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Matthew 18:21-35

“21 Then Peter came and said to him, ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’ ²²Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. “

Matthew 18:21-22

Don’t just forgive once but forgive time and time again. For useless you do Jesus warns us:

“³⁵So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.’”

Matthew 18:35

Forgive, forgive, forgive and God will forgive you your sins and faults as well. Do not judge and you will not be judged, harshly, by God either. Not an easy thing to do at times is forgiving but it is something our Lord encourages us to try and do and to try we have to. In trying we may often succeed despite the pain and frustration it might cause us. So as the Golden Rule says:

‘Love God and love your neighbour as yourself.’

and remember it's the trying to do so that’s important. For in trying we show that we are willing to do God’s will, even if it takes us a while to fulfil it!

We regularly cheer ourselves up by watching classic sitcoms and reflecting, as one is increasingly inclined to do with advancing years, that “they don’t make them like that any more.” Recently we have enjoyed revisiting The Good Life and the title reminds us that, as Dean pointed out last Sunday, much of the teaching in Paul’s letter to the Romans is about how to live the good life which is the life in Christ. In last week’s passage, Paul provides a list of  “do’s”. This week’s passage begins and ends with a list of “don’t’s” but Paul’s advice is rooted in the Gospel imperative of love.

“Love is the fulfilling of the law.”

If you haven’t seen it, The Good Life centres on a couple, the Goods, who attempt to achieve self-sufficiency in a suburban house and garden. They do this to the bemusement of their next-door neighbours and friends, the Ledbetters, an ambitious executive and his deeply snobbish wife. That friendship is frequently strained but never broken and it is often the generosity of the Ledbetters which saves the day when things go wrong for the Goods.

The very last episode breaks out of the cosy conventions of situation comedy. Returning home accompanied by the Ledbetters, the Goods find that their house has been broken into and vandalised. A hostile and lawless world has hurt them profoundly and challenged their values. We watch as they struggle to come to terms with this and, supported by their friends, find the courage to carry on and affirm their commitment to the good life.

Today’s Epistle and today’s Gospel were both written to advise and support Christian communities facing the challenges and pressures of a hostile society which did not share their beliefs and a political system under which they were actively persecuted. The Gospel reading is particularly interesting because it is one of only two passages (both in Matthew) in which Jesus refers to “the church”. We heard the other one a fortnight ago.

Some scholars have questioned whether Jesus would have used the word “church”, suggesting that the Gospel writer is guilty of an anachronism – reading back into the past a development which happened after Jesus’ Resurrection. That’s not a view I share. The Greek word that Matthew uses is an interesting one – ekklesia literally means “those who are called out” – in other words people with a vocation. Jesus in his earthly ministry “called out” a wonderfully diverse collection of men and women, some of them, like Matthew himself with very questionable past lives, and called them out to be a community of love and forgiveness and to share that possibility with the world.

It may be the case that the procedures for dealing with errant church members which we just heard were a working out by Matthew’s church community of how to handle difficult situations, but their understanding of what it is to be a “called out” Christian community is clearly rooted in the teachings of Jesus.

It's a difficult passage for us because we live in a society which is very individualistic and that sometimes shapes the way in which Christians think about sin; think about it as an issue between the individual sinner and God. I think that’s unhelpful because all wrong-doing affects other people and undermines community. Jesus’ teaching emphasises that.

To be called out by Jesus is also to be called in – to be called in to a community. Community is a warm word, applied more widely than perhaps it should be, applied which ways which suggest a stronger sense of shared purpose than actually exists. There’s another, stronger and more helpful word for Christian community, Covenant. It comes from the Latin con venire, to be called together. Called together into mutual love and support; called together into loving acceptance of mutual obligations. When I look at the state of our politics and the fractious and fragmented nature of our society, I see a crying need for Covenant values and for the kind of firm, gentle, persistent discipline of which today’s Gospel speaks.

That’s the way of achieving the Good Life.

