinion or cultural accommodation. You simply have to do what God calls you to do and enables you to do, if you’re doing it in the Name and power of Jesus! How liberating is that? How humbling is that?
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Might we see this and understand it in the context of the commands Jesus gave in last week’s Gospel, to deny ourselves, to take up our crosses and to follow Him? We’re being asked to do something difficult, something that comes naturally to very few persons. But it’s a command of Jesus, repeated by Paul, that’s absolutely indispensable to the spiritual health both of individual believers and of the Church as a whole. And if we do it, following the steps outlined by Jesus, in “the spirit of gentleness” to which we’re admonished by Paul and in the Name and power of our Lord Jesus, then what we’re doing on earth will be exactly what God is doing in heaven. Who could ask for anything more?
 
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer

Our Gospel reading for this morning comes immediately after the great confession of Peter that was at the core of last week’s reading. And so, in a matter of a few verses, we go directly from Jesus saying, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build My Church... and I will give you the keys of the Kingdom” to His saying to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan, you are a stumbling block to me.” From “rock” to “stumbling block” is quite a fall. And if we find it shocking 2,000 years later, just imagine how this radical shift was heard by Peter and the other disciples!

Here, as often, it’s “context to the rescue.” If we think Peter has done something to damage permanently his relationship to Jesus, we find out otherwise in the next chapter when Peter is one of the three disciples Jesus takes with Him to the Mount of the Transfiguration. Peter, thinking only that he’s protesting the unthinkable fate Jesus has just predicted for Himself, was essentially declaring his own loyalty to Jesus and his incredulity that any such things could happen to the very Person he had just confessed to be “the Messiah and the Son of the living God.” How could this Person Who had fed 5,000, walked on water, calmed the sea, healed the sick, cast out demons and powerfully taught the multitudes end up suffering at the hands of the elders, chief priests and scribes and be put to death? What Peter wanted for Jesus was victory, acclaim and glory. Instead he was hearing about suffering and murder. How could it be?

The very words that Peter said, at least in Greek, have a distinctly different flavor from that of any standard English translation, which is usually some variant on “God forbid” or, as in the KJV, “be it far from You, Lord.” But Peter’s actual words were compassionate: “May there be mercy on You, O Lord!” Then he added, “Not ever will this happen to you!”

Remember that this is Peter speaking. It’s the same Peter who, at the Mount of Olives, told Jesus, “Even though all may fall away because of You, I will never fall away.” It’s the Peter who at the arrest in the Garden will draw his sword and slice off the ear of the high priest’s servant, yet at the trial will deny three times that he even knew Jesus. No wonder Jesus had to tell Peter that he should forgive his brother not just up to 7 times, but 77 times (or 490 times, if you follow the KJV; see Matthew 18:22). Peter was one who often needed forgiveness himself!

And so it was in today’s Gospel that Jesus, hearing Peter’s words and knowing Peter’s heart, nonetheless did indeed say to him, “Get behind me, Satan.” There’s no way to soften the words themselves through some other translation. But what did Jesus really mean? Was he really addressing Peter as Satan, seemingly negating all the glowing things He had so recently spoken to this stalwart disciple who was to be a great leader of the Church? “Stumbling block” is bad enough, but “Satan?” Really? What did Jesus mean?

Some persons have tried to soften the blow by suggesting that Jesus was not addressing Peter with these words, but was actually addressing Satan himself, who was using Peter in an attempt to block the path of Jesus to the Cross, that is, to prevent the very work of redemption that Jesus had come to accomplish through His substitutionary sacrifice: to prevent the victory of Jesus over sin and death, and thereby to prevent His victory over the power of Satan. Had that been allowed to happen, then the last statement in our Gospel reading would have been negated: “There are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.”
 
No matter how harsh the words of Jesus may have been and no matter how they would have been heard by Peter, Jesus explains His meaning in the next phrase: “for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but on man’s.” Peter could not have understood the full significance of this statement at the time. But he certainly would have understood it later.

God’s interests sprang out of His loving heart for humankind, a heart that loved us so that He gave us His only Son, lifting Him up on the Cross so that all who look on Him in faith should not perish but have everlasting life. Satan, whom Jesus Himself called “a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44), was determined to stand in the way of God’s purposes. Both Luke and John tell us that Satan entered into the heart of Judas when he betrayed His Lord and Savior in what Satan must have thought was yet another way to thwart God’s plan. But Jesus, when He received the report of the disciples whom He had sent out to proclaim His Kingdom with power to heal and cast out demons, said, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18). Jesus saw that the power of Satan already had been broken. Yet in his first letter 30 years later, Peter wrote, “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (I Peter 5:8). In spite of that present reality, we share the assurance of Martin Luther who, in the text of our opening hymn this morning, wrote:

The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him; his rage we can endure,
for lo! His doom is sure; one little word shall fell him.
And on this basis Luther went on to add:
Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also; the body they may kill:
God's truth abideth still; His kingdom is forever! 

That’s what God has done and is yet to do. That’s what was accomplished on the Cross through the atoning sacrifice of His Son. That’s the work of the One Whom Peter recognized as “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” That’s how God’s interests are defined, in contrast to the interests of men and the designs of Satan. God’s interests have to do with the establishment of His Kingdom forever. It’s that for which we pray daily when we say, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done.” And it’s what we profess in the Nicene Creed when we say, “His Kingdom will have no end.”

