Relating to Those with Whom We Disagree
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Season 1, Episode 29: Matthew 18:15-20. Lectionary A, Proper 18
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it.
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Relating to Those with Whom We Disagree
Herb Montgomery | September 8, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“Concerns and disagreements will always happen. Human beings are messy. We all get to choose how we navigate those concerns and disagreements in a life giving or death dealing way.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:
“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.
“Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” (Matthew 18:15-20)
Our reading this week is not found in Mark’s or John’s version of the Jesus story. It is included in Luke’s version of our reading this week:
“So watch yourselves. If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.” (Luke 17:3-4)
I find it interesting that Matthew’s version explains to how Jesus followers should respond to a fellow Jesus follower who doesn’t listen. Luke’s version only explains how they should respond to a fellow Jesus follower who repents.
The admonition to forgive seventy times seven times if need be (Matthew 18:20-21 cf. Luke 17:3-4) has produced a lot of abuse because that passage can be interpreted in harmful ways. We’ll explore that soon. This week’s lectionary reading, though, focuses on verses 15-20.
This is a passage written when the Jesus community was grappling with how to respond to fellow Jesus community members who were making choices the community felt were out of harmony with the teaching they attributed to Jesus.
We also get a taste of the Jewishness of the Matthean Jesus community here, which cites precedent from the Hebrew scriptures:
“One witness is not enough to convict anyone accused of any crime or offense they may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.” (Deuteronomy 19:15)
This text from Deuteronomy would have spoken to the Matthean Jewish Jesus followers in Galilee.
Another interesting note is how this passage reflects more of the social bias against pagans and tax collectors in the larger Galilean society than the rest of the Jesus story does. This apparently negative admonition seems to contrast starkly with the way Jesus actually treated pagans and tax collectors in Matthew’s version of his story.
Consider the following examples:
Jesus welcomed and shared table fellowship with tax collectors:
While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:10-13)
Further, one of Jesus’ own disciples was “Matthew the tax collector.” (Matthew 10:3)
Jesus was also labelled a friend of tax collectors:
“The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.” (Matthew 11:19)
Jesus even affirmed tax collectors who were entering his vision of a just human society (the kingdom) over people who refused the vision due to the economic losses they stood to suffer:
“Jesus said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.’” (Matthew 21:31)
Although Zacchaeus’ example is found in Luke, not Matthew, it is a great representative of the tax collectors who were choosing to following Jesus:
Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”
But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”
Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:1-10)
This leaves us with interpretive options. It is quite possible that the the early Jesus community created the procedure in our reading this week as the need arose. It is also possible (though less probable) that this procedure originated with Jesus himself: in this case, the passage teaches us to relate to fellow Jesus followers refusing to listen as Jesus did, as someone to be won again, and as worth extending table fellowship and an invitation to follow Jesus again. I find this interpretation less compelling given how tax collectors and pagans were treated at the time Matthew’s gospel was written.
Regardless of its origins, I do appreciate the nugget of wisdom within the procedure: When a fellow member of your religious or non-religious community is engaging in harmful behavior, go to the person and talk to them about it. So many misunderstandings can be solved through a conversation.
The next step in the procedure, “take one or two others along,” sounds a lot to me like an intervention. Thus the issue has to be important enough to justify bringing others in.
When I consider real-life examples where the person being spoken to doesn’t respond in ways their friends or community members want them to, what always follows is a schism in the relationship with the person bringing the concern or in relation to the community.
I’ve been on both sides of this procedure. I’ve been among friends who in love for another friend staged an intervention which saved their life: today our friend is in a much better place than they would have been had they continued down their original path of self-destruction.
I’ve also been on the receiving end. Many times folks attempted to intervene with me when I and Renewed Heart Ministries first began affirming and welcoming those who are part of the LGBTQ community. Eventually I and those who came to me concerned about who I was affirming and including in a gospel of love parted ways. Looking back now, as the adage goes, I’d rather be excluded over whom I include than included for whom I exclude.
Just a few weeks ago, I answered a call from a concerned White Christian who thought I speak out about racial justice too much. Our conversation didn’t change their mind, and I’m not about to change either in the face of the racially based harm still happening in our society. So we parted ways.
