Mature Fruit

Last week we heard Jesus harshly rebuke Peter: “get behind me Satan, you’re still seeing things in accordance with the ways of this world, rather than in accordance with God’s ways.” Clearly Jesus knows of what he speaks. We know he will in fact go on to suffer and die at the hands of the elders and chief priests; that his faithfulness to God that results in his death, overcomes human sin and so reconciles us to life with God. 

We know this part of the story. We often talk about it, at least amongst ourselves: Jesus saves! Although sadly, some are reluctant to do even this! But somewhere in this rebuke Jesus  draws Peter back to him and us today. We have become very weary about identifying, let alone speaking of sin, and we dare not rebuke one another concerning sin. What happened? 

I don’t think it’s simply that we’re uncomfortable with confrontation: we seem quite happy to confront one another over things we think we know well (the business or procedural side of things). But we seem very reluctant to confront one another about matters related to following Jesus himself. Perhaps this is because many in Western mainline churches don’t actually know God that well. Perhaps it’s because of a generation where discussion of sin was used as a means to force people to conform to norms that are actually drawn from the surrounding culture rather than from Jesus. But I actually think one of our biggest challenges has to do with feeling afraid to confront sin because we’ve not done it well and have alienated so many people because of HOW we go about confronting it. Too often we’ve lacked the same thing Peter lacked: the courage to act in a way that both points people to, and draws people toward Christ, rather than protecting and feeding our own egos. 

Let me give you the contrast. In our Gospel today, Jesus says, “if someone sins against you, go and talk with them about it, but do it in private where no one else will know.” What’s your experience of what happens in church when someone feels someone has sinned against them, or done something wrong at any rate? Let me give you a hint: it happens a lot with kids in middle school. Yes, that’s right, gossip, talking behind someone’s back to another. When we feel hurt or angry, or even utterly righteous, so often our gut instinct is to turn to someone else and say, “omg, let me tell you about …” Or we go to a third party - often someone in charge like the teacher or the priest and say, “so and so did this or that.” Paul, writing to the early churches, identifies gossip as undermining the trust needed to sustain communities of faith, as his letter today to the Roman church says, “as doing wrong to a neighbour.” If you look at psychological literature, gossip can have several functions but when used to discredit or demean another by going behind that person’s back, it typically indicates the one doing it lacks the courage and emotional maturity to resolve a conflict that can help both parties be reconciled.

When Jesus says to first go and talk to the person face-to-face, he implies that the one doing the confronting first needs to have a good grasp of what sin actually is. To know what sin is, you need to know God; not just some of what God says, but all of it. Some things are obvious; murder, for example. Other things are not so obvious. Was lying to protect a Jew from a Nazi officer in 1942 a sin? What about sex outside of marriage, fornication, where the flesh of two is made one before God? What about any subsequent sexual relationships after this? Things here get more complicated. What about doing work on the Sabbath? Following God’s law is not quite as straightforward as following Scripture as if it’s a rule book; life is not made up of black and white choices.

So to speak about sin, your knowledge of who God is needs to be comprehensive, not shallow, lest you fall back into using pieces of scripture to justify the ways you’ve inherited from your parents or culture; it needs to be informed by a grasp of how Jesus works with the Scripture, the law, the rules laid down in other parts of Scripture so that you don’t end up trying to use Scripture as a mere rulebook. The Sadducees and Pharisees followed the letter of the law but lost God’s purpose - his mercy and his desire to draw others to him. 

And to know God is to know that he comes for people through people, through a community, a body, first Israel and now the Church. Believing this presses God’s followers out of themselves like Jesus and his prophets before him; out of their own desire for revenge or punishment when wronged. This is to set our minds, like Peter did in last week’s gospel, on the things of this world. Rather, our minds are to be set, like Jesus, on the will of the Father. And what is his will? That not one sheep, i.e. not one sinner, not one person who’s gone astray, should perish.

That we should set our minds and our ways on helping that person who has sinned, to reflect on why they did so - fear, anger, sadness, envy, jealousy, cynicism, misunderstanding, unconscious habits of thinking or perceiving, or maybe just ignorance - not to condemn, but to create the space and the time for them to let go of their defenses and see Christ in his mercy, his forgiveness, face to face. Jesus is calling us here to engage someone who sins against us by imitating the Father’s relentless pursuit of us, his love, and forgiveness.

We are called to confront sin because not confronting it can fracture trust and sow anger, cynicism and division. It can destroy churches, the very body through which we encounter God in worship, prayer and praise. But in confronting it, we must remember that ultimately, God has defeated sin and in so doing joined that body, his Church to himself so that others might know him.

So it matters very much how we, his body, the Church, confront sin; that confronting it stems from recognizing our own sin, our own failures, and realizing that we are alive and fruitful to the extend we receive and operate out of God's forgiveness and mercy extended to us, so that we might extend that grace to others. Recognizing and acting on this enables us to call sin out (to speak the truth) while simultaneously acting with attentive, patient, kind, compassionate actions (in love), extends forgiveness not just to one individual but to all who will come after them. Consequently, this act pushes back the fear that so often lurks in every one of our hearts. Paul tells us, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” Just as God doesn’t leave us in our sin but comes to us in rebuking grace, so we also extend that grace to others. AMEN