Thirteenth Sunday After Trinity

Sermon preached by the Reverend Canon Richard Ames-Lewis 

Where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them.

Matt 18.20

This week marks another step in our progress towards the safe management of Covid 19. Students return to school, and so parents can return to work, bus and train operators can restart their old timetables and it is hoped the economy of our cities can rebuild. At every point, we are hoping, safe practice has been established for everyone’s health and confidence. At the same time, here in church, we are returning to our “in person” Sunday worship. For the first time since 22nd March, 23 weeks ago, we have a congregation gathered for the Sunday Eucharist at St Bene’t’s.

So this is, for the moment, the new normal. And I am delivering a sermon for our congregations both on line and in person. On line, for the congregation remaining at home as in recent weeks and unable to come to church this morning; and in person for those who are able to come and are now sitting in the approved socially-distanced places in the pews.

Covid 19 has changed our way of life, not just in the way we must observe distance from one another. One aspect of the new normal is the insistence on having windows open, with the discovery that Covid can be dispersed by good ventilation, with outside events safer than indoors. This is why we must be cautious as winter approaches. Then, to safeguard against infection, life events like weddings and funerals must be limited. Visits to museums and galleries must be prebooked. Even coming to church must be managed in advance, as we know, with numbers controlled and everyone’s names recorded. No chance for now of our church welcoming a seeker coming in off the street! But perhaps the most insidious thing about this disease is the way it has discriminated: economically, between rich and poor; demographically, between young and old; racially, between white and black & minority ethnic; and medically, between those who are well and those who have underlying health conditions. It is as though all the flashpoints of conflict in human society are magnified by this disease.

So what do we think today when we hear St Paul’s words to the Romans, “You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers”? What might it mean, that now is the moment for our faith to be tested? Can it possibly be that in the sorrow and fear of this pandemic, and in all the anxiety about the future, there might actually be something positive of God to be learned and something of the salvation of Christ to be encountered, now?

Today’s gospel reading, from St Matthew Chapter 18, transports us to the discipline of the early church, and to the relations which members should have one with another. It was of great concern to St Matthew how new Christian disciples should live, and he devotes the whole of Chapter 18 to the issues of humility, offence, temptation, mutual care, what to do about sin, and forgiveness; all this to prepare his readers for Chapter 19, where he sets down Jesus’ teaching about the coming Kingdom. The way you live now will determine whether you will enter the Kingdom.

So, in today’s passage, Jesus is instructing his disciples about reconciliation between one member of the church and another. Since, in these days of Covid, reconciliation is the quality we most look for in our leaders and most hope for in ourselves, let us see what we can learn from this to help us today.

We see in this passage a sequence of attempts to make reconciliation, one building on another.

• First “if another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.”  If you feel you have been wronged, go and have it out the person who has wronged you, one-to-one. A practical and constructive way to reconcile conflict is to build your relationship face to face.

• Then, if this doesn’t work, move to stage two: set up another meeting and “take one or two others along with you, so that every word maybe confirmed by witnesses”. Again a practical method of conflict-resolution, using testimony and teamwork.

• If this also doesn’t work “tell it to the church”. Go public. Set up a meeting of the whole church community and share with everyone the shame and anger of the sin. I have to admit, this is not something I have ever done in my years as a Church of England vicar, but public confession of sin was practised in some reformed churches in the 16th century, using this verse from St Matthew as authority, to bring waverers into line.

• But finally if this extreme action does not move the sinner’s heart, “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” To St Matthew, a good Jew, for someone to be named as a Gentile was the equivalent of excommunication; and to be called a tax collector was to number them as a hated collaborator with the Roman governing authorities. The final sanction for someone who cannot be reconciled was expulsion from the church community. And it’s final. “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”  In other words, the way you live now will determine whether you will enter the Kingdom.

This all sounds pretty damning for a sinner, without much hope after all this. Here’s a thought: I find it helpful to remember that St Matthew is not recording Jesus’s actual words, more his actual voice, as he writes down a way of living for the young church in the light of the crucified and risen Christ. 

But St Matthew doesn’t leave it there. He goes on with the words “If two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.” There is nothing more precious than agreement between two sides. Reconciliation brings heavenly blessing, and agreement means a new deal, moving on, all the stronger in the providence of God. We may often wonder what is God’s will for us: well, we discover God’s will when we are reconciled with our enemy.

And as if to confirm this wonderful truth, Matthew then adds the verse “For when two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

Now this is a well-worn phrase. Jesus is there, when two or three of his followers gather in his name. I cannot count the number of times in my ministry this has been quoted, often by me, when some church meeting or other has attracted a mere two or three people. To justify the disappointing turn-out, and bolster our spirits, we have reassured ourselves, with these words, that at least we have a quorum for Jesus’s presence.

But the context here is not some little prayer meeting or some worthy church committee. The context is reconciliation between sinners, and the discovery when we are reconciled that it is Jesus who was there all along mediating between the two sides. We may wonder how we know if Jesus is present: it is when we know that undeniable experience of forgiveness, seeing things from the other’s point of view, standing in their shoes, and realizing that they are as much a sinner as you are. Then we experience Jesus, whose other name is love. 

And this reconciliation happens because of who Jesus is – this precious son of God who was put to death and rose again for us, and by so doing broke down the barriers that separate us. As St Paul puts it: “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself.”

In Christ, God is reconciling the world. The incarnation, God becoming flesh, was God’s undistancing. The Word became flesh and jumped across the chasm separating divine from human. And Jesus demonstrated this in his ministry – he jumped across boundaries, he laid his hand on sinners, he touched and healed. He even breathed on his gathered apostles and commissioned them with the Holy Spirit.

Jesus is no different now there’s a pandemic in his world. He is still among us when two or three are gathered in his name and still healing the divisions of our society through the power of his cross and resurrection. He still breathes the Holy Spirit on us. Perhaps that is why we need to keep the windows of our faith firmly open.