Matthew 18. 15-20 and Romans 13. 8-end

In our gospel reading this morning, Jesus tells us what to do when someone wrongs us. First, go and speak to them privately.

If that does not work, take someone else with you. If they still refuse to listen, involve the wider community.

And then Jesus says: “If the offender refuses to listen let them be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

In other words: draw a line, put them outside. Sounds fair enough..?

But then we have to ask a rather awkward question:

How did Jesus treat Gentiles and tax collectors?

He welcomed them. He ate with them. He healed them.

He called Matthew, a tax collector, to follow him.

He made a Samaritan Gentile the hero of one of his stories.

So perhaps “treat them like a Gentile and a tax collector” does not mean: exclude them. Perhaps it means: include them, love them because Jesus loved them. The purpose of confronting someone who has hurt us is not to prove that we are right. It is not about winning. It is about regaining a relationship.

Love is the way back.

You see, transformation happens when we stop dividing the world so neatly between us and them, good and bad, worthy and unworthy.

Because sooner or later we discover that we are all Gentiles and tax collectors.

We all stand outside.

We all get things wrong.

We all carry things we would rather other people did not see.

And yet Jesus keeps inviting us to the table.

God does not wait until we have become respectable enough to belong. Belonging comes first.

Paul says something very similar in Romans:

“Owe no one anything, except to love one another.”

Love is the one debt we never finish paying.

Love has to reach towards the person who has disappointed us, irritated us, misunderstood us, or really hurt us.

That does not mean allowing abuse or pretending that wrongdoing does not matter. Jesus is not asking us to abandon wisdom or boundaries. But he is asking us not to turn another human being into an enemy.

Love is the way back.

This morning, we will come to Christ’s table not because we have got everything right, but because we are all welcome -

The certain and the doubtful.

The person who has been hurt and the person who has done the hurting.

Those who feel they belong and those who wonder whether they really do.

God does not say, “Make yourself worthy, and then come.”

God says, “Come—and discover that you are loved.”

So when we leave this table, let’s carry one simple thought with

us:

Love is the way back.

Back to one another.

Back to ourselves.

And always, somehow, back to God.