Jeremiah 15:15-21

Jeremiah seems to be asking God to remember him despite anything he might do or not do. To remember him in his good deeds and in his forgetfulness. The forgetfulness is important here. Jeremiah tells God that he ‘ate his words’ and that wonderful phrase that reminds me of the Bible Sunday collect about hearing and inwardly digesting the Word of God:

Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: help us so to hear them, to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them that, through patience and the comfort of your holy word, we may embrace and for ever hold fast the hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ, who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

We all ingest many things be it the Word of God, conversations or good food, yet after we have ingested them we do tend to forget what it was we ingested. What did you have for your tea 10 days ago? Personally, I have no idea but I was nourished by whatever it was. What was the second last Scripture reading you read? You might not be able to call it to mind now but you will have pondered on it when you read it and ingesting its words it will have meant something to you; or it perhaps opened new vistas of understanding even you can’t now remember precisely what the text was!

Jeremiah in this reading is moaning about being forgotten by God or not being to understand God, despite ingesting his words. God it seems is illusive. However, God reminds Jeremiah that he has never abandoned him, it was in fact Jeremiah’s forgetfulness of God’s promises that obscured his vision of the Divine.

Sound familiar? We can all be a bit forgetful of God and then wonder where God has been or is now without realising that God has never left us. When you experience these times don’t despair, you’re in good company with Jeremiah and the rest of us including me. We might forget or misplace God but God never loses us!

Romans 12:9-21

Paul’s Epistle to the Romans gives us a template to try and fit our existence around, in order to try and live a good Christian life and to remember God. Actually, in our increasingly secular 21^st society, I think, Paul’s words have a relevance to all people, whether they have a Christian faith or not.

In his Epistle, Paul (and this is the actual Paul, not someone writing in his name at a later date) we are given a good list of useful things to help us live a life that is not self-seeking or contrary to the ways of God:

Hate evil, hold on to good, be patient, be kind and generous to others, especially those who are worse off or unknown personally to you. Don’t ignore anyone but extend the hand of friendship whenever you can and never leave anyone wanting, when you might be able to help them.

Whenever, I read anything this positive by Paul, I always suspect that he was writing as much to himself as to those for whom the letter is intended. Many preachers, preach sermons that they need to hear as well as those to whom they are preaching. For example Paul often preaches about the need to have patience:

“May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father...” Col 1:11

Was Paul particularly impatient? Could he get fed up too quickly with others? Probably, yes! Just like we all do and like Paul we all need to remind ourselves how we ought to behave towards others, because none of us get it right all the time. I know that I certainly don’t. But, if we try to live a good life we will be known by our deeds and evil will never be able to overcome us. If our hearts are as open and generous as our hands need to be, we will do all right and in being ‘good enough’ we will set an example to others. Be generous to others as you would wish them to be generous to you.

Matthew 16:21-28

Today’s Gospel reading takes the concept of living a good life a step further than perhaps Paul’s epistle suggested. Jesus tells his disciples that in order to fully live a life pleasing to God, one has to live sacrificially. One has to give so totally of oneself that ultimately one will give and give willingly all one has to give. These are strong words from Jesus for basically he is saying: ‘I’m going to give my life for you lot.’ What more can anyone give for others than their life?

All of us at sometime in our lives will give sacrificially. Probably not to the extent of actually giving our lives but of giving totally of ourselves in the support and help of others by sharing what we have (be it our time, talents or treasure) without counting the costs to ourselves. It is the old adage of ‘going the extra mile’ to help another and that should be our guide through life.

“Who do you say, I am?”

That was some question for Jesus to ask Peter and his disciples. Can you imagine what your response might have been should it have been you that Jesus asked that question of?

In actual fact Jesus has already asked you that question. You might not be able to answer it, as I suspect that like many of us, you might still be trying to fathom out who Jesus actually is for you. It is easy to give a quick, impulse response to his question; ‘Who do you say I am?’ by simply saying; ‘the Son of God’ but what does that response really mean?

Personally, I do not think that we can give one single, definitive answer to the question because Jesus and ultimately God are revealed to each of us individually. We all get to meet God in our own way. For me if I try to answer Jesus’ question as to who he is I have to approach my answer from an exploration of his human nature, for it is Jesus’ humanity that speaks most strongly to me. For you it might be his divinity or through his miracles, or whatever.

