No matter how you twist and turn your tablet or smartphone, the image manages to move right with you. Thanks to a nifty little thing called a gyroscope, everything stays “right-side up.” Don’t you wish lots of things in life had a gyroscope? Wouldn’t it be nice, if, no matter how turned around things got, there was always a way to get right-side up?
It’s like magic, isn’t it? No matter how many times you flip or turn your smartphone or tablet, the screen turns right along with you, keeping whatever it is you’re looking at right-side-up.
Chances are, the first time this screen flip happened to you, you were a bit unnerved. Now the feature is standard on just about every piece of mobile technology. We’re not used to things righting themselves. Typically, if something’s out of whack in life, we notice it and try to make it right. How many times have we straightened the picture over the sofa? Perhaps that’s what makes the screen on your smartphone so endearing. It does the fixing itself.
It isn’t magic that keeps our little screens in sync with us. It’s science. Inside your favorite device is a gyroscope, which – when coupled with an accelerometer – senses precise motion along six axes: up/down, left/right, forward/backward. It even keeps tabs on the speed with which you move. The result is a phone that not only keeps your pictures facing the right direction, but a phone that can track the number of steps you take while power-walking the indoor track at the Activity Center. The gyroscope also helps in playing some neat video games.
In today’s gospel reading, we hear Jesus urging us to keep our relationships right-side up. The only problem is that, unlike our smartphones and iPads, we don’t have built-in gyroscopes making it automatic and easy. At least that’s the assumption. But God has given us a grace that can be a gyroscope for our lives. This “gyroscopic grace” will unfailingly, and without any merit of our own, get us right-side-up with God.
Normally we do not start today’s reading with the story of the shepherd seeking out the 100th sheep which has wandered off. Yet the story is an exquisite lead-in to the core of the discussion about forgiveness. Verse 14 summarizes the teaching in this section: not a single person should be lost; no one is expendable; each one is worthy of being pursued to the point of risking everything.
Besides passing on the words and actions of Jesus, Matthew was also speaking words of support and admonishment to the community of believers who would be the first to get his gospel account.
Jewish believers in Christ were being barred from the synagogues because the Jewish leaders deemed that they were breaking the covenant. The synagogue leaders where trying to maintain the delicate balance of toleration with which the Roman authorities viewed them. The behavior of the Christ-followers could bring Roman approbation down on them.
Jesus’ teaching set the will of God in opposition to the will of the Emperor. It was the will of God that was to rule the faith community. God’s will is that all are to be saved; no one is to be lost. Christ’s followers don’t forget the believer who goes off by herself. Nor to they ignore the follower who has wandered mistakenly in his application of Jesus’ teaching.
The community of faith is a family. We all know that family members get off-kilter with each other. In the church family sometimes, it’s over trivial things. Snarky comments made at board meetings and people disagree about simple things, like where to put the tables and who will be in charge of the cups. Sometimes we get sideways with one another over truly sinful and downright evil things.
- Lies get told.
- Money goes missing.
- Power gets protected or foisted.
- Promises get broken.
- People behave badly and inappropriately.
- Factions form and people take sides.
The picture is turned upside down and, no matter how vigorously we shake the relationship, it doesn’t fix itself. We have to take action.
Only there isn’t a shining knight to come riding into town on a large white horse. Nor does Jesus magically materialize to scold, teach, and reconcile disagreeing parties. All we have is each other, imperfect as we are, hurtful and hurting, arrogant and abashed, adamant and apologetic.
The individual and then the community is charged to go. They must never give up, just as the shepherd never gave up on the 100th sheep. He would either bring it back alive or know that it had been the victim of a predator. If the community’s attitude is reconciliation, and if the community has tried diligently to reconcile the offender, then if the person refuses to be brought back into the fold, their exclusion is their own doing. They have been devoured by sin. They are, to use Matthew’s terms, like a Gentile or a tax collector. Yet Jesus ate with Gentiles, tax collectors and sinners. This was not casual shoulder rubbing. Eating was the most intimate of public relationships. The community must never give up.
South Africa’s Anglican Archbishop, Desmond Tutu, was a driving force behind that country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. As the Afrikaner regime handed power over to leaders elected by all the people, there arose a need for special tribunals to heal the wounds caused by decades of racial discrimination. Tutu later confessed his astonishment at the ability of South Africans to achieve reconciliation. Tutu said this in a 1997 interview:
“I have found breathtaking and, in fact, exhilarating, the magnanimity of people, the incredible nobility of spirit of people who have suffered as much as they have suffered. So many of them are ready to forgive, which sometimes makes you feel as though you should take your shoes off because you are stepping on holy ground.”In the interview Tutu makes it clear how difficult it is to achieve true reconciliation:
“[People] think that reconciliation is patting each other on the back and saying it’s all right. Reconciliation is costly, and it involves confrontation. Otherwise, Jesus Christ would not have died on the cross. He came and achieved for us reconciliation. But he confronted people and caused division.”(1)Resolution – reconciliation – can only happen after conflict. If believers are never to give up, then the strongest outcome is expressed in verses 19 and 20:
“I assure you that if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, then my Father who is in heaven will do it for you. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I’m there with them.”This tradition spoken by Jesus may have originally come from an earlier Jewish saying which found its way into the Mishnah of the 2nd century CE as a commentary on Psalm 1:1. That saying defined the “seat of the scoffers” (or “disrespectful”) as two Jews together without the words of Torah between them, whereas having the Torah between them, they had the Shekinah of Yahweh’s presence.(2)
We all need Jesus Christ between us. That is how we can forgive seventy-seven times.
Jubal Early, a key Confederate general in the Battles of Bull Run (Manassas), after the war became a very angry, bitter and vindictive man, feeding a hatred for people of the North. Robert E. Lee invested a lot of time in seeking and securing forgiveness for both sides. He once asked General Early, “Do you still hold to that harsh, unforgiving spirit?”
“I certainly do. I will never forgive.”
To which Lee responded, “Then, my friend, I hope you never need forgiveness yourself, for the one who refuses to forgive destroys the bridge over which he himself must pass.”(3)
The reading ends up where it began. It doesn’t focus on the offender but on the behavior of the offended community. The community is always called to be the good shepherd, living with Jesus between itself and the offender. Jesus – the Word made flesh – is the gyroscope that sets things right.
May the gyroscopic grace of Christ be with this and every Christ community.
(1) Bishop Desmond Tutu, interview in Commonweal, September 12, 1997.
(2) Shared by John Shearman, “Opening Comments for Sunday September 7 2014 which is the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost. Proper 18. Year A,” midrash@joinhands.com; Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 10:14 PM.
(3) Shared by Rev. Dan Francis, Latonia Baptist Church, Covington, Kentucky, in the September 2014 issue of Homiletics.
General Resources:
“Gyroscopic Grace,” Homiletics, September 2014
Ada María Isasi Díaz, “Theological Perspective: Matthew 18:12-22,” Feasting on the Gospels - Matthew (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013) vol 2, pp. 92-96.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
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