Year A, Lectionary 127
The Triune God lives in community: God the Father, God the Son and the Holy Spirit. We are meant to join that communion with God and each other, but when we sin and break that bond we need to work to restore that relationship. Jesus teaches us to approach each other in love and community to gather our sisters and brothers who are moving away from us, to ensure salvation remains for all.
Hate feeling lost on Sundays at church? Searching for a better explanation of the Bible than what you hear from your pastor's sermon? Check out the following collection of audio, video, and text commentaries from various Christian experts for a better understanding of today's scripture that deal with: Accountability • Anger • Approach • Authority • Church • Commandment • Community • Compassion • Conflict • Confront • Confrontation • Correction • Denounce • Dialogue • Discern • Dispute • Division • Ecology • Equality • Ezekiel • Faith • Focus • Forgive • Judgment • Justice • Knot • Love • Mercy • Neighbor • Offend • Openness • Order • Prayer • Prepare • Presence • Reconcile • Reconciliation • Relate • Relationship • Repent • Resolve • Sin • Struggle • Understand • Unity • Warn • Watchman • Women • Worship •
“we have to recognize if someone sinned against you, that there needs to be a process of reconciliation that begins with one-on-one and then may involve others as well, all with the interest of truth and charity in mind”
“So even though Christians aren't under the Law, all the laws of Moses like circumcision, in the new covenant they still have to keep the Decalogue because the Christian vocation is to love and the Decalogue is all about love. It's about how to love God and how to love neighbor correctly.”
“We place the judgment on people but God's door of mercy is always open, regardless of what we think or what we say”
“What we do as church, we try to find every single path to reconciliation before anything else”
“as some scholars have pointed out if you say 'treat the person like a Gentile and a tax collector'...What it means is that they need to be evangelized again, they need the gospel to be represented to them so that they can be called to repentance and then reintegrated into the community”
“when people read these lines in Matthew 18, they move too quickly to an individualistic interpretation of it and they forget...that reconciliation with God is really inseparable from reconciliation with the one church of Christ”
“The challenges of our church and our world are invitations to continuous discernment of how to dialogue, to forgive, and to be obedient to the urgings of the Spirit”
“If you're trying to win the argument, you're not doing what Christ is asking you to do. If you're trying to win over the person then you're following Christ's way.”
“And with understanding comes the opportunity for transformation. Repentance by those who caused the harm, healing for those harmed.”
“Jesus tells his followers that when we encounter a truly unrepentant brother or sister who refuses to accept even the Church's arbitration powers we should treat him or her like a tax collector. So speaks Matthew the tax collector who had been treated with great compassion by the Lord himself.”
“can you imagine just how more powerful the Christian nation would be if we ever stop and began to speak in one accord? How much more powerful could we possibly be if we ever stop fighting each other and began to work, speak and pray for one thing?”
“when we fall short, it's a loving word, it's a loving embrace that invites us into fuller life”
“when I look back at all the conflicts in my life, the one's that have gone well have all contained those 4 elements: love, speak, listen, pray”
“Many of our contemporaries are nervous about belonging to any institutional form of religion which might limit their autonomy. They want to believe without belonging. But the New Testament knows nothing of solitary discipleship. Believing the Good News entails belonging to the ekklēsia. Belonging is essential to both wholeness and holiness.”
“Love does no evil to the neighbor. This is a simple sentence but it is not an easy one. Love is not merely a private feeling. But it is an intention. Love must shape how we act, the choices that we make, and the systems that we support.”
“Oh blessed Church, may all women in their contributions, their longings, and vocations be honored in serving the Church's shared mission”
“Christian correction and confrontation does not seek to win an argument, it does not seek to punish, it does not seek to remind the other person how wrong she or he is. Christian correction is not about embarrassment or shame.”
“Love means noticing when someone is struggling and not just walking past them”
“God does not make you responsible for controlling another person's choices. He makes you responsible for doing the good that is yours to do.”
“when it comes to reclaiming a lost brother or a lost sister no stone must be left unturned”
“in order to obey instructions from God it helps to be in relationship with God. And our relationship with God grows out of our worship with God, and hardened hearts get in the way of worship, get in the way of authentic obedience, get in the way of authentic love.”
“Order is in being right relationship with our sisters and brothers and celebrating that relationship because we know it comes from God. That is what we are supposed to be all about...what we are growing to, moving towards, building ourselves into.”
“There will be times when maintaining firm boundaries is necessary to keep us safe, especially if we're the ones being harmed. But we are not called to give up on each other or on ourselves or on the very real and ever present possibility of redemptive love. Real love which does no evil to the neighbor”
“Can you imagine the society we could share, the world that we could dwell within if we experience and practice that gift of love that doesn't just come from God, is God?”
“Do not treat the other person based on who they are, rather treat them based on who you are. You must not let the bitterness of the other person take away your own sweetness.”
“It finally takes a lot of courage to go to talk to one other person. That one person who has offended you so deeply that you are still recovering from that hurt. It takes a lot to go to them, doesn't it?”
“What does he say? We should first take a deep breath and say 'come Holy Spirit, help me not to be afraid to approach my family'”