As a human male, I approach Jesus from a point of masculinity and my human male experience. I relate very strongly to Jesus the man, in the ways he is shown to interact with his friends and disciples; in the way he uses words to explain things; and through his emotions of compassion, laughter, joy and anger. These are things I know about and understand within myself and I am therefore more able to translate my personal experience of Jesus through them. I come to Jesus via my own personal experience but I also have to acknowledge that because I do this my understanding of Jesus will be different to yours and that I can never fully understand who he actually is because I am not Jesus and he is not me. For me it is from the similarities I share with him that I come closer to an understanding of who he is.

But what if I was really pushed to say who Jesus is? What would I say?

I think I would have to say that for me, he is the being who is the human personification of our Creator God. A flesh and blood being that showed both his humanity and his divinity in how he lived his life. A man who through his human attributes was able to show us what God is like, perhaps not what God is but what it is like to be of God.

To be truthful I do not think that I could ever know what God is because only God can know that and I am far from being God. Yet, saying this because we are told that we share in the image of God, I also believe that we have within our knowledge of who we are an inkling of who God is and thus who Jesus is; but it is only an inkling.

This does not confuse or disappoint me, rather on the contrary, it excites me and spurs me on to further explore, think about and pray through who I think God is from the ways I believe he is revealed to me and when I say God I also take it to mean Jesus as well. This act of mental and spiritual exploration is basically ‘doing theology’ for theology means ‘thinking about God’. We are all, even if we do not acknowledge it, theologians because we all think about God, whether or not we decide to believe in him or not. As theologians our thinking will lead all of us to different conclusions and understandings and will cause us to ask different questions and that I find exciting and fascinating. I also strongly and passionately believe that it is when we interact with each other and share our thought that we gain glimpses of God and who he is.

To be honest, I can’t definitely answer Jesus’ questions as to who he is but what I really want to do is to keep on asking my own questions as I explore an answer to him. And, the best way to ask those questions? Well, it is to ask them in the company of others.

Isn’t theology great?

But she came and knelt before Jesus, saying “Lord, help me” (Luke 15:25)

How many times have we been in a situation when someone – perhaps a stranger or a person who appears to be “different” comes towards us.  Our automatic response is to think “please do not come any further” or “please do not speak to me”. We may even turn our back on them or pretend that they are not there.

Occasionally if I am waiting for a bus on Lothian Road early evening a stranger will come towards me. I have seen them before. I know that they will be asking for money. I know that they will go from person to person to see how they will respond. I know that they will not have much success.  Sometimes I will say “I am sorry. I don’t have any money on me”. At other times, having encountered them previously, I will say “No, go away”. That could be seen as being unkind or uncharitable. On the other hand, their actions could be seen as being a nuisance or disingenuous.

In the second part of our gospel we have a strange and awkward encounter. Jesus has just gone north through Galilee until he came to the land of Tyre and Sidon where the Phoenicians dwelt. There for a while he could hopefully be safe from the hostility of the scribes and Pharisees. But even in this place he was not to be free from the demands of human need which cried out to him.

The encounter which we have is the only occasion in which Jesus was ever outside Jewish territory. The significance of the passage is that it foreshadows the transmission of the gospel to the whole world. It shows us the beginning of the end of all barriers.

The woman had a daughter who was seriously ill. She must have heard somehow of the wonderful things which Jesus could do; and she followed him. At first Jesus seemed to pay no attention to her. The disciples were embarrassed.

But there was a problem. Not only was the woman a Gentile but she belonged to the old Canaanite stock who were ancestral enemies of the Jews. Jesus began his ministry with a mission to his own people; but here was a Gentile crying for help.

But let us turn to the woman herself.

She had love. It was love which made her approach this stranger; it was love which made her accept his silence and yet still persisted; it was love which made her suffer the apparent rebuffs; it was love which made her able to see the compassion beyond and behind the words of Jesus.

She had faith. It was a faith which grew from contact with Jesus. She began by calling Jesus, “Son of David”. She ended the encounter by calling Jesus, “Lord” and her daughter healed.

She had great tenacity. This woman came because Jesus was not just a possible helper; he was her only hope. She came with a passionate hope; a burning sense of need and a refusal to be discouraged.

May we hear afresh those compassionate words of Jesus, “Woman, great is your faith. Let it be done for you as you wish”.

As we take this bread, we remember that you are the bread of life. You feed our souls. You nourish our hearts and give us sustenance. As we break the bread, we feel the softness of Your love for us and smell the fragrance of the grace You release afresh each day.