Year A
Matthew 18:15-20
The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn
Watchmen of God
Sir Thomas Browne, an English author in the 1600’s, once wrote “the voices we scoff at in others laugh at us from within ourselves.” This is so true of confrontation and vengeance more than any other failure in our human relations. Few of us do confrontation well. Either we hold in our feelings until we explode or we irritate by continuously urging. We call that nagging. The trouble with confrontation seems to be that we carry a lot of fear and not enough hope. We are afraid of anger, rejection, or another confrontation with the offender. We have trouble forgiving each other or evoking enough hope to believe that we can be reconciled. All our texts today demand that we expect goodness from others especially those who have wronged us, and work toward that good or reconciliation because God’s intent from the beginning was that human beings live in community.
We know this is not easy to do. Yet, loving others and forgiving wrongs is doable, the scriptures tell us and we have examples to live by. God’s very patient, everlasting love of us and Jesus, through his life, death and resurrection, help us and free us to live in love. This involves our behavior and choosing to do specific things that are the actions of love. The prophet Ezekiel speaks of this today when he tells us that God desires each soul to live even the wicked ones. He shows us a God who is willing to wait until the last minute, willing to forgive all previous moments of wrongdoing. A God of hope and it is the hope of God which makes possible the forgiveness of God which is our hope to show love and forgiveness.
The words in this OT passage are spoken by God to the prophet and priest Ezekiel shortly before the fall of the city of Jerusalem to the armies of Babylonia in 587 BCE. After Ezekiel was carried into Babylonian exile, he received his call to be a prophet and as an exile living in the land of Babylon, which is located today just south of Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, he knew firsthand the situation he was called to address. In his role he serves as a visionary, as one who suffers in a way for the sins of the people, as a grieving husband, but always as a spokesperson for God. At the time of his call, he was designated by God to be a ‘watchman” for the people of Israel.
This responsibility given to Ezekiel by God as the prophetic watchman is a fearful one. If the prophet does not warn a wicked person to turn from his evil way, the prophet’s own life will be forfeited. But if the prophet gives the warning, even though a wicked person does not repent and turn, the prophet saves his own life. Ezekiel is to warn the people that even further judgement will come upon them if they do not amend their ways. Strangely, the text does not tell us whether the people heed the prophet’s warning or not. It seems the whole emphasis is on the prophet faithfully proclaiming the word of the Lord even if it falls on deaf ears and indifferent hearts.
As so often even today the gospel is not gladly received by our secular world, and we get the feeling sometimes that we are making no progress at all in spreading the good news and drawing all persons to our Lord. But Ezekiel reassures us that our labors are not in vain, that God values his faithful servants and uses them to God’s purpose. We have the choice to grasp life from God that is available to all by turning to God who waits patiently for us with love, to love God back. Our choosing matters to God because God takes “no pleasure in the death of the wicked but that the wicked turn from their ways; turn back and live.
Jesus today in Matthew speaks to the actions of expecting goodness from others and showing love to others as he instructs his disciples about conflict resolution and forgiveness in the family of God which are wonderful instructions on paper. We read them and nod with understanding and trust they will work. But, they are some of the most difficult words of challenge that face us anywhere in scripture. When your brother or sister sins against you, you must go and talk to that person and if that doesn’t work you must keep going back-taking other people with you the next time-doing everything in your power to get your brother or sister back again. We are to expect goodness from the other person and listen to each other.
But if a member of the family refuses to listen over and over again then we are not to pretend that nothing has happened because it is far worse to pretend and let a wrong fester like a wound, then it is to recognize that one of the members has left the family and is not willing to be a part of the body of fellowship. However, even then we must not forget the passage that immediately follows today’s gospels. Peter asks, “How many times must I forgive?” Jesus answers, “Seventy times seven.” All hard but honest advice, one that we know is right, that we should do, but one that is very hard to act upon.
Yet, we are to hope, to hope that that there will be reconciliation and forgiveness. The testimony of the scriptures is that there is always hope and where there is hope there is love which Paul speaks of today in his letter to the Romans when he instructs the church at Rome not to owe anyone anything, except for love. He writes that the primary obligation of the Christian is “to love on another” as the way to fulfill the law. He begins by citing as examples of love some of the commandments given by God at Mount Sinai many centuries earlier. The commandments can be summed up in one word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Called by Jesus the second and greatest commandment, the first being “You shall love the Lord your God.”
It is impossible to love God without showing love to our neighbor. The way we love God is by loving our neighbor as ourselves. The love from God in us creates true peace because it is a love that never gives up on the other that expects the goodness even from an enemy. We were formed by God’s love and loving one’s neighbor is the free and grateful mirroring of that act of love. But love does not and cannot, coerce repentance. If the offender refuses to listen, love must honor even that because the ultimate reality is that we all share a common identity as chosen and saved by God; a God who in the face of all odds, continues to hope in us.
God’s hope went to such lengths that Christ gave his life that we might be reconciled to God. Christ gave his life in the expectation that we would turn from our wicked ways and live. For God, Ezekiel proclaims, does not delight in the death of the wicked but rather that the wicked turn from their way and live. God’s love is the love that overcomes evil that overcomes death. This is the love that expects everything from us, that gift’s us with life. This in turn is the love that we owe another as we are called to community with one another, to act like the family we are. This is how we know God and how God knows us. Who calls us to confront and make up, to forgive and seek forgiveness, to heal and be healed, to expect goodness and to love as God loves us. In this way, the church called to be “watchmen,” like Ezekiel, Jesus, and Paul will really be the church with Jesus’ presence always with us.