Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
September 8, 2002
Exodus 12:1-14
Matthew 18:15-20

INTRODUCTION

Have you ever known a real sports fan? I mean a real sports fan. A die hard. One of those people who knows the roster of your favorite team all the way back to 1929. One of those people who remembers every trade, every playoff, every called strike. There’s something interesting about the way they talk. They rarely mention the name of their team. They’ll never say, “The Mets traded for a great infielder the other day.” They’ll say, “We got a great infielder the other day.”

We.

It’s a little strange. When we hear someone talk that way, there’s a tendency to think there’s something wrong with them. I mean, in what sense is that person part of a ‘we’? I didn’t see you out on the field. That wasn’t you catching that long fly ball to center to end the game. Where do you get off saying “we”?

Our bosses might use “we” but they usually mean “you” or “I” depending on the circumstances. The Queen uses “we” but she definitely means “I”.

But it’s also unusual because the usage of the word ‘we’ is far less common in our culture than the use of the word “I”. And that’s hardly surprising, is it? We live in a pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps culture. American individualism. We find this everywhere. Perhaps the reason that the sports fan’s ‘we’ sounds so strange to us is that sports is one of the few areas left where team mentality survives. (I say this of course as sports like golf become more popular and sports like baseball become less so). But everywhere else, individualism reigns.

This is becoming more and more true in our Christian faith as well. Christian faith is becoming one of an array of options that people can choose–like a car, or music, or some other accessory. I note with some caution here, that even our own beloved American University has entering students fill out “religious preference” forms. It’s just another choice like soft drinks or breakfast cereals. What do you prefer? I used to prefer Christianity, but I’ve been using a lot of Buddhism lately.

THE TEXT

Today’s lesson from the New Testament, however, reminds us it’s not all an individual enterprise.

Listen again to the words we heard earlier from the gospel according to Matthew:

¶ “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and 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.

The sin of one member against another is a matter of community concern. Not without respect for privacy, however. If the matter can be addressed privately, it should. But when it cannot, then the community is involved. First as witnesses. Then as pastor. Christianity is not an individual enterprise, it is a corporate one–one done as a community, as the people of God together.

This is made strikingly clear by the remainder of today’s lesson:

Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

“If two of you agree on earth…it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.” If two of you agree. Note that it’s not, “Hey whatever you want is yours.” In the sermon on the mount, Jesus says, “Ask and it will be given you”–but there, as here, the word ‘you’ is plural.

And then there is the clincher: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” Christian faith is not a solo endeavor.

But neither is it an oppressive endeavor. Christ does not require us to subvert our individuality to the crowd. The phrase that is translated “member of the church” is in the Greek adelfoi. As perhaps our Chi Alpha or Greek friends can tell us, adelphoi means ‘brothers.’ Elsewhere in this translation the word is usually rendered more inclusively as ‘brothers and sisters.’ So it’s not just any old group of people living in faith together. It is a family, the children of God, a community united by the love shared among members of a family.

THE CHURCH

You would think that we would have that figured out since this text is specific instructions to the church.

Part of the problem we have here is with English. Don’t get me wrong, I love the English language and try to speak it often. But it is important to know that the Bible was not written in English. And most curiously, neither Jesus nor the Disciples, nor the early church spoke or wrote in English. I know, I was as surprised as you.

But that sometimes creates problems for us when we talk about our faith in English, because the words don’t always line up. This happens a lot in the writings of Paul, where English translations will often use different words where Paul is really only using one Greek one. But one of our biggest problems is with the word “church.” Our word comes from the Middle English chirche, from Old English cirice, ultimately from Late Greek kyriakon, from Greek, neuter of kyriakos ‘of the lord’, from kyrios lord, master. Basically, it come’s from a Greek phrase that means ‘the Lord’s house.’

Now, there’s nothing wrong with that, per se; the problem is with the fact that that is not the Greek word for church. No, when the word ‘church’ appears in the New Testament, it is the word ekklhsia ecclesia, which is itself the translation of a Hebrew word found in the Old Testament qahal, which means “assembly.” You’ve surely heard it as a cliché, but the church is truly not a building but is a community of people. To be a Christian is to be bound together in community–a community that is so at the heart of our faith, that even when we are alone in our rooms we pray “Our Father…”.

GOD

And there is something more.

As Christians, we confess a faith in the One God, Father, Son, and Spirit. The God we confess is Triune. Now, this is not the sermon to explain the Trinity. It would take a lot more than one 15 minute sermon to do that. But suffice it to say that when Christians confess that God is Father, Son, and Spirit, we are saying something about God’s innermost nature. God is a God in relationship. The relationship of the Father’s love for the Son and the Spirit. Of the Son’s love for the Father and the Spirit. Of the Spirit’s love for the Son and the Father. God was love before there was a creation because God loved in God’s own inner being.

We don’t have to truly understand how it all works to grasp the fundamental claim being made: The God we confess is a God in community. The Christ we follow is the Son who revealed to us the love of God and commands us to reflect that love in community.

SEPTEMBER 11TH

On Wednesday, we will observe the one year anniversary of the devastating attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania. Those of you who’ve known me, know that as a New Yorker and an 11-year Washington resident, the events of September 11 hit me hard. People–my people–had been hurt. And in those terrible days afterward, there was indeed a sense in the land that people–our people–were suffering together. And while different parts of the country experienced the tragedy in different ways, we were all experiencing it together. Bound together by communication lines, by telephone, by all-day and all-night television broadcast, we came to understand a fundamental truth: though different, we are all one people. A community. And we laugh and cry, suffer and rejoice, celebrate and grieve, together.

And it is in community that we know God. Oh sure, it might be possible to lock oneself off in a room or climb a mountaintop somewhere and ponder the nature of the divine. It might be possible to contemplate the nature of God by oneself. But the God that Israel and the Church proclaim is known in community.

[This weekend was Rosh HaShanah, the beginning of the Jewish year. Next Sunday night begins Yom Kippur a day of atonement, collectively for the community. A practice we follow in our own prayers of confession as we pray for forgiveness using the word "we".]

God is known in community. God is experienced in community. We related to God as a community of the faithful.

And on Wednesday, as we reflect back on the events of that awful day last year, we see the point that God is known in community, illustrated hundredfold. People would ask of that day: “Where was God?” And slowly the reports began to trickle back in: God was in a fireman’s helmet running up 50 flights of stairs as everyone else rushed down. God was an EMT rushing to the scene. God was in total strangers offering their homes, their places of business, as places of shelter to people they had never met before. In the response of the community, God was most evident, and remains so.

CONCLUSION

And so it is with us.

Over the past few weeks, there has been something of a series that rather serendipitously emerged from the sermons preached here. In our first service two weeks ago, we talked about how your lives in college, and all our lives in faith, are journeys that we walk our whole lives. Last week we talked about questions of identity and of who we are and how we are a people in relationship with God, who goes before us and with us one the walk of faith. And today we come almost full circle as we understand that the walk that we, as a people of God, embark upon in faith is a walk we make together.

When we as a church remember that we are a community of faith, then God is most clearly shown. This is what is meant by Jesus’ commandment, “Love one another as I have loved you. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” It is in our active love for one another, and for all the world, as a community of faith, that we are made known as disciples of the one who gave his life for us, who so loved that he suffered for the sake of the whole human community, who promised us, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”