15 “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. 16 But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’[c] 17 If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector. 18 “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be[e] loosed in heaven. 19 “Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” (Matthew 18:15-20 NIV)
Happy Monday, dear Friend! I pray you had a great weekend and made time to spend with God. I again thank you for your prayers for my surgery and for my recovery. I have to admit my vision is not yet where it should be. The prescription pre surgery does not work with post surgery results does not allow for my reading or writing well. There may be some spelling errors that I cannot completely identify but I will run this through a spellchecker to make sure I get the words correct. And I may not record any audio or video until I get new glasses. Pray for patience and pea
I've long held that Jjesus meant to say, "Where two or three are gathered, there might be trouble." Sociologically speaking that is true in every setting. Of course, we cannot limit it to sociology, psychologically as well. And even sometimes, one person alone with his or her thoughts might begin trouble within his own mind for himself. And in almost fifty years of ministry I saw and heard things not really meant for the Church. Most of those memories recalled that the first demon exorcised was from a man in the church.
Let's be honest about something right from the start — nobody particularly enjoys this passage. It's the one about conflict in the church, about what to do when someone has wronged you, about the uncomfortable and inconvenient process of actually going to the person who hurt you and saying so. We would almost universally prefer a passage that gives us permission to handle conflict the way most of us actually handle it — by talking to everyone except the person we have a problem with, by letting the thing quietly calcify into a permanent awkwardness, or by the time-honored spiritual practice of simply avoiding the whole situation until one of us moves to another city. Jesus, unfortunately, does not endorse any of these approaches.
What He gives us instead is a process — a remarkably humane, carefully graduated, grace-filled process that is designed not to win an argument or establish who was right, but to win back a brother or a sister. That phrase is worth sitting with before we get to the steps, because it tells us what the whole exercise is for. The goal is not the correction. The goal is the relationship. Not the verdict but the person. Everything that follows in the passage is shaped by that goal — which is why the first step is so private, so small, so deliberately one-on-one.
Go, Jesus says. Just go. Not to the pastor first, not to the church board, not to your three closest friends who will absolutely take your side — go to the person, just the two of you, and talk about it. The genius of this is that it gives the relationship the best possible chance of being restored before anyone else even knows there was a problem. Most conflicts, if they are handled at this first stage, never need to go any further. Most misunderstandings, most unintentional hurts, most of the friction that accumulates between people who are trying to live and serve together — if they are brought into the open between the two people involved, they have a remarkable tendency to resolve. The listening that happens when it's just two people, without an audience, without the pressure of public positions already taken, is a different kind of listening than anything that happens later.
But if that doesn't work, Jesus provides the next step — bring one or two others, so that every word may be established. Not to outnumber the other person, not to build a case, but to ensure that the conversation is fair, witnessed, and grounded in something more than one person's memory of what happened. And if that doesn't work, there is the community of faith as the final court of appeal. The process has a direction — toward restoration, always toward restoration — but it also has a recognition that sometimes the person who has done wrong is not willing to hear it, and that the community has both the right and the responsibility to name that.
And then Jesus says something that stops the whole procedural conversation in its tracks and reminds us what this is really all about: "For where two or three gather in My name, there am I with them." It sounds like a general promise about corporate prayer, and it is — but in context it's something more specific than that. It's the assurance that when two or three people gather in the difficult, uncomfortable, ego-surrendering work of seeking reconciliation, Jesus is in the room. He doesn't just show up for the pleasant gatherings, the celebratory moments, the worship services when everything is going well. He shows up specifically and particularly when two people who have been at odds are trying, in His name, to find their way back to each other. The hard conversations held in His name are sacred conversations. The reconciliation sought in His name carries His authority. The binding and loosing that happens when the community gathers with genuine intention is connected to something larger than any of us can see.
This is, at its heart, a passage about the extraordinary value Jesus places on the relationships within His community. He doesn't give us this process because conflict is pleasant or because He wants us to spend our time in uncomfortable conversations. He gives it to us because the brother or sister on the other side of the conflict is worth the discomfort. Because the unity of the body He is building matters enough to be worth the awkward conversation, the second attempt, the extra effort. Because the alternative — the slow drift of unresolved conflict, the accumulated distance, the relationship that simply fades away because nobody was willing to do the hard thing — is a loss that He takes seriously even when we've already decided to let it go.
The presence He promises is the presence that makes the hard thing possible. You don't have to walk into that conversation in your own strength. You go in His name, and He is already there.
PRAYER: Lord, give us the courage to go to one another in Your name, to seek restoration over vindication, and to trust that where two or three gather in Your name, You are already present and at work. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.
Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Identify one relationship where you've been choosing distance over the difficult conversation, and take one step this week toward going — in His name, for the sake of the person, with restoration as the only goal.
I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me!
Let's win the world for Jesus with our acts of love and kindness!
Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.
