The rabbis used some times to refer to God as ‘the Place’. By that they meant that God is omnipresent – he is everywhere, and when you become conscious of God, when you remember his word, when you join in worship, you are in the Place. Jesus extends that concept by implying that when even just two or three are gathered together and remember his name then they are in his place. The place of God is also Jesus’ place. And yet this place is as we learn in all our readings this morning not necessarily a comfortable place to be.
One of the great problems in being a Christian is finding the right balance between judgment and mercy. In the sermon on the Mount Jesus tells us not to judge, by which I think he means we are not to be judgmental. Of course the final judgment belongs to God alone and we are not to anticipate his verdict. But that is not to be a recipe for excessively liberal tolerance. To judge can mean both to discriminate between right and wrong and to condemn. It is the latter which Christians are to try to avoid. As we hear this morning, Jesus does not oppose offering correction; it is offering correction in the wrong spirit which he warns against.
Now that of course is supremely difficult; how as an individual do you approach another member of the Christian community – for that is what Jesus is talking about – how do you tell this person that what they are doing is wrong. Even if you are sure of your facts (as morally you must be) even if you have prayed about it, even then how do you find the right words so as not to appear judgmental. As adults we can and should tell our children when what they have done is wrong, but to say that to another adult is daunting in the extreme. How does one do that with love? For that of course is the guiding principle. ‘Love is the fulfilling of the law’ – and you do this by loving ‘your neighbour as yourself.’ So how would you want to be corrected and what sort of person would you allow to correct you? And the answer must be that I would accept correction from someone I knew cared for me and had my best interests at heart; someone who had earned the right to speak to me in this way because of our previous relationship. The loving person has learnt how not to be judgmental – the loving person knows his or her own capacity for sin and the way in which they in turn would wish to be corrected. And further the loving person has learned to trust the judgment of God. The loving person does not fear God not simply because he or she trusts in a loving God. The loving person does not fear being known through and through by God, the God who sifts the wheat from the chaff in all that we are and all that we do. So the power of love is bound up with the power of judgment; and to love is not only to serve but to correct, just as God loves and judges and corrects us.
And if we listen to Ezekiel we shall become aware that to learn this is vital for our own well being. And that is because if you don’t correct someone when you know what they are doing is wrong, then you become complicit in what they have done. When God comes to judge the sinner he will hold us also to account for not having spoken.
All that I have said so far applies of course to the communities of Christians and perhaps also Jews. And all that the gospel says on this subject puts private conversations before public ones. You do your utmost to bring someone back onto the right path before you involve anyone else. What we have in this passage from Matthew’s gospel is guidance on the way in which the church community is to challenge its members in the most loving, sensitive, careful but firm way possible.
But what of the church’s relationship to the wider non Christian community? We are to love our neighbours as ourselves and according to the parable of the Good Samaritan our neighbour is anyone who needs our help or who helps us. And if that is so then we need to show that love which also corrects, to the world outside the church. Before God we also have a responsibility for all that goes on around us – all that we allow to go on around us without comment. And the only way in which we earn the right to be heard in this way is on the basis of the loving concern and service we have shown to the wider community. Only when the wider community has learnt to trust the church and the sincerity of its love might it be prepared to enter the place of God and listen.