“15 “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. 16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. 18 Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. 19 Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”” (Matt 18:15-20 ESV)

Evangelical discipline, it courts our instincts, it calls to our principles. Wherever we are in the “walk of faith”, a little shout and heaviness is called for, right? To be sure, discipline shapes or crimps our Godly walk with the reassurance, not of scapegoating, but of being found “in the fold”. We are reassured, that all discipline is done in Love, and that we are each of us styled around our Maker, that there is a cubbyhole of Reassurance where we just fit, where we are Found not wanting, where we are congratulated that we have made it thus far.

Because the grand Puzzle: what to do with God’s faithful, it adheres to us and beckons from a distance, that to each is an occasion spelt, of highlighting the Patient Walk of the faithful, or of complaining about the heathenous ways of the so-called Faithful. More, we know the tantrum or magnitude of God’s people when they fall away, the reality being more sickly, absurd, astonishing, than what we imagine. This is still, to rehearse an old warhorse, the message of Law and Gospel, that the Christian is mightily mocked, playing musical chairs with absurd ideas, shooting oneself in the foot, because the Law is relentlessly asking for More, More discipline, More adherence, More Message Minus Grace. The fact of Grace… this gives us at the same time as a talking point, a clean slate and a joking if needed response, that indeed O Sinner, have you sinned and fallen away, but like the gentle laugh and good humor of a romantic would-be partner, we are not long Faulted. It was all Human and not incorrigible, after all. And when we cease to feel Judged, then we start to pick up by the bootstraps and Do Well.

The Passion, then, for an End to that trance wherein sinful avenues are Courted first in the Mind and then in the Flesh… this Trance is intervened upon mightily, but not perhaps by the Call to church discipline, rather by the shock value of Grace intervening. We knew all along our secret sins were front-and-center in God’s eye, but it was no small Gift that at the same time we took Ownership, took a relaxed Step Back, saw with New Eyes, just how treasonous to the Ten Commandments or name-your-law-here (clue: if in a church body, it probably revolves around infidelity or excess) our errant deeds were. Our Passion is to scream “Love”, “Grace”, “Second Chances” to a body that bores and ruins men with its relentless Demand.

In the Good Name, then, of such a Father Figure, a Mother Above, a Parental Unit revered, we are those strangely cheered even amidst said absurd Discipline of Others, because our Passion is writ in stone by now, that we are—to repeat that old Mantra—loved on by God, encouraged upon by His Spirit, capable by the example and meaning of His Son. And in community we find ourselves, if Grace is present, curious and interested parties to the dogma of a simple evangelical faith. We are curious to discuss… God’s love for the Sinner… God’s involvement in our day-to-day… God’s hiding Himself when discipline is trumpeted, because after all in that case Man thinks himself to be all-wise and knowing. But our Man, our Leading Woman, is able through the disciplinary storm, to end the Agreement of the Masses, the Groupthink, and to be patient in explicating God for us, Gospel, absurd sins forgotten for the season and better Angels trumpeted to the needful hearers. What we Bind, this is Bound in Heaven… what we Relax, this is Released Above. And Today, it is as fine a day as any in Creation, to allow that the Law has already owned and stormed the gates of our Hearts, but Grace… this will be a thankless but germane, synchronous, intuited and appreciated Response, though half the body will think it License and Absurd. To those precious few, it will be the succor, the moisture, the Meaning of God with us.