I had lunch last week with a friend from seminary.
The last time I’d seen her was last summer, when she was going through a rough time with the congregation she was serving—her first. The congregation had been less than enthusiastic about having a female pastor—which meant of course that any disagreement that arose, from the Sunday-morning hymn selections to the interpretation of the doctrine of the Trinity, was attributed not to the fresh perspective offered by the faithfully interpreted life experience of a new pastor armed with the latest in ecclesiastical scholarship, but rather to the naïveté and defiant feminism of “that woman.” My problems with the church had been different, of course. But I could tell from the look on Marcia’s face that the biley taste her experience had left in her mouth would be all too familiar to me.
That taste, or at least its source, was in the past now, as I learned as Marcia walked toward me in the restaurant parking lot last week. “I’m unemployed!” she called out cheerfully. But there was a thick, multi-textured edge to her voice. It, too, was familiar.
After trying for a year to minister with integrity, Marcia had made the same decision I had: better to face a frightening series of question marks than to live in hurtful certainty. And as we sat down at the table in the restaurant, I could see that, for all of the exhaustion, self-doubt, and uncertainty about the future, Marcia knew that she, too, had made the right choice.
We talked for a long time, less about any specific events that led to her departure, but more about the holistic environment of the church. “We work and work in seminary,” she said, “to learn how to meet people in their need, in their vulnerability. Why didn’t they prepare us for the people who just want to take advantage of
our vulnerabilities?
I don’t think this is what Jesus had in mind,” she continued. “I don’t think he’s anywhere near that place.”
“Of course not,” I said, nodding to the empty chair across from her. “We count as ‘two or three’; he’s right here.”
We laughed. And then we both stopped laughing, with a shared sigh. We glanced at the empty chair, and our eyes met again, this time moist with tears.
We were both kidding, kinda. But the truth behind the joke still hurt. “I think this is what he was talking about,” I said quietly.
The conversation moved on, but that little exchange stuck in my head. I thought about it on the ride home, and I’ve thought about it every day since then. It’s easy—frighteningly easy—for a person of some education to quote a snippet of scripture and use it to support whatever thesis suits her at the moment. Was I using “proof-texting” to justify the anger I still feel toward the church? Was that
really what Jesus might have meant?
It’s Matthew 18.20, that verse I alluded to. It’s one of those scriptural gems that gets quoted all the time—a potent theology in a single sentence. But what does
the rest of that chapter look like?
The 18
th chapter of Matthew opens with a question: the disciples ask Jesus, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” (Now they’ve just, in the preceding chapter, seen Jesus shining like the sun and talking to Moses and Elijah, and watched him heal a boy of epilepsy, all before he instructed them to find a coin in a fish’s mouth and use it to pay the temple officials “so that we don’t cause them to stumble.” We can, perhaps, forgive them if they seem a bit power-hungry.)
But Jesus’s answers to their question—there are four in this chapter—turn the disciples’ grand aspirations on their heads. First, he calls over a small child and says that only those who are “like children” will even
enter the kingdom of heaven (never mind who’s greatest). Then there’s the parable of the single lost sheep from the flock of 100. If “worth caring about” is any indication of who’s greatest, it’s the one who, for whatever reason, wanders away from the fold.
The “two or three” quote comes from the third example—the one that starts, “If your brother sins against you.…” First, says Jesus, go and talk to the offending party one-on-one. Then, if that fails, bring “one or two others” to help you explain your case. The third step, of course, is to take the issue to the church as a whole; but isn’t it interesting that Jesus then goes back to remind us “again” that it takes nothing more than two prayerful souls to connect with the messiah? Apparently “majority rules” doesn’t apply in heaven.
Then there’s the chapter’s concluding parable—the unforgiving debtor. The gist of that one: there’s only one boss, and it ain’t you.
So if we put them all together (which, granted, there’s no textual reason to do other than context), we find that the answer to the disciples’ question—the greatest in the kingdom of heaven—is a humble, unruly child who takes the time to understand and be understood by other children.
Marcia and I both had humility beaten into us by the church. And in the church’s eyes we were far from well-behaved. But we have found in each other a compassionate soul who agrees with us, and with whom we can bring our pain to a creator whose love and understanding shines like the sun.
There’s a word for that kind of a relationship. It’s called heaven.
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