Binding and Loosing, Part 2

Proper 18A
Sept. 7, 2008
Exodus 12:10-14;Psalm 149; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20

Even the pastor of Sarah Palin’s church in Wasilla, Alaska, confesses to having a diverse congregation. The Bible is the Word of God, Pastor Kroon was reported saying in a newspaper article about the Wasilla Baptist Church[i]. “The task of believers is to ponder and analyze the book for meaning – including scrutiny, he said, for errors and mistranslations over the centuries that may have obscured the original intent.”

Oh, the Wasilla Baptist Church is definitely a socially and theologically conservative congregation, but even there, in that small town that a week ago none of us had heard of but that today is the bellwether for the “real America,” even there at the Wasilla Baptist Church, even that much latitude to discover what the words of the Bible really mean to us today, is too tight a fit for some people. People in Wasilla, like people everywhere, are searching for meaning, and wondering how their story fits with God’s story, or Jesus’ story, but many people can go only so far.

Mr. Kroon said the Alaskan spirit of go-it-alone individuality gives the church a mix of joiners and resolute nonjoiners. The church offers full-emersion water baptism, which some people want and others do not.

“I have people who’ve been here since I got here [30 years ago], and they still say don’t put me on the membership roll,” he said. “There’s definitely a cultural element.”

Just what does the Bible mean to us today, and just how much of it do we have to take as, you should pardon the expression, “Gospel truth?”

Now the Gospel of Matthew, our first Gospel in the New Testament, is in many ways the most Jewish of the Gospels. Reading it from cover to cover, as it were, we can discern that Matthew sees the community around Jesus as a community of disciples around a rabbi – a substantially different rabbi, for Jesus truly is the manifestation of God on earth – Emmanuel – God with us – but a rabbi nonetheless. A teacher who stands in the tradition of generations of teachers, and who is well versed in how scripture has been read for generations. A teacher who, like all the other rabbis, knows how to make a good argument.

For thousands of years, people have been wrestling with what the Bible means for them in their lives. The people at the Wasilla Baptist Church have no corner on that. And like the pastor at the Wasilla Baptist Church, people have been struggling to figure out what the words in the Bible originally meant, and what has been added on over time, and how to apply what the words in the Bible originally meant to today, where we live, light years away from the people who originally heard those words.

Our Gospel lesson today is a little déjà vu from our lesson of two weeks ago. Both passages have a lot in common. In both passages we find the only time “the church” is mentioned in Gospels. In both passages, we hear Jesus talking about “binding” and “loosing.” So these passages are important. They say something about the character of Christian community, something about how Jesus wants his disciples to live.

Today, Jesus is talking about how to resolve conflicts. He lays out some rules, which some people and some churches take quite literally. If church members disagree in some churches, this is what they have to do, to the point of expelling the one who resists this “Christian” method of conflict resolution. But then Jesus says,

Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on early will be loosed in heaven. 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.

Binding and loosing. For generations rabbis had debated about the law. All of the law is sacred, every jot and tittle, which means every comma and squiggle of punctuation. But in some circumstances, the strict application of the law can be loosened a bit, and Jesus was famous for that. Take, for example, the commandment to love your neighbor. Remember Jesus’ summary of the law: “to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and to love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” When the question arose about, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus bound that law, strengthened it, tied it, to a universal understanding of neighbor that included even enemies. “‘You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” Similarly, starting from those two commandments – love of God and love of neighbor as self – Jesus, the rabbi, would loose the law, such as the law prohibiting work on the Sabbath. If people are hungry and it is the Sabbath and they have no food, or if someone is in need of healing, then they may loose the law and do those works. That does not break the law, for it is still forbidden to work on the Sabbath – but the demands of the circumstances – the time, the place, the burning need of the neighbor – demand that the observance of the law be stretched on this occasion.[ii]

And so how does Jesus want us to interpret the Word of God? Do we do everything he says? Do we have to work out our conflicts just like this? St. Paul lays out some of the original 10 Commandments given to Moses as part of Exodus story: “You shall not commit adultery. You shall not commit murder. You shall not steal. You shall not covet.” But then Paul, himself a rabbi, loosens those commandments, even as he binds the one that is more important: “’Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”

We may not agree with what the Bible means to, say, the people of the Wasilla Baptist Church. Even within this congregation we may find that the words of the Bible mean different things to different people. If the wisdom of generations of rabbis is any clue, these differences of opinion are nothing new. We are able to disagree – even when two or three of us are gathered together – because we are embraced in unity and in love by the one who has gathered us together, the one who is Emmanuel, God-with-us, the One who insists that we follow his commandment of love.

---

[i] “In Palin’s Worship and Politics, a Desire to Follow God’s Will” by Kirk Johnson and Kim Severson (The New York Times, September 6, 2008, p. 1,A12)

[ii] Mark Allan Powell, “Binding and loosing: a paradigm for ethical discernment from the Gospel of Matthew;” Currents in Theology and Mission, 2003