Chapter 18 of St Matthew’s Gospel is often referred to as the Sermon on the Church. It contains the teaching of Jesus about the life of the Christian community.

Today’s reading details a procedure for dealing with differences and disputes. It follows the Parable of the Lost Sheep which is concerned with seeking out and bringing back the one who gets lost.

In the same way, resolving disputes is not about being right and punishing an offender, but about conversion and reconciliation.

The three-stage process moves from individual dialogue to a small group trying to sort things out, to the whole community being involved in discernment and decision.

Traditionally, we have understood the words, ‘if he refuses to listen to the community, treat him like a gentile or a tax collector, to mean that the person should be expelled or excommunicated from the community.

However, Jesus was notorious for sharing meals with tax collectors and sinners and he called one of them, Matthew, into his inner circle of disciples. At the end of the Gospel, Jesus instructs the disciples not to reject the pagans but to invite them to become children of God. Excommunication doesn’t seem to fit either with the sentiments in the Lord’s prayer about forgiveness.

The parable of the Lost Sheep immediately before this passage seems to indicate that the church, following Jesus’ example, should never give up on any of the sheep, especially the lost ones. It has a responsibility to try to win them back.

The next verse about ‘binding and loosing’ extends to the community the power of authoritative decision- making given to Peter and the disciple-leaders in the Gospel of two Sundays ago. This decision-making follows community discussion and discernment about what is to be done.