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Let us once more turn to God in prayer, Christ in the eyes of who see Me Christ in the e I hear my voice, Christ in the hearts of oh no, me oh Christ. So

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going to be for I, so going to be in the beginning of a new year. It can seem that seminary is a perfect beloved community. We make our vows, we sign the book, everyone

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loves each other, everyone gets along, everyone supports each other and agrees with each other and we're just all one big happy family. So it's usually around the second week of the semester that it, that

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it hits you. This is graduate school and not just any graduate school, but the kind of graduate school that makes you do heart surgery, brain surgery and soul surgery on your trembling. Being in front

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of the rest of a class of still relative, strangers who are also doing exactly the same thing. In the second week, you come to realize that seminary is hard and fascinating and exciting and anxiety provoking

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. Seminary invites you to say, to bring forward beliefs, to speak your truths in a way that law school or Math science grad school would never do truths that have both material and intellectual but also cosmic

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and eternal consequences for you and for this world that God so loves. And here's the thing while you are in the midst of that kind of tender raw . Remembering when you are pulling apart the tangled threads

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of what you have always believed and measuring them against Hebrew Bible and theology and history and liturgy. You will find that you have tender spots, sore spots , spots that have never healed and scars that you

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would just as well not reveal to anyone else. Much less to this room of relative strangers trying to read Tertullian and figure out the difference between and sites and remember which of these dots and tittles is a

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and which is a comet because all of that matters so very much and then someone will hit one of your sore spots. No, let me rephrase that someone in their own flailing about in their own internal

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surgery in their own self protective, white knuckled grip on the world. They used to know someone will say or do something that will rip one of your scars back open. Someone will say or do something

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that will knock the wind out of you. Someone will say or do something that will leave you emotionally or even physically curled up in a protective fetal position and that someone may even be one of those people

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who sit in class with you who live on your hall, whose kids walk to school with your kids . Someone right here in this beloved community of worship and study and leadership formation. Today's gospel comes from

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the 18th chapter of Matthew. The last chapter of Jesus's teaching before he begins the long walk south from the Galilee to Judea. The long walk that will lead inexorably to arrest torture, death and burial in

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Matthew's Gospel. This is jesus' last chapter to teach the disciples in a place of relative safety and comfort . The chapter opens with a call to humility to be coming as Children are Jesus follows this with a

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warning against anything that might cause Children to stumble and with a promise that God seeks out those who are lost. All of this, all of this might be a conversation about those outside of the beloved community

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, those outside who cause the chosen family to stumble , those outside who cause the chosen family to become lost. And it would be easy to make this a conversation about them and us. But then Matthew

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records these words, if another member of the church sins against you and suddenly this is not a conversation about them. Suddenly this is a conversation about us about the beloved community, about our chosen family.

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About those we consider insiders. The Greek here offers two possibilities. One way to read. This is as a simple hypothetical option. Should your chosen family ever sin against you? Not that that's very likely

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. Now, I have my doubts about this kind of reading. You see, I'm reformed, reformed Christians expect sin and are surprised by grace. My reformed spirit leads me to believe that this is probably

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a future more probable condition, a sentence more like this. Suppose your chosen family sins against you, which eventually will happen because we expect sin even among our chosen family of faith and study and leadership formation

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, even within the seminary, even within the church , Jesus's counsel here is a familiar 11 that underlies even our grievance process is on campus. First, you go to the person who wronged you, the

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person who intentionally or not caused you harm, you go to them just in case they don't know. Sometimes we harm people and don't know you go to them because even though they harmed you, they are

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still part of your chosen family. And when you go to them, you expose the problem. If they hear you, you have regained your family and Matthew then gives us the steps to take if they

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don't hear you moving from a small group to the assembly as a whole, all in an attempt not to humiliate, but to repair, not to tear down, but to build up. But sometimes sometimes

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you can't fix it. Sometimes your scars stand right in the path of someone else's security. Sometimes reconciliation is not possible, not now, not yet. So Jesus says, if they won't pay attention,

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even to the church treat them as you would. A gentile and a tax collector, gentiles and tax collectors. These words have carried with them weight and power for generations. Communities of faith have used them

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as excuses to shun former members, excluding them, not only from membership but from friendship. Some even treating them as though they were dead, living ghosts , not speaking, not looking, not acknowledging their

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existence in any way after all. Doesn't Jesus teach this, aren't we to treat them? Those people who have sinned against us as gentiles and tax collectors ? Well, friends, Jesus does say these words

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, but I can almost see a little twinkle in Jesus's Israelite eyes as he says them, we who are hurt, we who want to shun to ostracize to cause others to feel our hurt. We often

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miss the twinkle, the gifts that this statement offers to us all in our heart. We read this as a call to build a wall around ourselves to float buoy and string razor wire across the space between

