“Intervention” – Sermon on September 7, 2014

Matthew 18: 15-20

Jesus said, “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or 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.

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

“Intervention” – Sermon on September 7, 2014                                                    by Rev. Doreen Oughton

With all our back to school prayers, I thought we’d start off with a little quiz. I’m going to quote a saying, and you decide if it is from the bible or not. You don’t have to answer out loud if you don’t want to, but feel free. Okay – here goes:

How did you do? Any surprises? I wanted to talk a bit on the last saying – God helps those who help themselves. I think some people may be surprised that this is not scripture. I’ve heard it quoted so often. The saying encourages self-responsibility and initiative. It’s a way of saying “don’t just sit around and wait for God to save you, do something about your own life. And maybe, once you start, God will join in and move things along.” There’s another common wisdom in a similar vein, that “you can’t help someone who doesn’t want help.” Now there may be wisdom in these sayings, a truth that helps people manage their lives, maybe even thrive in this world. And I certainly can’t speak for Jesus as to whether he agreed or disagreed with these sentiments, but I do believe, through my reading of scripture, that his focus was different. Jesus was much less interested in how individuals managed their lives than he was about how communities managed their life together.

This morning’s passage is an example of that. Jesus has been teaching his disciples, and one asks him who is the greatest in the kindom of heaven. Jesus took a child and said “whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in heaven.” He goes on to warn against putting stumbling blocks in front of such believers, and expresses woe about all the stumbling blocks in the world, and even within a person. He talks about the shepherd leaving the 99 sheep of the flock to find one lost one, and then rejoicing when it is found. And then comes this passage. “If another member of the church sins, go talk to her about it.” Some translations say “sins against you” and others just leave it at “sins.” In the first translation, we have a situation like we discussed in the children’s message. It is about healing a relationship between two people, keeping it real. In the second translation it is about seeing someone who is part of your community missing the mark, distancing themselves from God and others, for that is how I understand sin. Here is a definition of it that I came across that really spoke to me: “Sin is not a catalog of things we’ve done wrong, but a force that seeks to rob God’s children of abundant life.” The thing or things the person is doing may have nothing to do with you, and it could be easy to say, “not my business.” But here Jesus says it is your business. Jesus advises you to make it your business, important business that you will attend to for as long as it takes. If a private conversation doesn’t help the person see the light, get a few others who see it also, and bring them in on the conversation. If that still doesn’t do it, go ahead and talk to the assembled body at the church.

Now this is a really tricky teaching, one that can bite you if you don’t get it right. The focus is on maintaining community and relationship, not on getting an apology. The focus is on bringing a person back into the abundant life available through community when he or she has wandered off track. It is not about venting your anger, or sitting in judgment. And if you do the process with integrity, you will feel incredibly vulnerable rather than self-righteous.

Many of you know that before I became a minister I worked in addictions treatment. I think that idea that you can’t help someone who doesn’t want help originated in relationship to people with addictions. Because loved ones around addicts do so much to try to fix the problem – they cover up, they clean up, they beg and plead, they go to tremendous lengths to show the person their worth and value, to love them into sobriety. And it rarely works. Those who studied the problem and worked with addicts for years saw this truth, and knew that putting someone in the drunk tank to dry out was not going to really help matters. Many effective forms of treatment were developed, including AA, but, as the AA saying goes, the program is not for people who need it, but for people who want it. People had to hit a bottom, went the thinking.

But at some point people weren’t satisfied with this waiting. Too many were dying and wreaking havoc on society. And people tried what came to be called an intervention. The thinking was that an addict is so enslaved to the substance or behavior that he or she can’t think straight about it, can’t see or understand the destruction, can’t get out of the immediacy of need or desire to see that a different life is possible. They need people they love and trust to point it out to them, to show them what they are missing. It is not just showing the person their true worth and value, but speaking the truth about the way their life is being taken from them.

This is the word that came to mind as I read and reread this passage – Intervention. I watched an episode of the tv show Intervention as part of my research today. And I participate in a few interventions when I was an addictions professional, as well as on a personal level. It’s so hard to intervene in someone’s broken life, to confront them with the truth of it. You feel so vulnerable. When you hear the word “confront,” don’t you think of someone standing strong, maybe raising their voice, using anger to energize them? But these kinds of confrontations are so different.

As I watched the tv episode, it was clear that the whole family had problems, not just the one being intervened upon. And all of them needed to have some grasp of their own issues before going into the intervention session. In a family there is rarely, if ever, just one problem person that can be fixed while everyone else stays the same. It is a system, and everyone is affected by everyone else. The ones crying the hardest were the ones “confronting” the addict. All the love and fear and understanding of the complexity was there, and all of them so vulnerable.

And I think Jesus had something like that in mind in this teaching. It’s not about the people who have it all together getting after someone else to fly straight. It is about understanding that we are the Body of Christ – together – and if some part of the body is ailing, it affects all of us. Now this is not the point where we cut off the leg that causes us to stumble. This is where we give the resources of the body to the part in need.

I was also intrigued by the words loosed and bound in this passage. There are different ways of understanding them. What did Jesus mean? Was the goal to get the community bound together, and when one was loosed they were cut off from community, shunned? Or does bound mean in bondage to sin, and to loose someone mean to set them free from that bondage? Do we want things to be bound or loosed in heaven? The Greek word translated as bound can mean tied or fastened; or it can mean thrown into chains. The word translated as “loosed” means to loosen anything tied or fastened, or to unbandage feet, take off shoes. What do you think?

Now I see Jesus as a both/ and kind of guy more than either/or. So my take on it is that he wants us to help release a person who is in bondage to sin – who is enslaved to life-draining activities, people, substances, behaviors. And once they are loosed, they are invited to freely bind themselves to the Body of Christ, which is where abundant life is found. It requires vulnerability more than purity; it requires love more than judgment. It is hard to do, but it is worth doing, as it gives us all the power of heaven. Imagine if we could harness that, how the kindom would come. May it be so.