Skin in the game

 

Matthew 18: 15-20
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
September 6, 2020

Imagine if the passage was written this way:



If another member of the church is racist towards you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.



Or



If another member of the church misgenders you…



If another member of the church makes a sexist joke…



If another member of the church refers to your weight or your body…



The last thing any of us would want to do is be alone with that person. In fact, sometimes it’s a good idea to not be alone with anyone who has hurt us and try to confront them. When these verses were written, then as now, power and patriarchy had their firm grasp in the culture. Although Jesus had tried to change that, the verse was originally written as “If your brother sins”, also leaving out the “sins against you” part. That would describe an entirely different power dynamic: one between equals rather than between offender and the one who was injured.



Unless there are others present who know what it feels like to be marginalized, when someone shares their pain and trauma, often it can be minimalized rather than validated. When we make excuses for the offense—they didn’t know what they were doing, this is a good person, they’re from a different generation, they’re trying their best, it was just a joke, you’re being overly sensitive—we side with the offender rather than with the injured.

When we’re part of the dominant culture or when we’re adjacent to it—when we have privilege of some sort—we tend to side with power than with the powerless. It’s a survival tactic but a destructive one when it comes to the Beloved Community. Often people read forgiveness into this passage because it resolves the conflict within us; it takes us off the hook and makes us feel better. But if we’re the one who’s been injured, forgiveness happens when we’re ready, not because we should or when the offender desires it.



If you ask me, the offender gets off pretty easy in this passage. They can remain as unthinkingly insensitive as ever and still be in community with the injured. We know how Jesus treated tax collectors and those outside the Jewish faith—he extended unmerited mercy and inclusion.

I think it’s time to consider this passage from the other side: from the point of view of the one who has sinned against another and we’re confronted with what we have done wrong against someone. I think this is especially hard for us who think of ourselves as progressive, liberal, kind and open-minded. We’re good people, we tell ourselves. We don’t mean to be insensitive. We don’t deserve that level of anger or distrust. That’s not the impact we intended.



And yet that impact is very real. Those who suffer crucifixion by a thousand little cuts want to know that they can trust community with who they are. It is a sacred trust to honor the truth of another human being; to trust that they know who they are just as we know who we are. And so when we do something, say something unthinkingly and we receive backlash, we have added yet another cut to the other 999 that day, that week, that year.

What we have yet to realize is that we isolate and render invisible the pain of those who are already marginalized. We also diminish community and impoverish ourselves when we injure another by not recognizing and appreciating the full humanity of another person. Even Jesus was brought up short by a Syro-Phoenician woman who schooled him on how expansive grace is and that no one exists outside of it. 

And that’s precisely what the Table is all about. No one exists outside of grace. Here we also commune with betrayal and desertion—how we betray and desert one another, most of the time without intention, but it hurts all the same. It’s hard both to hear and to say “You hurt me” and stay in community. And yet that’s what Jesus is asking us to do because this Table is a sign of that new Table of humanity longing to be built. As we come to this Table in our own spaces, let us ask ourselves how might our lives and our life together be broken open in a way that calls to memory the life of Jesus? What of our substance can we pour out for the forgiveness of sins? Where do we need to let go of power, break old patterns, and protect the injured from further harm?

We’ve all got skin in this game. We all want to be seen and valued and heard. We want our community to be a safe space for everyone but especially for the most vulnerable. Healing and transformation begin when the truth is told, when we face our implicit biases and the violence that resides in all of us, and we begin to repair the holiness that also resides in all of us.

Amen.

"Isn't It A Pity" by George Harrison

 

Benediction

Go forth into the world in peace.
Be of good courage.
Hold fast to that which is good
and render to no one evil for evil.
Strengthen the faint-hearted;
support the weak; help the afflicted.
Honor all people.
Love and serve God,
rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.
The grace of our Savior Jesus Christ be with us all. Amen.