September 6, 2026

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott

Matthew 18:15-20

Truly, this Gospel text is a hard teaching. It’s harder than the one on forgiveness that we’ll get next week, the one that looks at forgiveness as a math problem, forgiving each other 70 x 7 times. For some of us, today’s teaching is a harder cross to bear than the cross of persecution and death. So you might ask, why is it so difficult?

It’s a hard text because it has a complicated history and use. On the one hand, it can be used as a blueprint for how to build community. But it also has a troubling history of being used to cast people out of community. It doesn’t take much imagination to envision how a sociopath or a narcissist could use this text to get support for their views and to get rid of everyone who disagrees and will not conform to their world view.

For some of us, it’s hard because it seems so legalistic. Bible scholars can show us that today’s Gospel is rooted in ancient Jewish law about how differences will be settled. On its face, this Gospel doesn’t seem like the rule of love that Paul encourages in today’s passage from the letter to Romans.

For some of us, it’s hard because it reminds us that what we want to have happen—a quick resolution so we can all go back the way we were before—this outcome may not happen the first time we make an attempt. Forgiveness and repair of relationships can be an arduous process—and the fact that Jesus doesn’t offer a quick fix makes it a hard teaching.

Today’s text reminds us that Jesus comes to earth for many reasons, but one of the most essential reasons is to show us how to live in community, not how to live for ourselves. And today’s text tells us how to navigate one of the hardest parts of living in community—how to handle disagreements of all sorts, from the petty to ones more major.

The bad news is that we don’t automatically agree on what God wants, for us and for the larger world, just because we profess the same savior. The good news is that we don’t have to do the work of resolving disagreements by ourselves. We don’t have to change ourselves to be what someone else wants us to be, but we can’t ignore, dehumanize, avoid, or just dismiss the one with whom we disagree. We have to talk to them. We can’t do what so many do in this age of social media, complain to everyone else except to the one with whom we disagree.

Jesus gives us an order of approaches, which involves more and more members of the community. We’re involving others for several reasons. Maybe we need witnesses. Or maybe it’s because we’ll be more likely to work on a resolution in the company of others. Maybe the other members of the community will see a way forward that those who are disagreeing do not see.

Involving others also helps everyone to have a spirit of discernment. In a disagreement, it can be so easy to be sure that we are right, that we have been wronged. A loving community can remind us of our part in the conflict, of the ways that we have not been innocent, the way we may have added fuel to the bonfire of disagreement.

We begin the work of reconciliation on a small scale, one on one, two by two, and then with the larger group. If differences can be sorted out easily, no need to involve others. But if it can’t, the resources of the larger group may be required.

In verse 17, the larger group is translated as “church,” which probably leads many of us to think of a group of folks, like this one, who gathers on a Sunday. The Greek word is ekklesia, which is often translated as “church,” but the writer of the Gospel of Matthew would not have meant a church, like this one, but a much smaller group of people called by God, living together like the church in the book of Acts. The church that Jesus creates in the first century is one forged in opposition and resistance. The stakes of a disagreement can be much higher, truly life and death.

Jesus’s life shows what happens when disagreements aren’t settled in the way that Jesus describes in today’s Gospel. We know that some of his ekklesia of 12 disciples are not happy with decisions that Jesus makes. We saw it last week with Peter wanting a different outcome for the ministry of Jesus, and we’ll see it in the Holy Week stories of Judas being so upset that he betrays Jesus to the authorities. Judas shows what happens when disagreements are allowed to fester.

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