In these cases, I guess I’d have to say I am now treated as a “tax collector” or a “pagan”: their relationship to me resembles much more the biases against pagans and tax collectors in 1st Century Galilee than it does the Jesus of the gospels. I would love it if they treated me the way Jesus treated tax collectors! But that’s not been my experience.
So what is a life-giving way to relate to those with whom we have significant differences? Are all differences the same? Are some differences of such intrinsic significance that in the wake of disagreement, we must end relationships? Disagreements about a person’s worth and right to existence are much different than other conflicts. Are we sure that what we disagree about is at that level? Or are we too quick to sever relationships over the slightest differences? We must weigh both the values over which we are disagreeing and the value of the relationship that may be lost.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, do we turn a blind eye because we are conflict averse and afraid of rocking the boat? I appreciate that in this week’s reading, Jesus followers are not encouraged to avoid conflict, but to lean in, beginning with one-on-one conversation.
How I wish many stories that have circulated about me over the years would have begun first with a simple conversation. Conversations don’t solve everything. Sometimes the conflict is unavoidable. But how much misinformed harm can been averted with a conversation? We shouldn’t jump to rumors, nor bury our heads in the sand. The life-giving option lies somewhere in the middle, beginning with a direct discussion. Which steps come next can’t be predicted, but whatever those steps are, may we take each one thoughtfully with life-giving intent for everyone involved.
The rest of our reading refers to binding and loosing. You can hear me and Todd Leonard discuss this teaching on YouTube.
Lastly for this week, the promise of where two or more are agreed in our reading this week repurposes Jewish rabbinic wisdom contemporary to this passage. The wisdom stated that where two or more studied the Torah, God was present in their midst.
The life-giving grappling for me this week revolves around the first portion of this week’s reading: What is a life-giving procedure for relating to those in our communities with whom we have concerns and disagreements?
Concerns and disagreements will always happen. Human beings are messy. We all get to choose how we navigate those concerns and disagreements in a life giving or death dealing way.
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. How does the counsel in week’s reading inform your relationship with others with whom you may disagree? Share and discuss with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate.
You can find Renewed Heart Ministries on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts. Also, if you enjoy listening to the Jesus for Everyone podcast, please like and subscribe to the JFE podcast through the podcast platform you use and consider taking some time to give us a review. This helps others find our podcast as well.
Also I want to share that we are partnering in a new weekly YouTube show called “Just Talking.” Each week, Todd Leonard and I will be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
My new book, Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels is now also available at renewedheartministries.com
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
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Herb’s new book Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels, is available at renewedheartministries.com.
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Jesus and Another Story of Debt Cancellation
Herb Montgomery | September 16, 2022
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“Am I prioritizing relationships with people over and above the rules that capitalism continues to try to program us with as to how to play its game? If we do this, in the end, we may make less and our net worths may be less, but our investments in people and in relationships will be greater or possibly developed in a different direction than our present capitalist system would have sent us.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Luke:
Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.
“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” (Luke 16:1-13)
This week’s reading puts serving God and serving wealth in tension. “Serving God” is a phrase that should be read in the context of the reign or kingdom of God. We can understand the gospel phrase “the kingdom of God” as God’s just future here on Earth, a new iteration of our present world where there is economic, social, and political justice. In that kingdom, resources and power are distributed with equity and everyone has what they need to not just survive but also to thrive. It’s a world where the rain falls and the sun shines on all.
In this context, we can begin to understand why, intrinsically, you cannot both serve this vision for human community and serve the interests of wealth. This is difficult for us in our capitalist culture to grasp. Jesus’ economic teachings in the gospels assume that there is enough for everyone to thrive abundantly because our heavenly Parent provides for us. Wealth is created when someone begins storing up more than they need, which creates a deficit for somewhere for someone else.
There’s a slightly different lesson in the manna story in the Exodus tradition. For those who tried to store or hoard more than they needed instead of sharing with others who had gathered less, the manna “bred worms and became foul” by the next day. In this example you simply could not amass a “wealth” of manna. It was impossible.
