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16 Pentecost (RCL), 4 September 2005
A Sermon on Matthew 18:15-20 by Samuel Zumwalt

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Matthew 18:15-20 [NRSV Text from BibleWorks]

15 "If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. 16 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. 17 If the member 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. 18 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. 19 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. 20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them."

ALTARED HEARTS

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

I have been to Honduras nine times since the terrible category 5 hurricane Mitch hit that incredibly poor country in October 1998. One-third of the country’s roughly six million residents lost their homes, thousands of lives were lost especially in the capital city of Tegucigalpa where approximately 2 million people live. The hearts of people all around the globe were moved by the horrible destruction there. Since that time countless church groups have gone to Honduras year after year to help reconstruct what was already a third world country.

And now New Orleans, Gulfport, Biloxi, and Mobile – but especially New Orleans have suffered such devastation that chaos still reigns there with communications largely cut off, the number of dead is still unknown and perhaps rising, and those that have survived have indeed become reptilian in their will to survive. As of Wednesday night of this week, looters were still wading or paddling their way through streets filled with water, in some places up to 20 feet deep, seeking not only food and drink but whatever they could lay their hands on for materials to barter. There were news reports of weapon-wielding gangs of people moving past a single policeman here or there with impunity. Most of the news footage has been running over and over again. Much of the information seems to be either anecdotal or indecipherable video images without interpretation of what was being seen.

But there is some hopeful news as the hearts of millions have been opened and dollars are starting to pour into the accounts of first responders like the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and other charitable organization. Neighboring states and cities, largely unaffected by the huge category 4 storm Katrina, have begun to offer temporary housing and medical care for survivors.

It seems again that Charles Dickens’ oft-quoted line applies: “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times” (from A Tale of Two Cities).

I have seen first hand and have joined in the number of responders to the devastation in Honduras. And now, dear people of God, I ask: “How will you respond to the heartache in our own backyard?”

Right now all the dollars that we can afford to give need to be given to relief agencies. You can give directly to the ELCA Domestic Disaster Relief or Lutheran Disaster Relief (or internationally through Lutheran World Relief). You can give to first responders like the Red Cross or the Salvation Army. If you have a policy with the American Lutheran insurance company Thrivent, you can have your gift to one of the Lutheran disaster relief funds matched. Please give as you are able.

If you are a medical person and have the flexibility to donate time and labor, you might well offer your services right away as part of the early response efforts. You could contact the Louisiana or Mississippi Medical Boards of Examiners about getting credentials to volunteer.

Needless to say, there will be a long hard road to recovery all along the Gulf Coast. Lutheran churches may need to be rebuilt or renovated. Social service agencies may well need to be rebuilt or renovated. Certainly housing for the poor will need to be constructed, and Habitat for Humanity and others will probably be right there in the middle of those efforts. When the time comes in several months, we may well organize a mission team from this congregation to help in the rebuilding efforts when we know how we can help and not simply be in the way.

If you cannot give money or time or labor as they are needed, then you can pray for the victims of Katrina and for those that are on the frontline of relief efforts. You can pray for our congregation as we discern how best to help and in what ways. You can write letters and e-mails to our elected leaders encouraging them to do the right thing at the right time for the right reasons. Anyone can talk the talk. What we need right now is people that can walk the walk.

Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

Why should we do this? It almost goes without saying. These are our neighbors, and Christ calls us to be neighbors to them. These are the least of these Christ’s sisters and brothers, and He is there with them in their suffering and so should we! We don’t just do this, because we here in coastal Carolina know that it could be us someday soon. We don’t do this, because it is the humane thing to do. We do this, because this is what it means to be Christian – to be “little Christs” to our neighbor (as Martin Luther said).

So what does all this have to do with Matthew 18:15-20, a word about truth telling in the Christian community? And what does this have to do with what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called our life together?

Methodist bishop William Willimon tells about team-teaching an ethics class (probably with his good friend Stanley Hauerwas) at Duke University, when Willimon was Dean of the Chapel there. He says that each student presented a case study of some ethical dilemma in which they were involved and how they responded. In each case, the student was afraid to be thought judgmental by a friend and so they typically did not confront their friend with the friend’s hurtful or wrongful behavior.

At the end of the course, Willimon told his students: “You people give friendship a bad name. Maybe Aristotle was wrong (about friendship in his Nicomachean ethics). I find it interesting that whereas Aristotle made friendship the basis for ethics, you make friendship the excuse for immoral behavior. Let me just say this. Please, don’t any of you be my best friend. I am too dependent on somebody who cares enough about me to say, ‘Now that was not one of your better moments, was it?’ or ‘What the heck were you thinking when…?’ or ‘There, you’ve messed up again.” I don’t need any of you to aid my self-deceit. Please, don’t be my friend” (from Pulpit Resource, September 2005, 42-43).

Willimon continues: “There can be no community worthy of the name, no connection that’s deep, no friendship without truthfulness. And there can be no truthfulness without judgment, without that risky, sometimes painful willingness to confront. Judgment, the assignment of right and wrong, the acknowledgement of genuine injustice, the naming of real hurt, the telling of truth, can be an act of deepest love. I love the truth enough to tell it. I love you enough to risk it.”

Bishop Willimon applies this line of thinking to today’s Gospel lesson: “Is Jesus Christ, the one who not only tells the truth about our sin but also in the same breath forgives our sin, is Jesus Christ capable of producing a new people, a reformed humanity, a new people call the church, or not?”

He concludes: “…whenever two or three of us are gathered to tell the truth to one another, to risk relationship on a more truthful level than usual, to seek repentance and to offer and receive forgiveness, then Jesus is there with us. It’s a high standard for community, a high requirement for the real presence of Christ. This great mystery is at the heart of the miracle we call church” (Pulpit Resource, September 2005, 43).

Every one of us has experienced more than one confrontation about our behavior. Whether it was a friend or a detractor, we probably responded defensively at first and then later we had to think about that confrontation. Was that person telling us the truth? Was that person telling us the truth based upon what she or he presumed was the facts? Did that person care enough about us to confront us with the truth as a real friend? Or was it simply part of that person’s own need to get in her or his gibes at a perceived weakness or even as payback for a perceived slight or even as giving a come-uppance?

Where there is a real connection with the one confronting, there can be genuine friendship and even love. This is what good parents and good children do for one another. This is what good spouses do for one another. This is what good friends do for one another. This is what good churches do for one another. This is what a good Christ Jesus does for his friends and enemies alike even from his lonely cross.

When Christ Jesus died for the ungodly, which, in all truth, includes you and me, He was telling us the truth about ourselves. We are, by nature, truthfully turned in upon ourselves and will even execute God’s incarnate Son rather than admit that God is our Maker and Owner to whom we will, at last, give an account for our lives. Christ Jesus also tells us by His death that God truthfully loves us enough to die for us to save us from what we deserve – eternal death, eternal loneliness, and eternal separation from the God that we truly reject again and again and again.

The meaning of Holy Baptism is not that we buy a little fire insurance just in case there is a God. The meaning of Holy Baptism is not that we go through this quaint little naming ritual in order to make grandparents happy, affirm our familial heritage, and get a little return on the money that we have invested in the Church. The meaning of Holy Baptism is not that we get a little wet or a lot wet on one occasion so that we ever after can claim that we hold title to a mansion in the sky.

No…the meaning of Holy Baptism is that we die daily with Christ, burying our selfishness each day, and being raised no longer as an autonomous self marked by freedom to define ourselves as we wish but rather being raised to have Christ Jesus living in us as Lord and Savior who directs our every thought, word, and deed! I don’t just use the benefits of a long dead Son of God, like a get-out-of-jail-free card in the game of Monopoly, to get me off the hook from the demands of God’s Law.

I die to myself and all my truthful or untruthful self-affirmations daily. Now it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me – that’s what Holy Baptism means according to Martin Luther in the Small Catechism (“All this He has done that I may be His own, live under Him in His kingdom, and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness” –and He defines what that means.)

And the truth about you and me is this: if Christ Jesus is not living in me directing my every thought, word, and deed at every moment of every day then I am wasting the death of God’s only begotten Son and all His benefits! And I need to die again to myself whether that’s a pietistic thing to do or not!

So…what does this have to do with Matthew 18 and the disaster along the American Gulf Coast? Glad you asked!

Where is the Lord Jesus today? Among all the other places in the world in which there is much suffering, Christ Jesus is right there in the midst of the chaos in New Orleans and along the American Gulf Coast. Whether this horrific event is a teachable moment for American narcissism, only God knows! Doubtless some self-called prophet or six will say this is God’s retribution at work, while she or he feasts on the sweet meat of self-righteousness.

But Christ is there in the chaos, the suffering, and the devastation and if you and I belong to Christ, and if He lives in you and me, then we will be there, too, in whatever ways that are helpful and not simply all about us! And that’s the truth that Christ Jesus tells you and me today, because He cares deeply about the communities that bear His name and the people that are marked with His Holy Cross. If we are truthfully part of the holy Christian Church, the one holy, catholic and apostolic Church, then we will open our hearts, our minds, and our wallets to the heartache and the misery not just today while the story is plastered all over the news but in the months to come when it is no longer news.

American Christians love to sing the hymn “What A Friend We Have In Jesus.” The truth about us that is worth telling and worth living is that we have a friend Jesus in us when daily we die to sin including all our selfishness and when we give our lives away in humble service just like our Lord. When He comes to us today in bread and wine, will He find a submissive and penitent sinner who willingly says: “Take My Life That I May Be Consecrated Lord To Thee?”

Today when you come to the altar through your monetary gifts and then with the gift of your empty hands as you come for Holy Communion, ask that you may have an “altered” heart – a heart that is offered up in thanks and praise to God – a heart that is truthfully filled with love of God and neighbor. Indeed that the heart of Jesus is beating in your chest!

© Samuel D. Zumwalt
St. Matthew’s Evangelical Lutheran Church
Wilmington , North Carolina USA
szumwalt@bellsouth.net

[An MP3 version of this and each week’s sermon is available after 8 p.m. Saturdays at www.stmatthewsch.org]


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