When Someone Sins Against You - Matthew 18: 15-20

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The text is Matthew 18, especially the last third of the Gospel reading that began with these words, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone…”

I begin with this caveat: I am preaching not just to you today, but to me as well. While that is true every Sunday, some texts, some lessons strike home in an even more powerful way than others. So, while I stand in the pulpit, I assure you, I am also sitting humbly under the cross of Jesus in repentance and in faith. 

Back to the text…  So, how does a Christian handle when another Christian sins against him or her? To the point, what do you do when your brother or sister in Christ does something against you in word or action? It’s a good question, and the answer is challenging for us as people of God because we live in a world that teaches quite opposite.

Conventional wisdom says, “If your brother sins against you, go to social media, the barbershop, the salon, the back-yard fence, and even church parking lot and tell everyone just what a jerk that person is.” It’s an inverted tithe: whatever was done to you, add ten percent and do it back to them. The excuses are offered quickly: “He did it to me first!” “Oh, yeah? Well, she did this to me.”  Very quickly, it becomes like the first day of dove season, with verbal shots scattered hither and yon. Sticks and stones, contrary to the limerick, are nothing compared to the hurt caused by words. Survivors of the verbal combat, if there are any, are rarely left unscathed and wounds are often deep and painful. The Old Adam and the Old Eve love the advice of conventional wisdom. It sounds just, it sounds fair, it sounds like getting even (plus ten percent for inflation, of course) is the way to go.

Jesus calls the disciple to a different way of handling conflict. “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone…”  First of all, this sentence is not about you. Let me say that again. This is not about you, the one against whom the brother or sister has sinned. If it were, it would be all too easy for anger, malice and revenge to drive our action, or, alternatively, to excuse our inaction. [Z-pattern snap] “Let me tell you what you did to me!” This happens when we allow ourselves to become the focus of the sentence. The grammar of the sentence helps us here: in the subordinate clause, brother is the subject; sins is the verb. The person of importance is your brother, your sister. Why are they so important, our Old Adam and Old Eve demands, after all, they are the guilty party! Exactly: that is the point. They have sinned – regardless whether it is against you or another Christian – they have sinned principally against God and, presumably, they are stuck, trapped, enwrapped in that sin and are in danger of being overwhelmed. Understand it this way: “If your brother, if your sister has sinned against you in a way that it seems that they are in danger of falling from the faith…” Your brother or sister who sinned against you is the most important person in this conflict – not you.

This is the entire idea behind chapter 18. If you grew up with Luther’s Small Catechism, when you hear “Matthew 18,” your mind probably immediately trips the switch for “church discipline.” While, yes, there is that element, the chapter is about more than discipline. It is about rescue. That change of perspective makes all the difference. I don’t have time to unpack this all today – I would invite you to join us for my adult Bible class the next few weeks as we do dig into this more. Quicikly, chapter 18 begins with the understanding that we become like children who are incapable of doing anything besides relying on someone else. The point of comparison is that as children of God, we must rely on Him for everything. And, in the Kingdom, the greatest is the neediest, the most childlike, the one who is least able to do for him- or herself, be it physically, emotionally, mentally, and especially spiritually. So, the greatest isn’t the one with the most money, but the one with the least; not the one with the greatest joy but the deepest grief; not the greatest faith but the faith that looks at a mustard seed and wishes his or her faith to be so grand. And, we who are the greater at that moment  (objectively, if not subjectively) are called to walk alongside and help. Just wait; it'll be your turn soon enough to be the weaker. 

Now, carry that idea over to temptation and falling into sin. Who is the greatest? Not the one who was sinned against, but the one who is listening to that seemingly beautiful but deadly siren song of the devil and whom satan threatens to destroy on the rocks.  So, if your brother or sister sins against you, the issue isn’t that they have sinned against you – as if, “how dare they sin against me!” The problem lies the very fact that they have sinned against one of God’s children, that they have listened to satan’s temptous lies, and have sinned against God and might be in eternal danger of damnation.   In the moment, that brother or sister’s whose neediness owing to sin has rendered him or her the greatest in the kingdom and the Lord Jesus Christ is giving you the opportunity to bring the erring brother or sister to contrition, repentance, and faith.

This, your brother, your sister, is one for whom Christ died. This is one whom Jesus entered into the pits of hell with the victory declaration of “It is finished!” still echoing through the cosmos to redeem. This is the one Jesus suffered for, bled for, died for, and rose for – to bring him or her, along with you, into the life everlasting. This is the lost one, the wandering one, the endangered one for whom Jesus was willing to leave 99 other safe and secure lambs to save. And, in their sinfulness, whether unintentional or, presumably, intentional, they are in danger of continuing to run away from the Good Shepherd and deeper and deeper into satan’s briars and brambles.  Jesus calls you to speak to that one who is in danger of death – spiritual, eternal death – and give them words of life.

