Brief synopsis of the readings: God announces, in the book of Ezekiel, that the “Son of Man” has been appointed as a watchman for the House of Israel. In that role the Son of Man is to warn a wicked person to renounce his ways. If not warned, the person will die for his wickedness but the watchman will be held responsible for his death. On the other hand if the watchman does warn the wicked person and the person does not repent, he will die for his wickedness but the watchman will live. In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus talks about what to do if your brother sins against you. First you are to confront him alone in the hopes that you will win him over. But if he doesn’t acknowledge his sin you should gather two or three members of the community and confront him. If that doesn’t work then announce his sin in front of the whole church. If he still refuses to listen, treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector. Jesus then tells them that whatever they declare bound on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever they declare loosed on earth will be loosed in heaven. And anything that two or more ask for will be granted and “where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

When a community forms it doesn’t take long before its members need to figure out how to deal with conflict; only the epically naive doubt this. And human conflict has gone back from our earliest days when Cain murdered Abel in the 4th chapter of Genesis. So we can look at these readings as a sort of “policy guide” when someone strays from the straight and narrow.

Problem is, well, we don’t normally look at Scripture that way. Scripture entails many different types of literature: history, poetry, prophecy, myth, well, you get the point. It is essentially the lived experience of several communities as they struggled to understand God’s dreams for them. And for us.

A few years ago authorities discovered several children had been sexually abused by members from their place of worship. When asked why law enforcement wasn’t when the abuse was discovered they pointed to this passage from Scripture. The abusers were confronted by the congregation, they denied it and the community threw them out. The members of the community didn’t call the authorities because the Scripture passage didn’t say they needed to. Ejecting them from the community fulfilled their responsibilities.

But these readings do speak to deeper truths about how we are supposed to reconcile. Unfortunately when we try to do this on our own without God we’re just not very good at it. Case in point: the Hatfields and the McCoys. Along the Tug River on the border between West Virginia and Kentucky lived these two families. In the Civil War both sides fought for the Confederacy but in the waning days of the war a member of the McCoy family was accused of killing a member of the Hatfields. The feud escalated later over ownership of a pig and it eventually turned into a multi member multi generational feud. The next forty years saw a continuation of violence that didn’t really die down until the early 1900s. In the years since there have been truces but no reconciliation and no admission of guilt.

Related to this we see lawsuits all the time that are settled out of court. Payments are made but the losing side insists that there be “no admission of guilt.” Parting with millions of dollars is seen as acceptable but recognizing that their actions were wrong is a bridge too far.

So how exactly do we reconcile? In our first reading the prophet Ezekiel is told that he has a part to play when he someone who has wandered from the true path (in the Old Testament sin is considered “missing the mark” or straying away from justice. It’s not good enough to decide that if you see something it’s “none of your business.” In the case of Cain v. Abel Cain asks “am I my brother’s keeper?” It’s asked with a generous amount of sarcasm but it’s a good question. And the Ezekiel reading gives us an unequivocal yes. The hope is that we love and care enough for each other that we do intervene, that we do point out what we see.

And this gets extended to Jesus. We all stray, we all miss the mark at times, and sometimes we find ways to justify what we’ve done. But we have permission to call each other into account, to love each other enough to want them to return. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes more complicated. But here are two things we can easily overlook.

First, sometimes we’re wrong. If we confront someone and they don’t do what we want, maybe we’ve read the situation wrong. By bringing in another person or the community we may find we’re wrong or it’s more complicated than we thought. It may be the reconciliation happens when we recognize that we misjudged the situation or we reacted from our own woundedness. Inviting the whole community gives us the opportunity to discern an action.

Second, when we are told to treat the person as a pagan or a tax collector we’re not being told to turn them away from the community without the ability to reconcile. Jesus didn’t. He saw pagans and tax collectors not as enemies but as people in need of and worthy of love. Said another way the person who sins may have given up on the community but the community has not given up on him.

In addition to these two things this also promises something good for the community. Any community that professes itself to be perfect and not in need of reconciliation is doomed to a fast failure. But a community that recognizes the need for healing, that listens to each other and themselves, is a community that reflects God’s love and Jesus’ command. A reconciling community will attract new followers and keep those who belong. And it will welcome back the pagan and the tax collector.