Sisters & brothers, grace to you and peace from the God of love, the Christ of compassion, and the Spirit of light and life. Amen.

Jesus is talking about tough love in this morning’s Gospel text. This isn’t easy listening; this isn’t light fare; this isn’t Candyland for Christian living. Rather, this is hardcore, honest, cut-the-bull-and-go-straight-to-the-source authentic “community relations.” This is Jesus’ policy position on conflict in the church. In St. Matthew’s Gospel, the word “church” only appears in two texts: the first was a few weeks ago as we hear the account of Peter’s confession of Jesus to be “the Messiah, the son of the living God.” Jesus was so impressed that Peter had gotten it right that he said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” Upon that bedrock confession of Jesus as “Messiah” and “son of the living God,” Jesus promises Peter he will build his church. This is the very first mention of church, EKKLESIA in the Greek, literally, “ones who are called out,” called out from the world to be the body of Christ in the world.

Now, the only other time the word “church” or EKKLESIA is mentioned in St. Matthew, is here, where Jesus is saying to the disciples “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone…”

So, as far as St. Matthew’s gospel goes, these are the two things about the church, about EKKLESIA, we must know: the gates of Hades will not prevail against it and its confession of Jesus to be the son of the living God, AND its members will, in fact and in deed, sin against each other. Reality check. From the get-go and from Jesus’ own mouth, via the lens of St. Matthew’s perspective of course, these are the two truths about the church: the first one a super-human characteristic (which is to say, not even the gates of hell shall be able to prevail against its confession of Jesus) and the second a verrrrry human and painfully-flawed characteristic (that is, members of it will inevitably and most certainly prevail against one another – even though the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church itself!).

Now of course, we know this is not true of St. Paul’s Church! Right now. As one of our diligent and observant congregation council members noted some months ago at a council meeting, “St. Paul’s seems to be a bicker-free zone.” On second thought, maybe he was just referring to the actual council! But, there has been conflict in this congregation in the past, and, I imagine, there very well could be in the future, even as it is so in other congregations and even as it is so in our denomination the ELCA, and in all the other sects of Christianity that are in existence today.

The church is both about being that indestructible body-of-Christ-presence in the world that confesses the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, while at the same time having the capacity within its own walls to be self-destructive as an institution and as individuals with one another. If you have stuck around any congregation long enough, you know this to be true while at the same time bemoaning the human condition – also known as “sin” – that causes it to be so.

But this Gospel text is about tough love. It’s “tough,” in that it acknowledges that within the church we have the all-too-cavalier capacity to sin against one another, as we pray in the prayer of confession “in thought, word, and deed.” But it’s about love in that this text calls us to actually DO what love requires: to enter into the complicated engagement of human beings with one another and to work it out in the spirit of love.

Dorothy Day, the co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, referred to this kind of complicated engagement with each other as “radical hospitality.” She often quoted the chapter from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov titled “A Lady of Little Faith,” in which an elderly priest named Father Zosima exhorts a wealthy woman to “active love” as a remedy for her doubts. “Strive to love your neighbor actively and inde-fatigably. In as far as you advance in love you will grow surer of the reality of God and of the immortality of your soul.”

When the wealthy woman confesses her sentimental dreams of a life of service to the poor and her fear of their ingratitude, Zosima –while remaining kind – delivers a scathing critique of charity, which is chiefly about controlling and defining the one who is in need. “I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you,” Father Zosima concludes, “for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.”

Today, Jesus calls us to this harsh and dreadful “love in action” with one another. It’s putting the words of St. Paul from the second reading into force in a personal way: “Owe no one anything, except to love one another,” Paul writes, “for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”

We live in a time when the dangerously-ubiquitous word “Whatever” threatens to freeze our hearts and block the path of reconciliation between one another. So often in our hurt and in our pride we choose silent indignation over Jesus’ pro-active policy to complicated, messy, and loving engagement with each other” until we can finally reach that interpersonal radical hospitality that reflects the grace of God with each of us.

To do it, we’re going to have to “put on the armor of light” as St. Paul writes, and claim the promise of Jesus that conclude this morning’s gospel text: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

It’s about tough, tenacious love and radical hospitality: from the waters of the font that welcome each one to the eternal embrace of God to the bread and wine of the Lord’s table which feeds every hungry and thirsty sinner and welcomes us again and again to the feast of love. The water, the bread, the wine: this is our armor of light, equipping us to love one another fiercely, and strengthening us to stretch beyond our own conflicts and heal the broken world.

Amen.