September 6, 2026 Sermon -- Pastor Becky Piper [Matthew 18:15-20]

The Holy Gospel according to Matthew the eighteenth chapter.

Glory to you, O Lord.

Jesus said to the disciples, If your brother or sister sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.

If you are listened to, you have regained that one.

But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses.

If that person refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.

And if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.

For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

You may be seated.

From the God who was, is, and is to come.

Amen.

You know, this is just like last night.

We had a baptism last night too, and we were very busy, and it was beautiful because you know that there are people here and there is life.

So please, no worries.

We just have to listen a little bit harder through some of the little voices, and it's okay.

It's okay.

Well, I like to bake and I like to cook, and I often, when I'm baking, I follow a recipe and I follow it exactly because, as you know, if you're baking, you want to get ingredients correct, or the recipe may not work.

Now, my family, we don't do a lot for birthdays, but we do have one another pick out what they want for their birthday cake, and we do a homemade cake, and often it could be different ones.

So I've done a baked Alaska, and I was very concerned that it would not come out of the oven well, and phew, thankfully that one worked.

I've done a Snicker Bar peanut-free cake for my son who's got a peanut allergy because he saw Snicker Bar commercials and said, That looks so good, but I can't eat a Snicker bar.

I wonder if there's a way that you could make something that would be like that.

Well, go to the internet, you know, Google it, and you can.

You can use roasted soy nuts.

And I wasn't thinking that that would go over well with a group of middle school boys for a cake.

So I made a small chocolate cake for the friends and just said, you know, if they don't want to eat this one, it's okay.

They all ate that one.

So I thought, all right, that one worked out well.

I'm so glad for that.

Well, when I make dinner, often I might find a recipe that gives me the idea, but if I go through the recipe and there's ingredients I don't have, I don't scratch the recipe, I just figure it out and I just make it work.

It seems to work better making dinner versus baking.

Usually I don't want to do that when I'm baking.

Most often the recipes work out.

But every once in a while there'll be something that we eat, and we're like, yeah, it's okay, we don't need to make that again, but we're able to eat it.

Then are those there are those occasions where I have an epic failure when it comes to baking.

It's usually baking.

There's two most famous ones for me.

One involves a lemon meringue pie, gluten-free.

And I made it for a church potluck.

And that was in Hermosa.

And I was so proud of that thing.

It came out of the oven.

I'm like, look at that meringue.

It is beautiful.

And I carried it in, and I was so happy.

You know, here's the pastor.

I made this beautiful lemon meringue pie.

And then when they went to cut into it, that was the only good part of it was the meringue.

The rest of it, I'm not even going to tell you about, but let's just say I have not made a gluten-free pie since then, and it's going to take a little bit for me to get over my anxiety over making a gluten-free pie.

Then there's the famous dump cake incident of 2015.

One of those recipes where you just dump the ingredients together, pop it in, it's going to be great.

Everybody's at the table, they're eating, and it's quiet, so I'm thinking, boy, it really must be good.

Nobody can talk because they're eating away at this cake.

Then I sit down and take a bite.

And this is one of the only times in front of people I've spit out my food back onto my plate, and it was that cake I made.

And I looked at my family and I said, How are you eating this?

And my son's like, Well, it's kind of good.

I'm like, No, it's not.

Don't stop, stop, stop.

We're gonna dump the dump cake in the garbage.

It was an epic failure.

Now you may have your own stories about recipes that went well and didn't go well, and you should tell those stories.

Somebody told me their story at the end of worship last night, and it was a good one.

So you have those that you can share with one another as well.

But I think about recipes and being able to follow directions and have things work out well, and I wonder if there's a recipe that we are given for Christian community.

If we follow the recipe and the directions, then we know that we can be community together and all will go well no matter what.

Well, we do have a few recipes that we're given, a few guidelines we can follow.

Referenced in our scripture text for today, there was discussion about the Ten Commandments, and we find those in the book of Exodus and the book of Deuteronomy, and when confirmation begins, we're starting with the Ten Commandments.

And if it's too difficult to remember ten, well, just maybe remember what Jesus said.

Oh, we'll bring it down to two.

Love God and love neighbor.

Because really the first three commandments are about loving God, they're about our relationship with God.

And the other commandments are about our relationship with one another, our neighbor.

So either follow 10 steps or Jesus' two steps, and we can simply be community together without any problems.

Well, if that were the case, Jesus wouldn't be giving us this passage, what he's giving us in Matthew 18.

For we know that not just in our own lives, but all through biblical story, there are times that there's misunderstanding, there are times that there's trouble within communities, and sometimes there's even where we experience epic failures, just like in baking or cooking.

And I always call that the human factor.

Because when it comes to human relationships, we all sin and fall short.

So it is natural to say that we can't simply just follow this recipe and check off one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten if we're following the Ten Commandments.

We try our best, but there are times that that human factor comes into play, and we may have disagreements, we may have heartache, and we may have brokenness with our relationships to with one another.

And it happens to all of us.

And I can tell you from experience how it has even felt when you go through the guidelines and try to end with reconciliation, and you realize that sometimes that doesn't even happen, that those relationships are left in a painful place.

And then we may all wonder and ask that question like we ask in the small catechism, what does this mean?

If we follow everything, why can't we get past it?

Why do sometimes we get stuck or we feel like we're left with some painfulness?

But that's human, and it's okay to be grieving loss of brokenness within a community.

And what we do is we continue to be community together because relationships take work, we work at them with one another, and sometimes in order to move forward, we offer not only forgiveness to other people, but we also need to forgive ourselves in order to be renewed and to start again.

And then we continue to love God and we continue to love neighbor, and we do that one small step at a time.

We forgive, we learn, and we forgive again.

Which, if you want to hear more about forgiveness, that continues in the gospel text for next weekend as well about forgiveness.

And it's not quite that it's like following a recipe or directions where you go and follow one, two, three, four, and everything works out.

For these directions that we're given are boundaries, they're a parameter, and within that we figure out how we are to love one another.

For Romans 13, 8 says, owe no one anything except to love one another.

For the one who loves one another has fulfilled the law.

And maybe you're thinking, well, how could I fulfill the law if you just said that we all fall short, if sin is a part of humanness?

The one who fulfills the law for us through love is Jesus Christ, that gift given to us out of love from God.

It's Jesus who is there with us and fulfills the law for us, makes us able to go again and again, to live together in community, to work at our relationships, to forgive, to learn, and to forgive again.

It really is how we can work together through the strength given to us, through the one who loves us and knows us fully and continues to be with us.

It is a gift to be community together.

It is a gift to be community even through the brokenness and the messiness, because we have one another.

And it is a gift to know that we have the greatest love of all who will be with us, no matter whether we're struggling through messiness or brokenness, or celebrating baptisms, or serving communion together, or tailgating and eating hamburgers and hot dogs.

Jesus is there in the midst of us because where two or three are gathered, who promises to be there with us.

Jesus is in the midst of us.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.