Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Jubilee Episcopal Church is an incense-swinging, sanctus-bell-ringing, stomp-your-feet- singing ancient way of following Jesus with more than enough room for you to bring your compassion, curiosities, and complete self. We're rooted in NW Austin, Texas, but connect with folks globally in sharing a joyful and inclusive Christian faith. The title comes from a prayer found in Compline, a service in the Book of Common Prayer, where we intercede for Jesus Christ to care and tend for the hurting, the sick, and the weary, but also, to shield the joyous. This prayer is our heartbeat at Jubilee. You'll hear sermons, devotions, and other occasional audio treats here -- including the occasional baby squawk or squeak from our decidedly family-friendly community!
We worship Sundays at 9:30am in person at 12129 FM 620 Ste 310 Austin, TX and online!
Watch Live: https://www.youtube.com/@jubileeatx/streams
Website: https://www.jubileeatx.org
IG: https://www.instagram.com/jubileeatx/
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. Now, if I were Jesus, I would have totally led this whole teaching on conflict resolution with that line right there. Because, I mean, that's the incentive for all that other stuff right here, right? I mean, all we have to do is agree with each other, and God will give us anything that we ask. Easy, right? Just agree. Now, obviously I'm not Jesus, but I'm just saying, I think that last bit of information might have been the main point of this narrative. I mean, gathering and unity is sort of the whole Christian thing, right? So, all of Christianity began with this mismatched group of disciples who came together to follow this Middle Eastern miracle worker. This Messiah, Jesus. One commentary says of this passage, to be Christian is to be bound together in unity. And though we are all members of the same body of Christ, not every part is exactly the same. And Paul talks about this. I mean, he says, imagine if our bodies are made up of all hands and no feet, or essentially all legs and no arms. We really wouldn't get very far. So, each of us individually provides something different. And it's because of those differences that the body works as well as it does. The body serves a greater purpose when we put it together than just the hand or the eye serves alone. I mean, it's amazing when we work well together. And also, I can see why Jesus didn't just start this conversation leading with that bit about unity and agreement. I think Jesus knew a little something about humans. He knew that agreement is hard. He knew that getting people together is hard. And perhaps even more to the point, he knew that when you try to do either of those things, that conflict is inevitable. Now, let's go back to the top of this passage for just a second. It begins, if another member of the church sins against you. So, I just want to be clear right here because that word for member in the Greek, it actually probably would be better translated like your brother or your sibling. So, Jesus is really pointing to this like familial bond of those who are part of the body of Christ. This is not just some random person off the street who offends you. It's addressing people who have agreed to be a part of this family. You've agreed to this contract in a way. So, if your brother or sister sins against you, you go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. And I want to just stop right there for a second. It says, if you feel harmed, to go and say something, to tell the truth. And I want to be clear about that. And Reverend Lizzie actually shared this in the newsletter this week. But we should not confuse peacemaking with suppressing conflict or use it as a means to silence folks who have been harmed. That's not what Jesus is saying. In fact, Jesus' first step is not to sign an NDA, okay? His first step is to get it out. He wants us to get it out. We don't have to hide our hurt for the sake of peace. So, let's be clear about that. You can speak your truth. You can say something. And then it goes on. And it says, if you're listened to, you have regained your brother or your sister. And then it lists the next steps. So, it seems that Jesus in this passage is preparing his disciples, preparing us for the inevitable conflict that comes with belonging to a family of diverse individuals. After all, Jesus knows that it's not our sameness that ties us together. It's not going to be our sameness. It's our faith in him, our faith in Christ. And the desire to be united in Christ, that's the faith that draws us out to take this risk with these people we don't really know. And we take a risk to become family of all things, right? With people who are nothing like us. But as I read somewhere before, the fact that we risk relationships with people outside of our own gender, our own nationality, our own language, our own ethnicity, our own socioeconomic status, that is precisely what makes us Christians. It's the overcoming of such differences. That's what distinguishes us from everyone else. And everyone else, let's be honest, the outside world, they organize around sameness, right? That's not us. Sorry, we are not free from each other, actually, so we don't get to break away from each other. We are free in each other. Being in community with one another across difference is inherently the Christian value. And if that's the case, then that conflict comes with it. Okay, now that I got you nice and all unified, let's talk about the conflict. So this conflict, or these so-called rules of Christ, is the way that Jesus gives us to deal with conflict in the family. And it kind of sounds harsh, right? Especially that end part. But as the New Interpreter's Bible says, As serious and stringent though these procedures are, they are in the context not of some self-righteous vindictiveness, but of this radical caring for the marginal and of grace and forgiveness beyond anything that we can imagine. In other words, we don't start this process having already decided we really don't want to reconcile with this brother. We just need to get through this process so that we can get him out of the church. We don't want to have anything to do with him. We begin this with the heart of love for our family members, of radical caring, and a heart to