This, along with the debt forgiveness of the Torah, is an economic Jewish tradition Jesus was standing in firmly within his own culture. For the oppressed community of the gospels for whom Jesus’ teachings held deepest meaning, it was clear that one could not serve both wealth and people because one would have to choose between individual opulence and community thriving. (Certain Indigenous traditions also speak of this contrast in their ancient wisdom. See Spirit and Resistance: Political Theology and American Indian Liberation by George E. Tinker.)
Someone somewhere has to suffer loss for wealth to be created, but Jesus taught that that someone somewhere was an object of Divine Universal love for whom the sun was also shining and the rain falling (Matthew 5:45).
As the saying goes “Each day there’s enough for every person’s needs, but not every person’s greeds.” Wealth means having more of what one needs while others do not. In Jesus’ worldview, however, it’s not about everyone having the same quantity, but everyone having the same quality. Some people don’t need as much to thrive. Others need more. In a just world vision with God as the Great, Just Householder, no one has too much while others don’t have enough.
Dishonest Wealth
Our story this week is a lesson on how to use “dishonest wealth” to benefit people.
This strange story only appears in Luke’s version of the gospels and has troubled Christians from the very beginning. Based on this trouble, many of the most progressive historical Jesus scholars attribute this story to the historical, Jewish Jesus.
To be clear, I don’t interpret this story as determining the moral value of dishonest business dealing, embezzlement, or fuzzy accounting. What it does do is commend the manager for his shrewdness in using managing accounts to create relationships for him to fall back on when his current employment ends.
What I glean from this story is a call to look at my priorities within our system as I imagine and work toward a different iteration of our world. What am I prioritizing? Is wealth, creating more capital in order to create even more capital, my priority? Or am I prioritizing people, using the current world and its resources to create relationships with others? Am I prioritizing relationships with people over and above the rules that capitalism continues to try to program us with as to how to play its game? If we do this, in the end, we may make less and our net worths may be less, but our investments in people and in relationships will be greater or possibly developed in a different direction than our present capitalist system would have sent us.
I mentioned Biden’s modest student loan forgiveness program last week. For some parts of the country, Biden’s approval ratings have shot up as a result of him doing exactly what we read about in this week’s story. In the story, a steward told people who owed money to cancel portions of their debts to increase his favor with them, and the manager doing this was not moralistically scolded but commended as being wise.
The uproar among some Christians about Biden’s recent actions reminds me of how this story attributed to Jesus has troubled wealthy Jesus followers from the start. But to those scratching out an existence in the 1st Century and the economically marginalized who comprised most of the early Jesus movement, this story must have resonated deeply. It was this demographic, like today, who deeply wished someone would step in and simply cancel or forgive their debt.
I like that we have an example from our sacred stories of Jesus that mirrors what we see happening around us in our modern society here in the U.S. It’s nice to see our U.S. government economically doing something I actually agree with, which is a rarity. I like the idea of forgiving debt for people who are victims of predatory loans for something as valuable as an education. I wish all of it was forgiven! I want to live in a more educated society and support using part of our society’s wealth to create a more educated populace. It encourages me that despite those Christian friends who are up in arms about this small amount of loan forgiveness, this week’s story tells us this is exactly the kind of thing we should favor as Jesus followers.
So which value system have we allowed to shape us more: Are we capitalists first or are we Jesus followers first? Have we allowed the values and ethics of the Jesus story that we hold so dear to shape the kinds of people we are becoming, or have we allowed the value system of capitalism to shape how we see the world.
These questions are far more than partisan politics. They help me to question what it is that I’m choosing to shape the way I live.
What is shaping you?
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. What other possible applications or lessons do you glean from this week’s parable? Discuss with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
I want to remind you, that you can find us here at Renewed Heart Ministries on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. If you haven’t done so you can follow us on any of those social media platforms for our daily posts. Also, if you enjoy listening to the Jesus for Everyone podcast, consider taking some time to give us a review on whichever podcast platform you use. This helps others find our podcast content as well.
If you’d like to reach us, you can always drop us a message here.
That’s all for this week.
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week
Begin each day being inspired toward love, compassion, action, and justice.
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