“To bind or to loose”: a sermon

Stuart Higginbotham

September 10, 2023

Proper 18, Year A

Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20

To Bind or to Loose

When I was a child, my aunt, uncle, and cousins lived right down the road from us. I loved being able to go down and, especially, visit with my Aunt Sharon. She told me once what she would do when any configuration of my three cousins would get into arguments. She would take an extra large t-shirt and put two of them inside it at the same time, facing each other with their arms out of the same arm holes. They had to wear that shirt, stuck face to face, until they resolved whatever they were fighting about. 

I have always loved this image, and I keep thinking what the world would be like if we took this same technique and put politicians and other so-called world leaders in a shirt together. 

It seems like so much in the world is uncertain right now, so much is tense and stressful from the threat of violence. We wonder what it will take to break through some of the egoic-driven greed and nonsense that plagues us, with so many innocent people caught in the middle of the ambitions and small-mindedness (can we even say sinfulness) of leaders. What will it take for us to realize that we all are actually as close as if we are wearing the same shirt?

In this morning’s reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, he lays out a very radical framework for understanding how we are connected. 

for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

It is a pretty radical thing to lay out the prescribed commandments and then reframe them in terms of a deeper, underlying foundation of love, of compassion. In a world where our sense of uncertainty can lead us to hyperfocus on certain rules or regulations–and the ensuing sense of a purity code that plagues so much of our social life right now–St. Paul challenges us to go deeper in how we understand our practice of faith. 

All is condensed into the one foundational element of love toward one another, and here is where the reading from St. Matthew’s Gospel is so interesting. 

Jesus is giving advice, as it were, to those gathered about what it looks like to live in a community–especially how to address conflict in a community. He lays out a series of steps to take, beginning with individual meeting, then with a small group, then with the entire body, when a perceived wrong has been done. 

And while it is easy to follow a series of prescribed steps, Jesus goes further and offers a much deeper teaching on what we are called to embody: “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven,” and conversely, “whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

This teaching connects with an earlier moment with St. Peter, which is noted a couple chapters before this one. There, Jesus tells Simon that he is Peter and on this rock Jesus will build his church. He says that he is giving St. Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven, so that “whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

In Catholic theology, this is what is known as the Power of the Keys, and it is the moment in the Roman understanding, where St. Peter’s authority is established, an authority that is passed down through the centuries in successive popes. 

But Matthew 18 is interesting in this regard. There is a series of teachings on lost sheep, community life, and forgiveness. And the entire chapter opens with a challenging image on authority: “whoever becomes humble like a child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” So, the images that Matthew lays out in regards to authority fly in the face of many of our cultural assumptions.

In Matthew 18, this image of binding and loosing is not restricted to St. Peter. Somehow, this image of binding and loosing is embodied within the entire community’s life. There is something deeper going on here. 

This image of binding and loosing can be understood on an institutional level for sure, and our egos are very good at setting up categories and frameworks to quantity membership and belonging, so to speak. This is what Richard Rohr and others in the contemplative tradition speak of when we are reflecting on the “mythic membership” aspect or level of spiritual development. In certain moments (stress, anxiety, fear, etc.) notice how we can become obsessed with who is “in” and who is “out” and such. The old tendency for purity codes are never far away, and the mythic membership level is extremely pervasive right now. 

When we look further, we can see that the image of binding and loosing has a profoundly mystical element to it as well, a deeper grounding that challenges us to look at our own interior life and the motivations that affect the way we live in the world. 

A key aspect of our spiritual practice is the call to engage with the inner dynamics of grasping. In uncertain times, we seek control and this urge, as it were, can lead us to grasp onto something to gain a sense of power. Sometimes power is needed, of course, but can we reflect on those tendencies to grasp onto it?

Fr. Thomas Keating often spoke of what he saw as the tendency to fixate on our Emotional Programs for Happiness. In this view, all humans have a longing for power and control, survival and safety, and affection and esteem. There are human elements to this search, but we should pay attention to when we notice we are grasping onto one or more of these. It is the impulse to grasp that is a key focus in our spiritual practice. How can we notice patterns in ourselves? 

When we grasp onto these emotional programs for happiness, for power and control, survival and safety, and affection and esteem, can we notice how this grasping strengthens the binding in our lives? We may actually feel it as a sensation in our bodies, as a tightening and tension. When we say “whatever we bind on earth is bound in heaven” we are actually describing how this sensation of binding persists throughout every level of our existence, even to our higher states of consciousness, as it were, that become stunted in the binding.

Our practice of prayer nurtures an openness for the Spirit to help loosen those grasping patterns–and in that spaciousness, we become more aware of how we are all held together in God’s dynamic love. Love, as St. Paul says, truly does fulfill the law.

I can’t help but laugh when I read the last sentence of today’s Gospel reading: 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.

As if two or three people could agree on anything these days! But here is this hope laid out for us in the Gospel reading, and it is a hope for us to see what it truly means to gather in Jesus’ name, that is, to gather with a conscious grounding in this openness of the Spirit. 

My Aunt Sharon said it usually didn’t take long for my cousins to reach an agreement when they were stuck together in the same t-shirt. Maybe there’s something about looking someone in the face that brings us back to ourselves, beyond whatever petty ego-driven grasping we thought was so important at the time. 

Is it that the loosing nurtures a sense of the awareness of the union of all existence, or does the awareness of our union enable the loosing of our grasping tendencies?  

Maybe here’s a practice to try this week, to see if there is truth to the Gospel’s claim. Spend time today reflecting on something that has you experiencing tension or tightness, somewhere you know you are bound. Is there a conversation you need to have that you have been avoiding? Is there a decision you need to make that you want to ignore? Notice what comes to you when you allow yourself to pay attention to what binds you. Then, honestly pray for the Spirit to give you an opportunity to resolve that tension, to practice loosing what you are grasping. See if there isn’t a sense of clarity that comes from this practice of prayer, even a sense of peace. Then pray for the spiritual courage to embody the loosing, to take the imaginative risk to lean into the loosing. Maybe you call someone and ask them to talk–maybe someone calls you. Maybe you make the decision you realize you need to make. 

And, maybe in that moment of awareness, when two or three are gathered together with this grounding of deep prayer and love, we will realize once more that Jesus is always in the midst of us and we can be free once again.