And, by the way, this isn’t just the work of a pastor, or the elders, or the church secretary who keeps the church records, or a board or committee tasked with tidying up the rolls. This is the responsibility of every lamb of God who is called to the flock of the church, to watch for and care for those who are in danger, who are wandering, who have gotten lost in satan’s lies.

So, with that attitude, bathing this entire conversation in prayer, with repentance in your own heart over your own sins of thought, word, and deed, with the deepest of love for this brother or sister, and trusting the Spirit who will be at work in your words and in the Word of God which you will speak, then lovingly speak to your brother or sister – not about him or her to others, but to him or her. “Pastor, what do I say?” I don’t have “the right words” to say, as if a Disney genie rubbed his Bible three times. What you have, what I have, is the Word of God, and the Spirit of God delivered in your Baptism, and faith that trusts those living and active words. I can tell you that a soft word will turn away wrath, and love for that brother or sister, as described in 1 Cor 13, along with patience, gentleness, kindness, not being envious or boasting, arrogant or rude, not insisting on being right, not being irritable or resentful, bearing, believing, hoping, and enduring all things for the sake of this brother or sister, you speak the truth of God’s Word to them. I’ll tell you, sometimes there is immediate acceptance as the Word does it’s powerful work, leading to repentance. I’ve had that happen. In that case, speak words of assurance: “You are forgiven in Christ and as He forgives, so do I.” Meet them Sunday at church, sit with them, with the attitude of “My brother, my sister who was lost is home!”  

But, it’s also possible that they don’t want to listen. I’ve been on the receiving end of that, too, literally being told “Don’t come here again.” (That’s the PG version; in reality, it was NC- 17.) It’s a mystery, in the truest sense of the word, that the Word is at the same time so powerful as to accomplish exactly what God says it will do, but at the same time, it is completely resistible by the human beings to whom God gives it for salvation. The human heart can grow harder and colder by the influence of the world and the devil. Yet, Jesus says, our love is so great for this one in danger of being lost, that we go back again and again, bringing another brother with us, together, lifting up the lost and endangered one to the Lord in prayer over and over. This is not a one-two-three strike process, or a punch-list to follow before kicking them out of the church like a ball player no longer able to perform to the team’s expectations. You do this over and over and over again, prayerfully, humbly, gently, speaking the truth in love from God’s Word.

I will tell you, it is hard work. It can be frustrating work, especially when the first, second, or third attempts at bringing them back to the fold, to the body of Christ, are resisted. It is very tempting, and here the irony is that the one who has been sinned against is now in danger of sinning himself, it is very tempting to want to wash one’s hands of the whole mess and say, with a little bit of pharisaical schadenfreude  (pleasure in another’s pain or loss) “that’s it – they are now like Gentiles and tax collectors and I no longer have to do anything with them.” And, here, I confess my own sins – against both God and His flock. Too often I have thrown up my hands in frustration and said, literally or figuratively, “Well, I guess that’s it. They should have known better.” Lord Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Hmm…Gentiles, tax collectors, sinners. You know, those are the folks Jesus pursued. It’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick; it’s not the righteous, but the sinners who need a Savior. Over and over, as you read through the Gospels, you find Jesus sitting and eating with tax collectors and sinners, reaching out to touch the Gentiles, proclaiming to these very people who seem to be so far from the Kingdom that in Him, the Kingdom is near and it is for them. In other words, when Jesus says, “Let them be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector,” rather than being a means to write them off, it is to pursue them all the more diligently because they are no longer your brother, your sister – they are now outside the flock, outside the fold, outside the church, and they desperately need Jesus to rescue and redeem. And to you, dear brother and sister in Christ, to me, the pastor, to us the church, we are given the opportunity to be on a search party for the one who needs Jesus.

What Jesus says about prayer, “ask and it will be done” and “where two or three are gathered,” these words are often misunderstood as blanket promises regarding prayer. Context is key, and here the context is with those who are lost, that the Lord God will hear the prayers of the church, of you, of me, as we make our requests for these lost and straying souls. God hears the prayers for the sake of Christ Jesus, who died, who rose, who ascended and reigns, and who with all power and authority in heaven and on earth promises to be present among the faithful, however few they – we - may be. Perhaps we should start remembering these wandering and lost brothers and sisters by name in the prayers of the church, just as we do our sick, hurting and grieving, not to shame them or to make it a sanctified “wanted” poster, but to do this very noble work the Lord gives us to do.

And, regardless the outcome, the goal is the same: to reach out and love those who, according to the strange and gracious standards of heaven, are the most important and greatest of all. “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.” (I Peter 4:8).