protect all of the individuals involved in the whole unity of the body of Christ. And I know sometimes it's hard for us to imagine how an individual offense between two people can impact the entire body of Christ. Because as Westerners, unfortunately, we pride ourselves on individuality. We focus on our individual success, on that of our own household, of our partners, of our own children. However, we often forget that we worship with a much larger body of saints, both living and already with Christ. When we join that Christian community, when we decide to follow Jesus, we immediately belong to another family. We link ourselves together under Christ's headship, despite our differences. Now, if this passage, this message of Christ concerning conflict in the church was only about protecting us as individuals, he could have ended this whole thing after that first step. You meet with your brother, your sibling in Christ, y'all work it out, that's it, that's the end of it. But he doesn't. So this is not a message about an easy rejection of one brother or sister or sibling in Christ. It's not a message about disunity or even excommunication. As many as us have been taught, right, Jesus actually instructs us to keep working towards reconciliation, to keep working at it. In fact, every step of this process is meant to reconcile this family that's created in Christ and to bring unity back to the body. The hope is that no one member, no person who belongs to this family, it continues to be hurt. And Jesus essentially says it's not until we have exhausted all of these efforts that he's laid out here and the offender again refuses to reconcile that the offender essentially makes the choice that they no longer want to be a part or united with this family. And that's when it gets what we think is harsh. Jesus said, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Now, I know some of us come from churches and have been around church leaders who use this scripture legalistically as a license to excommunicate or shun members who disagree with them, or even with those whom the leaders themselves have determined are harmful and are trying to keep quiet. And they quickly label those people Gentiles and in this attempt to get rid of them, right. And after all, at the time that this was written, Gentiles were viewed as the outcast or the heathens and those people who kind of didn't belong. But if we were to really treat them as Gentiles, why don't we take a look at how Jesus actually treated those Gentiles? To begin, the author of Matthew is though he was likely a very devout Jewish person, interestingly enough, includes five women in the genealogy of Jesus, right. Now that's already rare. There's five women there. But three of the women mentioned are Gentiles. Three of the women in Jesus' own family are Gentiles. And one of them is married to a Gentile. And then in Matthew eight and five, Jesus himself has another encounter with the Gentile. Now, how does Jesus treat this Gentile? And wait, on top of this person being a Gentile, this person is a Roman centurion. The Roman soldiers were the most hated of Gentiles among the Jewish people, as you can imagine. They were the ones who kept them in line. But this man has the audacity to come to Jesus, to come and ask Jesus to heal his servant. And what does Jesus do? Now, we would think that Jesus would say, this is a Gentile, you're unclean, get away from me. Why are you asking me to do things for you? Because some of us would want to do that. But Jesus does something unheard of. He offers to go to this man's house and heal this man's servant. Now, in addition to this, for a Jewish person to enter into a Gentile's house, especially like right before Passover, which we just heard about in the Old Testament reading, that would make them unclean, right? But Jesus still offers to go. And he goes to this Gentile's house and he heals his servant. So Jesus heals Gentiles then. And then further along in Matthew, it's noted by the religious leaders of the time that Jesus spent time eating and drinking with Gentiles, and that he was a friend of tax collectors and sinners. So when we view this passage through the lens of the Gospel as a whole, that verse, let such as a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector, takes on a little bit of a different meaning. It would seem that as opposed to shunning our siblings by washing our hands of them, we're supposed to treat them the way that Jesus treated the Gentiles and the tax collectors. They are included in his family. He heals them, he feeds them, and he goes out of his way to reach them in love. And then to really emphasize what he's thinking here, in the very next passage, Jesus shows how often we should extend this grace to our siblings when Peter asks, Jesus, so how many times are we supposed to forgive our brother or sister? I mean, what are the limits of this, you know? What's the limits of your grace? And Jesus responds 70 times 7. Or essentially, for those of you who are Mean Girls fans out there, the limit does not exist, okay? So basically, we are never to stop offering grace. We are never to stop extending the opportunity for belonging, particularly when we're doing it as part of a loving, supportive community. So we trek ahead and during the conflict and the process of reconciliation so that we can gather together because there's power in gathering together. And the enemy kind of knows that, right? The enemy wants us to be lonely and isolated because he knows there's power in our gathering together. And we gather together despite the difference. We gather with people we don't know and those we do know. We gather with people we like and those we don't like. We gather with friends. We gather with strangers. We gather when we want to and when we really don't want to. We gather when we're hurting and we gather when we're healing. We gather in faith knowing that where two or three are gathered together in Christ's name, there he is among us. And that's the point for me, guys, to all of this, to this whole reconciliation thing. Conflict is inevitable, but we can't let it stop us from gathering together because when we gather, Jesus meets us there. And when Jesus himself enters the chat, miraculous things start to happen. In fact, the world itself is turned upside down. Amen.