September 10, 2023
Rev. Mary Erickson
Hope Lutheran Church
Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20
What Is Bound and Loosed
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
This morning we hear something Jesus said that’s hard to understand at first blush. At first reading, it sounds very straight forward. It sounds like the kind of self-help Step – One -Two -Three kind of advice that we see all over the internet. “Three behaviors from airline passengers that drive flight attendants crazy.” “Five red flags employers look for in a hiring interview.” “Seven key actions to help you retire by age 55.” Today’s gospel reading sounds like “Three steps towards conflict resolution.”
But the scriptures are rarely ever simple and superficial. As St. Jerome said, “The Scriptures are shallow enough for a babe to come and drink without fear of drowning and deep enough for a theologian to swim in without ever touching the bottom.”
No, there’s more to this text than its face value. It is indeed about our neighbor. How do we get along with our neighbor, especially when there’s some conflict stirring the kettle?
Jesus is addressing how we deal with our neighbor when conflict is present, especially within the faith community. And we can pick up some significant clues to Jesus’ understanding of conflict.
First of all, what agitates between you and me affects more than just the two of us; it touches the whole community. Family systems theories reveal just how intimately connected all of us truly are! We live together in a great human web. And like a spider web, a disturbance on one end of the web jangles through the whole system.
If you’ve ever worked in a department or on a floor where two co-workers despise one another, you know just how true it is that their trouble affects everyone who works with them!
At creation, God said, “It’s not good for the human to be alone.” We were created in community, and it’s in community that we thrive or fail. This is why so many of the commandments deal with our human connectivity.
So Jesus suggests that if you and I can’t work it out between ourselves, then maybe it’s time to bring in a third party to help mediate the trouble. Or for really tough conflicts, maybe it’ll even take a whole village to sort it out.
Jesus widens the circle as the scope of the conflict intensifies. But then it seems to reach a point where we just have to say “enough!” If the issue remains unresolved even when the whole community is brought in, Jesus says, “Let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”
Finally! We can brush off our hands and be done with them!
But is that really what Jesus is saying? Here’s where we come to realize that Jesus’ words are more involved.
First of all, let’s look at where Matthew placed this passage. Immediately before, Jesus tells the parable about the lost sheep. “Take care that you don’t despise one of these little ones,” he says. Then he tells about the herd of 100 sheep. One sheep goes missing. The shepherd abandons the 99 in order to find the one wayward sheep. He concluded, “So it is not the will of your Fater in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.”
That’s right before today’s text. And immediately after, we get next week’s gospel reading. Peter asks Jesus how many times he needs to forgive his brother. He ups the ante from three in today’s text to seven. “Do I need to forgive him seven times?” But Jesus expands it even more. “Not just seven times, Peter, but seventy times seven.”
So to suggest that today’s reading is a simple one, two, three strikes and you’re out doesn’t mesh with the surrounding passages. There’s something deeper going on.
“Let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” These were the despised of Israel. But Jesus … well, these were the people he sought out! Matthew, the writer of this gospel, knew first-hand how Jesus regarded tax collectors. Jesus didn’t give up on Matthew. Jesus didn’t scorn or condemn him. He invited Matthew to join in his holy fellowship.
Jesus sought out Gentiles and tax collectors. So when he calls us to regard the person we’re in an unresolvable conflict with as a Gentile or a tax collector, he’s getting at something much more profound about our human situations. These persons we’re at odds with, they still have tremendous worth in Jesus’ eye.
Jesus ties our hard work in conflict resolution to some promises.
The first promise deals with binding and loosing. Our words and actions have the power to bind together and also the ability to set loose and set free. And, in fact, we’re brought in on heaven’s own power to join and to liberate.
Binding and loosing. There are things that need to be bound up. We are called to bind up the brokenhearted. We bind our hearts to Jesus. We bind to one another in humble compassion.
And at the same time, there are other things that need to be loosed. We loose the yoke of injustice. We untie ourselves from judgmental mindsets. We release our neighbor through forgiveness and magnanimity.
But these power of binding and loosing don’t come through our frail and limited human capacity. They are gifts from above. We receive these gifts through Christ. Only he has the ability to bind up and set free. Through his incarnation, he bound himself to our human reality. And when we look at him, we realize that we are the Gentile and tax collector, we are the lost and despised outcast. By being bound to his cross, he took on the burden of our alienation. And through his binding to the cross, we were loosed from the snare of sin. He was bound up in graveclothes and sealed in his tomb. And through that, we have been loosed from the grasp of death. He was bound so that we might be set free.
What connects our earthly binding and loosing to heaven doesn’t originate with us. It begins in heaven, for the power to bind and loose is divine.
Binding and loosing aren’t something we can do on our own. As Paul wrote in our reading from Romans, we put on the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s his divine power, the power of heaven, that binds and loosens. He is the golden cord close-binding humankind. His divine forgiveness sets us free. And in being freed ourselves, we gain the capacity to forgive others.
His final promise is that where two or three are united through him, there he is, too. His presence makes holy our earthly connections. His grace lives and moves among us, and through his Holy Spirit, we see are able to see the face of the divine in our neighbor.
