Jesus said to his disciples: “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother. If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector.” (Matthew 18.15-17)
In our psychologically savvy society, most of us are familiar with an intervention, one of many tools in the toolbox of a psychotherapist who finds a client particularly resistant to changing his or her maladaptive behaviors. While used to address any of several behaviors, it is most typically utilized when a person suffers from addictions of one sort or another. Often, it is a last-ditch effort, used after everything else has been tried and has failed. It is meant to express clearly the damage that an individual is doing to self and to others.
As defined by the American Psychological Association, an intervention “is a technique in addictions counseling in which significant individuals in a client’s life meet with him or her, in the presence of a trained counselor, to express their observations and feelings about the client’s addiction and related problems. The session, typically a surprise to the client, may last several hours, after which the client has a choice of seeking a recommended treatment immediately (as an inpatient) or ignoring the intervention. If the client chooses not to seek treatment, participants state the interpersonal consequences, for example, a spouse may request that the client move out, or the client’s employment may be terminated.”
If we didn’t know better, we might be led to think that the selection from scripture that is presented to us on this Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time is describing for us a psychological intervention. And, truth be told, there is good cause to label the activities that are described in the passage as an intervention. It may, in fact, be the easiest and the safest way for us to understand this particular pericope.
Without that framework for the text, we are inclined to balk at the passage, few of us having much tolerance for being confronted for our bad behavior and fewer of us having the stomach to challenge another for his or her actions that we deem inappropriate or destructive. Our natural inclination in hearing the text is to say it’s nobody’s business what we do or, more commonly, to dodge the bullet by arguing that nobody has a right to judge another person, everybody having plenty of personal faults of their own.
And, frankly, such defenses have their place, gaining support from Rabbi Jesus who himself said, “Judge not lest you be judged.” And yet, the evangelist Matthew puts before us in this passage a three-part process for not only judging others, but also for removing others from our community. Obviously, there is a tension or an incongruity in Rabbi Jesus’ message that calls for some remedy.
One writer, in attempting to tackle this tricky conundrum, expressed his opinion that “today’s gospel sounds more like regulations devised by a church committee than a teaching of Jesus.” Truth be told, he may not be far off the mark, at least in the precisely spelled-out procedure that Matthew gives us for addressing errant behavior.
First, we have to remember that most scholars agree that the gospel of Matthew was written in the mid 80s or early 90s of the first century, at least a half-century after the death and resurrection of Rabbi Jesus. That reality means Matthew had no verbatim manuscript of anything Rabbi Jesus spoke, but more likely sayings that had been passed down the generations.
Second, Matthew was addressing a particular community with Jewish-Christian affiliation living in the last decade of the first century, his focus on their concerns and their issues. His text is meant to offer them guidance for their contemporary lives and means of dealing with their current problems. And, it is clear from this passage, community cohesion is a prominent concern for Matthew’s audience.
One clue that we have Matthew in the forefront of this text is his use of the word “church,” or “ekklesia,” a Greek word that is often translated as church, although its original meaning is an assembly, most often referring to a military unit or group such as an army. No other gospel uses the word and Matthew only uses it in Chapter 16 (“You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church”) and here in Chapter 18.
It is almost certain Rabbi Jesus did not use the word, first because it is a Greek word, and also because his understanding of a religious assembly would have been the synagogue model. In short, the word “ekklesia” simply would not have been in his vocabulary. Assembly, yes, understood in the Jewish sense of the word.
So Matthew is addressing concerns of his Jewish-Christian community that have surfaced in the decades since Rabbi Jesus’ ministry, a community that Matthew now feels comfortable in calling a church, the term that has come to describe these communities, as the writer of the Book of Revelation, written at the tailend of the century, also uses.
That these communities have internal issues that call for remedy should come as no surprise to us. In a community as small as two people–which in many circumstances we call a marriage–there are issues, areas of disagreement or conflict that call for remedy if the community is to survive. Hence, the appeal of marriage counseling to assist in these matters.
So here in Chapter 18 we find Matthew proposing a step-by-step process for dealing with bad behavior from members within the community. The need for such a procedure should be obvious to us, almost every group of people requiring some means of addressing behavior that has the potential to disrupt the community and, if left unattended, might destroy the life of an individual or individuals within the community.
And because Matthew is writing for a Christian community with Jewish origins, his procedure is based on long-standing Jewish practices, such as two or more witnesses being required for any judgment against a person. Likewise, calling for a member expelled from the community to be treated as “a Gentile or a tax collector” is clearly rooted in the Jewish mindframe, the words only having meaning to such an audience.
So, where does this leave us, Christian believers living centuries after Matthew’s writing? Basically, in the same boat as those first-century believers. We’re all trying to sustain a viable community of like-minded people who want to model their lives on the words and works of Rabbi Jesus. And were we perfect–which we are not–we would not have need for an intervention with a person or persons who are destructive of and disruptive to the community.
But, since perfection is God’s alone, imperfect people attempting to form a community based on the life of Rabbi Jesus must deal with the faults and failures that we all bring to the table. Parents have to do it with their children or else they will not grow into responsible and law-abiding citizens. Married couples have to challenge each other when one or the other is tearing away at the fabric of the marital community. If they do not, the marriage is at high risk for not surviving. Employers have to do it with employees who do not meet expectations or are causing serious disharmony in the work environment. Otherwise, the purpose of the business will be compromised, handicapped, or destroyed.
Simply stated, unpleasant as the task of challenging one another to do better may be, it has to be done, not only in Christian communities, but in communities of every sort. All things considered, Matthew is being a realist, providing his community of listeners with a process that obviously is needed if the community is to stay intact.
One fascinating thing that has to be noted is that this passage on achieving group harmony through fraternal correction is followed by Rabbi Jesus telling Simon Peter that he must forgive his brother “seventy times seven times.” In this way, Rabbi Jesus restores mercy to the forefront, offering a counterbalance to the removal of persons from the community that we find in this prior text.
And, in an effort to make clear to Peter the primacy of mercy to those who have fallen short in one way or another, Rabbi Jesus tells the parable of the unforgiving servant who shows no mercy to his fellow servant, even after he himself has been shown mercy by the king. For his unwillingness to show mercy, the servant is punished by the king. We will hear Rabbi Jesus issue this warning at the end of that parable, “So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart.”
As I said at the start, there is an obvious tension exposed here between judgment and mercy, a tension not easily fixed. Matthew makes clear that for the sake of the preservation of the community–and ultimately for the well-being of the individual at fault—judgment is necessary. There is no disputing the need, as any family or marriage can easily attest when a member brings chaos and destruction into the familial community through bad choices, bad behavior, and bad addictions.
But Rabbi Jesus also makes clear the need for forgiveness and for mercy, going so far as to say we are to forgive another person who has wronged us as many times as necessary. His entire life and mission were built on this principle–that the sinner should not be shunned and that the outcast should be brought to the table. So strong was his message for inclusion that he was crucified for his heretical stance, his antagonizers much more comfortable with judgment than with mercy.
Given this reality of the clear tension between judgment and mercy that our text today presents, what are we to do? Here’s my suggestion, unsatisfactory as it may be. There is a time for intervention, as life shows us all too often. But there is always a time for mercy, as Rabbi Jesus showed us again and again. Which means, I suppose, our interventions must be weighted more by mercy, and less so by judgment.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 