Forging the Bonds

Welcome Back . . . I really enjoyed building our chain this morning?

What then are we to make of our three stories about the essentials of faith community this morning.

In our Hebrew story the Passover festival is described in its original setting among the events leading to the escape of the Israelites from slavery. In the verses preceding these, nine plagues have struck Egypt. As the Israelites prepare for the tenth and final plague, Moses instructs them to smear the blood of a lamb on their door posts, roast the lamb, and eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. The blood on the door post is a sign to God that the plague is to "pass over" those that live within. Still today this faith event is commemorated in the Passover meal or Seder. Through this celebration, modern Jews remember the past and strengthened their community to meet new challenges.

The Hebrews believed it was God orchestrating these events. The Egyptians were the "baddies" and so they deserved all they got.

Well, excuse me. Two weeks ago we heard that it was Joseph, child of Jacob, who invented an economic system that he could use during a seven year famine to "enslave all of the people of Canaan and Egypt." You might make a case that Pharaoh, who profited from this system deserved what he got. Stretch it and argue that all the solders who pursued the escaping Israelites and were drowned deserved it, though most soldiers in most armies have no idea what they are fighting for, or why.

But the children? All the children!

It is true, these stories were told and written down at a time when values, concepts, theology were vastly different, and a question like that would never have occurred to those storytellers. "God rescued us from them." Nothing was considered too terrible a fate for the bad guys in the story.

That is the story, and while I agree that we cannot and should not judge ancient peoples by modern values, nor should we try to clean up the story to make it sweet and nice, the question should occur to us. God killed the children?

We hear the story with the knowledge that God is not like that. We know God does not massacre children (nor anyone else, I would argue). And it is important that we understand that a text that tells us this killing was the work of God is "isogesis" of the worst kind. It is reading into events the presence of a God that does our will.

I don't want to change the text. It reflects quite accurately the values and perspectives of the people of that time. And they were quite right in seeing the hand of God in the events of their salvation history.

But at the point in the text where it says God slaughtered those babies, we need to say firmly and categorically, "They believed that. But I don't."

So how are we to hear our texts this morning?

I want to suggest that we listen for the presence of God just where the ancient Hebrews did: in the things which liberate, which save us from whatever seeks to rob of us of living full lives, and calls us into a new community relationship of freedom and responsibility centered on God.

Paul is concerned about conflict within the churches at Rome. Paul is in Corinth, where he has just completed a fund-raising campaign to aid the church in Jerusalem. Before leaving to deliver the money, he gives Phoebe - a woman who is one of the leaders of the early church - he gives Phoebe a letter to take to Rome.

Conflict has arisen between the converted Jews and their Roman rulers. Angered by heavy taxation and repressive treatment, Zealot groups are calling for violent revolution. Jewish Christians with Zealot sympathies may endanger themselves and the Roman church community. Gentile Christians who are drunk and promiscuous offend those who follow Jewish law. Paul calls for an end to violent and immoral behavior. He reminds them of Jesus' favorite commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. The focus of their lives in community are to be neither the law nor our selves, but our commitment to each other. A commitment to be alive in the Spirit of Life - Christ in our midst.

Our gospel story reminds us that even when our reason for being together is a focus on that which is greater than our own interests, there is going to be conflict. Most of us have been at odds with another church member sometime on our spiritual journey.

How are we to handle it?

Our reading from the MATTHEW gospel seems to answer the question three ways. The offense is first to be dealt with privately. If this does not result in reconciliation, then one or two other church members should be consulted. As a last resort, the church is to be informed and the offender treated like a "Gentile or a tax collector".

In the past, many churches have interpreted this to mean that the person is to be ostracized or shunned by the community.

I think this happens because folks don't look at the last two verses of this sequence - the lectionary even leaves them out. Verses 21 and 22 are the well remembered exchange between Jesus and Peter regarding forgiveness.

When we remember how Jesus treated the rejected, the impure, the non-celebrities -- the Gentiles and tax collectors -- according to the stories in this very gospel book, Jesus calls a tax collector to be a disciple, heals the servant of a Roman centurion, dines with "many tax collectors and sinners and is regularly accused of fraternizing with the unclean."

Acceptance, repentance, and forgiveness are the ways that followers of the Christ work together to restore community.

[PAUSE]

As we begin our new church year, there will be many opportunities to celebrate, remember, and reflect on our lives as a faith community. We will, hopefully, continue to learn from the experiences of our biblical ancestors who gathered together in God's name.

It also provides us with an opportunity to renew our covenant with God, committing ourselves anew to love others as we love ourselves. Being fully alive in God's way, fully human in Christ's way involves gathering together as a community of faith. Celebrations -- potluck dinners, worship, religious holidays, and pageants -- are an important part of life as a community of faith.

Gathering together can also be painful. We might be divided over our finances or the energy in the outreach program. Or our we may face external challenges such as churches being burned and growing homelessness, economic disparities, poverty and violence.

This week's readings remind us not that "God will get the 'bad' guys" - and we ought to be very thankful for that since God's idea of whose bad and whose is probably VERY different from our own --- these readings remind us that when we gather together in God's name, in the name of the GOD OF LIFE, we are called to be Alive in God's Way, grounded in the stories and memories of the times when we have experienced God's liberating and delivering presence alive among and through us - focused on Christ, rather than on those things that seem so important and which so often seem to rule our lives - and reminded that confrontation and judgment in the Spirit are preliminary to acceptance, repentance, and forgiveness, not punishment and exclusion.