But that’s not the end of today’s gospel. It may be the end for many who consider themselves to be Christians, having grown up in the Church and under the influence of good Biblical teaching. It’s good information to believe. But it stops short of a person’s becoming a follower of Jesus, a disciple of His. There’s a next step without which Jesus says no one can be His disciple. It’s all embedded in these few but potent words:

“If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? 

What’s really involved here? It’s rather explicit; this definitely was not one of those occasions on which Jesus wished to be ambiguous. To be a Christian, here’s what’s required:

1. Self-denial,
2. cross-bearing,
3. following Jesus, and
4. losing one’s life for Jesus’ sake

All of that seems obvious and self-explanatory. Perhaps that’s at least one reason why preachers don’t mention these things more often. But I suspect it has more to do with wanting to retain members and pledge units rather than chasing members away by emphasizing the considerable demands of Jesus. Not one of these 4 things He requires is easy, and not one of them is remotely popular in our time and in our culture. But isn’t that precisely why these 4 things should be embedded somewhere in just about every sermon from every pulpit in every church that calls itself Christian? We should never be in the business of making people feel that the Church is just a place to get comfortable.

You’ve probably heard the adage that we’re not here only “to comfort the afflicted,” but also “to afflict the comfortable!” Do you know who authored that adage in the first place? It wasn’t a preacher. It was a Chicago newspaperman who wrote in 1902, “The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” (Finley Peter Dunne, “Mr. Dooley,”1902). It was another Chicagoan, the theologian Martin Marty, who commandeered the adage for the mission of the Church 30 years ago (1987), and it’s been heard from many pulpits ever since.

Perhaps there’s no better way to afflict the comfortable than to demand self-denial, cross-bearing, following Jesus and losing one’s life for His sake. Instead of planting ourselves as Christians at the intersection of happy and healthy, we need to find ourselves at the intersection of grace and mercy, where Ace is not the place, but where “the place” is at the foot of the Cross.

If Christians consciously positioned themselves beneath the Cross of Jesus, they would live different lives. They would see His wounds and His blood and be reminded of the cost of our redemption. They would have a completely different perspective on what we’re doing at this table and what’s being done here for us. They would come to see that whatever passes in their lives as “self-sacrifice” grows dim in the light of the greatest sacrifice of all time. They would “let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also.”

Then, from this perspective, they would hear differently the words of Jesus, “Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” And they would hear differently these questions of Jesus as though they were coming from the lips of Christ on the Cross: “What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”

How will you answer these questions of Jesus this morning? Will you even allow yourself to hear the questions? Last Sunday Jesus asked you, “Who do you say that I am?” Now He comes again asking in essence, “If you say with Peter that I am the Messiah, the Son of the living God, then are you prepared to deny yourself, to take up your cross, to follow Me and to lose your life for My sake?”

This is precisely how the Christian faith is meant to play out in our lives! The Church absolutely is not a place to come to get comfortable. While it’s not a place to be miserable, it’s definitely not a place not to be cost-cutting, but to be cost-counting.

What should being a Christian require of you? It’s far more than Sunday morning attendance with a passing nod to the offering basket. It’s a commitment of your entire life to the One Who died for you. The Church is not a social club where you simply can enjoy fellowship with people who think the way you think. It’s not simply a place where a beautiful building, beautiful music and beautiful liturgy will soothe your soul. It is instead a launching pad for mission, a place where service begins when the service ends, a place where the longsuffering of God is translated into our own compassion for all those who are in any sort of need, spiritually first of all but also materially and emotionally. It’s a place where prayer leads to action.
 
Yes, it definitely is a place where we hear not only these words of Jesus: “You shall find rest unto your souls” (Matthew 11:29); but where we also hear these words: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34). Those words were spoken immediately after Jesus had said, “Whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 10:33).

Those who claim to follow Jesus yet ignore the cost of discipleship are mocking Jesus’ words. Those who actually do follow Him will find that there is a cost. Stewardship is not just a matter of paying tithes to the Church. It is that, but it also is stewardship of one’s entire life, a re-ordering of one’s life priorities, a determination to hear His voice, to follow His leading and to walk in His ways.

The Way of the Cross is not an easy way. Nowhere are we told that it will be. We can be grateful that for most of us it will not be nearly as costly as it was for Jesus. But the Way of the Cross should not be perceived as drifting downstream with the current. In fact, it’s just the opposite. It’s fighting one’s way upstream, against our culture, against our inclinations, against our natural passions, against our innate spiritual apathy and against a set of standards that never has been acceptable to God. What is acceptable to God is that we “present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to Him, which is our spiritual service of worship” (Romans 12:1).

What does it mean to you to be a “living sacrifice?” What does it mean to follow Jesus? What does it mean to deny yourself? What does it mean to be a cross-bearer? What does it mean to lose your life for His sake? According to Jesus, these are crucial questions that each one of us is responsible to ask and answer. Ask them this morning. Ask them this week. Ask them on your knees before God’s throne of grace. But whatever you do, do not postpone the exercise.

The author of Hebrews wrote, “We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end” (Hebrews 3:14). Then he quotes these words from Psalm 95: “Today if you would hear His voice, harden not your hearts” (Psalm 95:7b, 8a).

We have today. Don’t let it go by without listening to Jesus all over again. Hear His voice. He says, “Take up your cross, and follow Me.” Answer Him in the words of an old gospel hymn: “Follow, I will follow Thee, my Lord, follow every passing day. My tomorrows are all known to Thee, Thou wilt lead me all the way.”
 
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen