Matthew 18:15-20
Matt Sturtevant, preaching

I have shared often before from the pulpit that I love to hike.  I love to be outside and most of my favorite places are outdoors.  This morning, I want to tell you about a new favorite place.  This summer, my family and I went to Zion National Park in Utah and my dad, brother, and I went on a hike to a place called the Angel’s Landing.  The trailhead starts in Zion Canyon – a beautiful, serene place, and hikes up past the river to a slot canyon on the side.  The trail continues into this cool slot canyon, with steep, high walls on each side, until it reaches a series of switchbacks called Walter’s Wiggles.  You climb these tight, steep switchbacks, until you reach a view that looks something like this…

This is Angel’s Landing – a huge promontory that stretches out into the canyon, with a narrow ridge on top.  It wasn’t until I was on it until I realized how narrow it really was.  The trail winds its way slowly out this catwalk-like ridge, with gorgeous views on either side.  But the hike is not a simple one.  The top of the ridge is made up of slickrock, which means that we were walking on this tilted, slanted, slippery catwalk out the last mile.  Just in case we weren’t nervous enough, there were chains along most of the trail, helping you to hang on and reminding you what happens if you don’t.  So we made our way down this narrow trail, all the while remembering that if we strayed too far to the right or to the left, we would end up with a less-than-angelic landing of ourselves.  So we walked the line and found it was well-worth it – an incredible view of Zion Canyon from both sides of the landing, a surprise visit by a California condor with a huge wingspan, and of course, the sense of accomplishment that we had beat this difficult trail.

 We have been taking a walk with Jesus and his disciples through the book of Matthew this summer, and this week finds us in Matthew 18.  It is not long after the mountain-top experience of the transfiguration, where Jesus and Peter and James and John have climbed the mountain and have experienced God in a new way.  And we are not far from the triumphal entry, where Jesus crests the top of the Mount of Olives and enters the city as a victorious hero.  We are in between the mountains with Jesus and we hear him speak two messages rolled into one.

The first message found in the passage for today is a powerful one – “It’s up to us.”

First, a clarification.  Have you ever heard the phrase, “putting your words in my mouth”?  This morning, we read a passage in which Matthew put words into Jesus’ mouth.  Remember that Matthew’s gospel was written decades after Jesus had died, was resurrected, and ascended.  The new church was struggling to figure out how to follow the legacy of Christ without his physical presence in their lives.  Paul writes about some of those struggles in his letters.  Church members were not treating each other fairly – the rich ones got special treatment while the poor did not.  They fought about who their leaders should be.  There were some that stirred up gossip and conflict and it caused dissention and distraction to the church.  Therefore, as Matthew wrote these words, he wrote them with the full knowledge that these squabbling early church members would read these words and hear how they should respond.  So, he took the oral tradition that was passed down to him – the words and sermons that Jesus spoke – and put words into Jesus’ mouth.  Jesus did not preach about life in the church, because it did not exist yet.  But he did doubtless talk about how we are to relate to one another and how we should treat each other and Matthew adapted these two realities into his gospel.  In my eyes, it doesn’t lessen the impact of the words, but strengthens them – it creates a new applicability that was not there when Jesus first preached.

And so Jesus, and Matthew, give us a teaching on how we are to deal with a conflict in the church.  Many of you have heard me talk before about the Matthew 18 principle – it is the method for dealing with disagreements between fellow Christians and I believe it is one of the hardest things that we can do – regardless of our age or experience.  And it starts with the message, “It’s up to us.”

Say you have a disagreement with your fellow Christian – not an ideological disagreement, but a relational one.  You feel that they have done something to wrong you.  They have hurt you.  You feel that the relationship is a broken one.  What does Matthew 18 say you should do about it?

Step one is honesty.  Go to that brother or sister.  Tell them what you think that they did.  Tell them honestly how they hurt you.  “It’s up to us” to make the first stab at reconciliation and unity.  This is probably the hardest part of the Matthew 18 principle.  Because what is easier?  You hurt me, so instead of tell you, I will sit on it.  It will stew about it.  I may tell you and maybe even myself that did it not hurt and smile when I am around you, but then I burn with anger when my true feelings are out.  Maybe I even go to find me an ally – someone who I can complain about you to.  Someone that will agree with me and I can get them to tell you how badly I was hurt and how horrible you are.  The Bible says “no”.  It says this is not the way to unity.  It says “It’s up to us” to go to the person directly and honestly and tell them what hurt – how we were wrong.  The first step is honesty.

The second step is humility.  Maybe I go to you and tell you the truth and still feel like there is a conflict between us.  That reconciliation has not happened yet.  Matthew 18 tells us that what we must do then is to humble ourselves enough to seek the opinion of a wise intercessor.  To take the one who you disagree with and together go to someone who can offer advice or counsel.  This is a step of humility because I may be wrong!  To humble myself enough to say, “let’s go to a third party and see what they say,” is difficult.  Now, this is not an ally.  This is not finding someone that we know will agree with us, but humbling ourselves enough to put the value of the relationship above the satisfaction of being right. 

Marriage counseling can be an example of this – our relationship is hurting, so let’s invite another in to help us make sense of what we need to do next.  Counselors all the time, though, see couples come in where one partner is looking for a ally – someone to tell him or that he or she is right.  That’s not what Matthew 18 is talking about.  When we humble ourselves to put the relationship first, that’s when unity can truly be achieved.

But maybe neither of those steps work.  Maybe the conflict remains.  It is here that Matthew talks about the church and says bring the conflict to the church as a whole.  Remember, now, he was not talking about First Baptist Church calling a congregational meeting because two of its members are having a disagreement.  The average church then was a house church – a handful of members that could together make decisions like a family – everybody speaks their piece and together reach consensus.  But if the conflict was one that overwhelmed this family – if someone was breaking up the unity of the church with this conflict – if they chose to insist on being right over being unified, then this house church was to chose unity.  It hurts to see someone leave the family, but the reality is that sometimes, we must let them go.  The final step is differentiation.  Murray Bowen – a family systems therapist – used this term to describe the process of me being me and letting you be you.  We cannot fix everyone.  Jesus let the rich young ruler walk away because his money got in the way.  He let would-be disciples walk away  because they had to care for what were in the long run more trivial matters.  If Jesus couldn’t fix everyone, if he had to let them walk away, what makes us think that we can do better.  Differentiation means not reacting to their conflict and bowing to their demands, but letting them walk away.  Jesus didn’t run after the Rich Young Ruler and tell him that he’d be okay if he only gave up half his possessions.  It was painful, yes, but not as painful as letting them destroy the unity and priority of his mission.  Would there be opportunity to welcome them back?  Absolutely!  Only verses later, Jesus claims that we should not forgive 7 times, but 70 times 7!  But unity and priority of the goals of the church had to be the standard – then and today.

It’s up to us.  This is a lesson in maturity.  Honesty.  Humility.  And differentiation.  Jesus and Matthew call us to a higher goal.

If the first lesson is “It’s up to us.”  What is the second?  Hear again these words from Matthew 18: 19-20.  Matthew seems to make an about face here and shifts from the message of “it’s up to us” to the message of “it’s up to God.”  When we gather in prayer, God does amazing things.  When two or three gather in his name, Christ is with them.  In worship.  At a prayer meeting.  Around a hospital bed.  Over the phone.  When we gather in prayer, God does amazing things.  I have seen it.

I have seen cancer tests come back clean.

I have seen broken relationships healed.

I have seen victims of massive heart attacks walk around healthy.

I have seen the most ardent atheists baptized in the waters of faith.

I have seen all of these answers to prayer.

But…I have also seen dear friends die after we prayed for them to live.  I have seen cancer return after we prayed for a clean bill of health.  I have seen marriages fall apart…

Does it mean that those prayers weren’t good enough?

Our faith wasn’t strong enough?

We didn’t say the right words?  No.

The lyrics of a song by Scott Kryppayne help me understand this better than anything else.  He sings: “Sometimes he calms the storm and sometimes he calms his child.”

Sometimes, God answers our prayers the way we want them answered.  Sometimes, he gives us the resources needed to deal with another answer.

Sometimes, we receive healing that we want.

Sometimes, we receive the knowledge that God will heal in the life to come.

Sometimes, we receive reconciliation.

Sometimes, we receive the strength to deal with the brokenness.

But, God always hears the prayers that we offer and is always in our midst when we gather to pray.

And that prayer always makes a difference.  Either in the storm, or in his child.

But, you can see that with this message – It’s up to God – there is a danger lurking nearby.

There is a danger in each of these messages – “it’s up to God” and “it’s up to us”.  There is danger from falling from one side to another – emphasizing one message to the exclusion of the other.  Just like the treacherous hike to Angel’s Landing, the walk of faith is sometimes a catwalk on slickrock, dangerously nearing the edge of two false assumptions.

Some read the first message – it’s up to us – and write God out of the equation.  In fact, the first message almost reads like a psychology text book.  You could almost lift those verses out of Matthew and place them in one of the works of Murray Bowen, or another psychologist.  Differentiation, triangling, human interaction.  If we are not careful, we can turn these words of scripture into cold, clinical, Godless interaction.  This passage has been used to justify unfair judgment, self-righteousness, and the destruction of unity in the church.  If we don’t hold onto that chain, we can slip into clinical precision, and leave God out of the process.

Or on the other side – it’s up to God – these verses have been used in equally unhealthy ways.  Some have taken these verses to treat God like the Easy Button from the Staples commercials.  Just push the button and God will do whatever you ask for.  You don’t need to go to the doctor.  Just push the Easy Button.  You don’t need to face your addiction.  Just push the easy button.  You don’t need to work at this relationship.  Just push the easy button.  If we don’t hold onto the chains, we can just as easily slip to the other side, which is just as perilous.

Our calling is to balance between these two messages.  Not ignoring either, but not leaning too far to either side:

We go the doctor, the hospital, or the surgeon AND we pray for God’s healing to work through those hands.

We pray to receive God’s gift of grace and salvation AND we respond to that gift by “working out” our salvation by declaring him our Lord and Savior, following with the act of baptism, and living a life of faith.

We pray for our children and our grandchildren that they might know the faith that has sustained us AND then we volunteer for Faith Forest.

We vote for a pulpit committee who seeks the vision of the congregation, searches resumes, and interviews candidates, AND at the same time, they and we humble ourselves in prayer for God to be a part of the process and to help us as we move forward.

It’s up to God AND it’s up to us.

Benedict of Nursia, a 6^th century monk, is perhaps best known for this sentiment: “a balanced life of prayer and work.”  To be consumed with one over the other is to miss the point.  The life of faith requires balance.  I believe that is why Matthew put these two messages together.  A balanced life of work and prayer, or as the more contemporary paraphrase goes:

Work as though it is up to you.  Pray as though it is up to God.  Because it is.