“Blest Be the Tie that Binds”

 (Ex 12:1-14; Ps 149; Mtt 18:15-20) 10:30 am, Sun, Sept 6, 2026; JGW, FBC Amherst

“Blest be the tie that binds.”

Twenty or so years ago I went out west to visit my brother and family in northern Manitoba. I met up with Steve down in Winnipeg, and he happened to have a wedding to attend, of a friend of his. So, I went to the wedding with Steve. It was an outdoor ceremony; it was a same-sex wedding – the first and actually the only one I have ever attended. (I had passing thoughts that others at the wedding might think I was Steve’s boyfriend, instead of his brother!)

Anyway, one bit of that ceremony I had never seen before was an old Celtic/Scottish/Norse tradition called handfasting. The two grooms’ hands were tied together with a rope, symbolizing their union and commitment to each other. I don’t think I have seen that done since. 

The work of a rope, or cord of any type, is variable. We decorate. We tie and hold things together. We attach and pull things along. We weave or knit a net to catch fish or sit in our hammock. We attach a rope to our dog, or horse, or goat, or cat, to keep it in the yard. We hang our laundry out upon it.

So it is with the religious side of spirituality. We develop patterns, rules, methods, guidelines, categories, hierarchies, limits, to help us be together on a path of Faith. They are like ropes that keep us in place, or guide us along, show us the limits, and keep us connected.

The summer I was twenty-one I worked in a place where we were always coming and going by way of a small boat. So, I learned to tie certain helpful knots. For the rope to attach the boat to a mooring place, or for the long line that, with block and tackle, we used to haul the motorboat up the slip on the rocky beach. 

The key to tying most good knots is to make it possible to untie it later. Seems to me there was a knot called the bowline that we used a lot. I have long since forgotten the knots of the summer of ’92.

The famous line from Jesus today, about ‘where two or three are gathered,’ is in the midst of a little talk about conflict. How to resolve a disagreement, to heal some harm that’d been done. We might say: how to stay bound together, in a blessed way. How to agree on things. How to set some boundaries, and how to loosen barriers. Amazingly, under the authority and power of Jesus, His people get to bind things on earth and loose things here. Decide and plan and organize and choose.

And we like to do this. We like it a lot. Indeed, we can go overboard, taking charge of more than we need to. We humans have control issues, we might admit. No wonder from the earliest days of Christianity the Church has simply declared, “Jesus Is Lord.”

All these centuries later, we believers still can’t all get along. The struggle is real! Again, in our Reflector, our little newsletter, I mention our Baptist denominational policies and politics. It is the best of times and the worst of times. At the annual meeting in August, the Atlantic Baptists passed the motion to disallow people like me to be officially registered with them as a Baptist Minister, and with any other Church group that would register or accredit me. I must pick one or the other, not both. Not both the Atlantic Baptists and the Canadian Association for Baptist Freedoms. 

The main, underlying, unspoken issue for the Atlantic Baptists is that groups like the CABF allow for churches and clergy to perform same-gender weddings and include LGBTQS+ people fully in church life. I can also see why they think it does not make sense for someone like me to be also officially a minister with the CABF, which now operates like a little denomination of our own across Canada. 

The business meeting, in August, was no fun for me. I was not feeling great that week anyway. And I just don’t like those things. Conflict and debate and all does not attract me. Maybe that’s part of why I don’t follow politics very well. Or even phone in shows on the radio. It’s all so awkward. 

I am also not big on taking sides. It’s who I am – some of this is good, some of this is bad. I want to please everyone; I want everyone to like me. Maybe a few of you are like this? I also find I can see the other sides of the issues, even when I know where I stand. During Oasis, the Atlantic Baptist meetings, my heart went out to the denominational staff and the Council. People like me who are dually affiliated or not on side with all the policies and resolutions just make things tricky for them. I thought their theme song, their lament, rightly could be Avril Levigne’s 

Why’d you have to go and make things so complicated?

I see the way you’re acting like you’re somebody else gets me frustrated?

A big business meeting is a way of getting the Church together to decide things and make plans, but it is far from a perfect method. To bind things on earth, and to loose them, is like tying knots. Many knots. Big knots. Sometimes we get them tangled and tightened too much, and we end up in a mess. Sometimes we make things very clear, cut and dried, but learn later we need to loosen up and change where that knot is in that particular rope. 

In what Matthew tells us Jesus taught, are the words about someone who refuses to listen being treated like a Gentile and a tax collector. Does that mean kicked out? I think it means reached out to, respected, leave the door open for them. Go back and read the many moments Jesus met tax collectors for Rome, and people considered the worst sinners in Judaism. He had a lot of time for those people. “I’m coming to your house for dinner today!” He said to Zaccheus, for example. 

Thanks be to God we have all been learning this, as our lives go along. The gracious Spirit shows us the way, the Way of Jesus. We’ve let go of the strict and severe ways of being faithful and being in control. We’ve loosened up. 

I read a sermon Professor Spencer Boersma preached just two weeks ago. He teaches at Acadia Divinity College. He told this story.

Like many churches, we have communion once a month. When I was pastoring in Sudbury, we had a communion Sunday very similar to here [at Billtown]: the same way the deacons pray and the elements are distributed. One Sunday my worship leader invited a family to come to church. She was a single mother with three kids, one of whom had autism. She arrived late, just before we served communion. She kind of sheepishly snuck in the back. Well, when I started going over the communion words, something set the poor kid off, and he began running back and forth at the back of the sanctuary. Then he ran up to me, grabbed the communion cup, and ran off with it.

What would you do if that happened? I stood there stunned a bit, but I got a little nudge from the Spirit, I believe. It occurred to me that if we got really wrapped up with what we were doing with the bread and the wine, we could actually be missing the point of what communion was about, and that was, for this morning, welcoming a family with Christ’s love. That is communion.

Without any prompting, some of the older women came and sat down next to the lady and simply said that they were glad she was here. Of course, a ritual purist might insist that communion is about remembering Jesus and making sure the elements are taken respectfully. But could we say, “Communion was made for humanity, not humanity for communion”?

Boersma’s story illustrates the need to be – as Jesus was – not legalistic, but aware of what matters. People matter. As Paul wrote, in Romans 13, “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” We will sing Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love. The binding and loosing of ties that bind our lives is the tying and untying of the strong cord called Love. The ropes that guide us, the ropes that connect us, the ropes that fence off the dangerous or wrong ways, the ropes that help move huge things: these are cords of love.

When I read again today’s bit from Matthew 18, I notice the final phrases, amid the advice about conflict and hurting one another and deciding things and struggling to agree. “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” 

I believe it all comes down to that. The presence of God. Present – in the most amazing, loving way – as Jesus. 

Jesus be with you! Jesus be with me. Jesus be with us. Jesus be with them.    Jesus be in the silence.

[silent meditation]