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ourselves and that person who has hurt us who has sinned against us. That person who refuses to see and hear. We deputize our tongues as miniature Texas rangers to shoot to injure or to kill that one

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. We see as trespassing crossing our boundaries. We read gentiles and tax collectors and some of us even some of us who claim to be justice seeking progressives , slightly chant within our own spirits. Build that

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wall, build that wall. Even maybe especially against those to whom we are closest in, call closest in passion with whom we share classroom space and apartment space. Those whose names are written like ours in

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the seminary's book of Matriculation or even in the Lamb's Book of Life. When we get in that space of hurt and self protectiveness, we miss the twinkle in those Jewish Palestinian eyes as Jesus says, treat

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them as you would a gentile and a tax collector . After all, Jesus knows what we know if we've been following Matthew's story. Gentiles like rehab and Ruth are part of Jesus's lineage. Gentiles. The

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magi bring gifts to the one whose star appeared in the heavens. Gentiles the Egyptians take in the refugee holy family until it is safe for them to return to Galilee. Jesus promises Galilee of the gentiles that

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the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Jesus acknowledges that even gentiles of basic ethics treating others as they have been treated and praises the faith of a gentile Centurion. Indeed the witness of

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the gospel of Matthew is that Jesus treats gentiles as good and honorable and faithful people. They're not insiders . No, the original disciples are all Jews, but Jesus builds no wall and strings up no razor

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wire against the g what about tax collectors? Those who work for the Roman Imperial colonizers, those who were seen as complicit in the community's oppression. Yes . These things are true. This is also true

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. Jesus says that tax collectors return love to those who love them. Tax collectors can be called into the company of Jesus's 12 closest male friends. Tax collectors eat at table with Jesus and he is called

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their friend. Jesus even claims that tax collectors and sex workers will proceed some of us into God's promise realm. Jesus isn't undercutting his own message here. He knows that sometimes we need to create distance from

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each other. Jesus knows that sometimes we sin against each other and sometimes we cannot hear our sibling in this faith community cry out because of our actions. I am reformed friends and in the seminary of the

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reformed flavor of Christianity, I say again, expect sin, sin of omission, sin of commission, sin of avoidance and negligence expect that in our emotional , spiritual, even physical flailing about, we may

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well fail each other and fail to see it. And yet even amid the mundanity of sin, we experience a surprising gift of grace. We who are gentiles are reminded that we are also part of God's

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greater story called to go beyond our basic ethics and to embrace the radical faith of our forebears. We who are tax collectors are reminded that we also are called to discipleship for. We also may proceed into

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God's promised realm. And here in this place, this font reminds us gentiles and tax collectors all who we are and who we are and here at this table, we gentiles and tax collectors all are welcomed

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and fed and sent forth. Jesus doesn't end here and instead he closes the section of chapter 18 with a promise and a warning. The literal translation of the Greek reads something like this, whatever you bind

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on earth will already have been bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will already have been set loose in heaven. The promise and the warning are the same. You have power. You have the

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power to bind fast hands, feet, spirit and hearts, and you have the power to bind up wounds. What you bind here will already have been bound in heaven. Family. Be careful what you

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bind. Likewise, you have the power to let loose gossip, slander, ostracism, the kind of cheese made that breaks down communities and cuts through people like hidden razor wire in the Rio Grande. And

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you have the power to set loose those held captive to the forces of oppression and hatred and bigotry, whatever you loose here will have already been let loose in heaven, family. Be careful what you let

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loose. Remember Christ is there among you wherever two or three of you gather, Christ is there in your joy and in your disagreement, in your elation . And even at the point of rupture, Christ

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is there always calling, always loving, always challenging , always seeking to heal all of us, gentiles all of us tax collectors. It will happen inevitably your chosen family will wrong you and you will wrong

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them. You may not be able to reconcile now or for a long time from now. Even here at seminar, surrounded by people who love God so much who signed up to do this deep open heart

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, open soul surgery on themselves. Even here, inevitably, someone from this chosen family will wrong you and you may not be able to be reconciled to them because of the utter mundanity of human sin,

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your sin, their sin, our sin. Yeah . And here in this place, there is water . Here in this place, there is the bread of the earth and the fruit of the vine.

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Here in this place, there is a table so big, so welcoming, so surprisingly grace filled that we all are welcome. Even tax collectors even gentiles , even you, even me. It is the

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second week of seminary friends, conflicts will happen, you will wrong others and they will wrong you. Even when you are trying to be the best that you can be, do what you can to be

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reconciled to one another. And trust that even if you through the mundanity of your own ever present sin , become someone else's tax collector or gentile. You may always come here to this place of grace here

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, Christ welcomes you. Here, Christ feeds you here, Christ sends you to try again for Christ did not come to the world for perfect people, but for us just as we are gentiles and tax