Jesus spoke to his disciples. 15‘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. 16But 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. 17If 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. 18Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. 19Again, 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. 20For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.’
John Pridmore Sermon
THE New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, in common with many other modern English versions of the Greek and Hebrew scriptures, seeks to avoid “linguistic sexism” in translating the original texts. Few would quarrel with that objective. Male bias misleads.
Yet sometimes our translators, in their effort to eliminate this bias, come up with a wording that only makes matters worse. So it is with the passage from Matthew that we read on Sunday. We must notice what has happened. Nit-picking it is not.
The Greek text has: “If your brother sins against you . . .” The NRSV reads: “If another member of the church sins against you . . .” The surgery has been successful — the sexist language has been cut out — but the patient has died.
The heart of the passage has stopped. An inclusive translation that does not miss the point would have to be: “If your brother or sister sins against you . . .”
There is all the difference in the world between “your brother or sister” and “another member of the church”. If you are my “brother” or my “sister”, there is an intimate personal relationship between us. “Member of the church” has no sug gestion of a personal relationship; it indicates no more than an impers onal affiliation. It sounds as if Jesus is telling you what to do if someone on the electoral roll upsets you.
To be sure, in his little tract about Jesus, Matthew certainly has “the church” in mind. He is the only Gospel-writer to use the Greek word (ekklesia) that — for all its un happy associations — we usually trans late as “church”.
It is Matthew, only Matthew, who tells us that Jesus said that he would found his “church” on Peter (Mat thew 16.18). Matthew twice men tions “the church” in our Gospel reading, although not in the unfor tunate phrase “member of the church”, which the NRSV translators have made up.
Our Gospel reading prescribes what must be done as a last resort about the brother or sister who has behaved hurtfully. In the end, the offended party must “tell it to the church”. If the one who has caused the pain refuses to listen to the church, then no one must have any thing further to do with him or her.
It is impossible to say precisely what processes are contemplated, but the judgement (“bound in heaven”) is one of uncompromising severity. “Let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax-collector.” No amount of special pleading can stifle our suspicion that we might not be listening to Jesus here, but to someone else.
Clearly, by Matthew’s time, some thing called “the church” exists and has some rudimentary organisa tion, although it is still blessedly free of all the baggage that will later encumber it. What constitutes the church for Matthew? Where is it to be found?
From a first reading of our Gos pel, we might conclude that, for Mat thew, the church exists simply where two or three gather in the name of Jesus. From several more read ings, we might stay with the same conclusion.
Matthew notes the course of ac tion that must be followed if some one offends a fellow Christian. But what is prescribed is not a disciplin ary procedure within an organisa tion. It is within the family that in jury has been done, and it is within the family that reconciliation must take place.
The memory has not been lost of all that Jesus taught about the inti mate family relationship of those who trust and follow him (Mark 3.31-35). Those who walk the way of Jesus together are kith and kin — and more so than human siblings can ever be. Schism in the church will always be much more serious than organisational breakdown.
Male bias misleads, both in the Bible’s language and our own. So, too, do truncated readings. The lec tion ary tells us to stop, where we should read on. Matthew, sounding rather like an archdeacon, has out lined the formal steps to be taken wh en a brother or sister says or does something injurious. The scholars en dorse our own misgivings, that there is more of Matthew than of Jesus in this passage. Something is missing. What is missing is any mention of forgiveness.
That omission is at once repaired if we read on. It is particularly im port ant that we read these subse quent verses this Sunday, if next Sun day we are planning to read the Gospel for Holy Cross Day instead of them. We register what Jesus says — and now it is surely Jesus speaking, and not Matthew — in response to Peter’s question about forgiveness.
How often, Peter wants to know, should he forgive a brother or sister who does him wrong? Peter has learned something from Jesus of the importance of forgiveness. (One day, through his own experience of being forgiven by his injured Lord, he will learn much more.)
Peter’s question shows that he under stands that forgiveness must be generous. Jesus’s response reveals what Peter — and the rest of us — have yet to grasp: that forgiveness must be uncalculating
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