If your Brother sins against you
The sermon today was mostly about Matthew 18:15–20 and the order Christ gives for dealing with serious problems between people, beginning with "If thy brother shall offend against thee, go, and rebuke him between thee and him alone." The first response is supposed to be private, you speak to the person involved before turning the problem into something everybody else knows about, and the purpose isn't simply establishing who was right because Christ says that if the person hears you, "thou shalt gain thy brother." The desired result is reconciliation, not victory
There is a clear order to it as well, first you go to the person alone, then if they won't listen you take one or two others so that the matter can be established with witnesses, and only if that also fails does Christ say to bring it before the wider community. I like that there are steps because it gives somebody several opportunities to listen and respond before their failure becomes public, while also recognizing that two people aren't always capable of resolving something by themselves.
It is also a fairly direct teaching against gossip, because if somebody has hurt you, everybody except that person shouldn't know about it first. This goes nowdays, friends don't need screenshots before you've even asked for an explanation, resentment doesn't become more justified because you've spent weeks discussing somebody with other people instead of speaking to them, and silence can be wrong in the other direction too. Deciding what somebody meant, becoming angry about it and eventually cutting them out without ever telling them what happened doesn't give them much opportunity to listen, explain themselves or make anything right. Another important part of the passage is that Christ doesn't treat correction and reconciliation as opposites, the correction is meant to serve the reconciliation. The responsibility is to tell the truth about what happened while still treating the other person as somebody worth trying to "gain" rather than somebody to defeat or embarrass.
The reading from Ezekiel 33:7–9 makes the responsibility to speak even clearer, Ezekiel is appointed as a watchman and told that when he receives a warning from God, he has a responsibility to warn the person concerned. If he refuses to warn them, he shares responsibility for remaining silent, so silence isn't automatically kindness and avoiding an uncomfortable conversation isn't automatically peace, there are situations where knowing somebody is doing something seriously wrong and refusing to say anything because speaking would be difficult isn't really love.
Then Romans 13:8–10 gives the standard underneath all of that, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," and "the love of our neighbour worketh no evil." telling somebody the truth therefore isn't permission to humiliate them, punish them or enjoy being right about them, correction is supposed to seek their good and reconciliation is supposed to matter more than pride, you can say something completely true for a completely wrong reason, just as you can be genuinely hurt by somebody and still behave badly afterward
I think that's also why the Gospel doesn't begin with punishment, but with conversation. The person is given the dignity of hearing the accusation privately and answering for themselves, then if that fails the response becomes more serious, but even then there is another attempt before the matter becomes public. Truth matters and wrongdoing isn't supposed to be ignored, but neither is somebody supposed to be publicly reduced to the worst thing they've done when the problem might still be repaired privately.
The ending of the Gospel makes more sense in that context too, Christ moves from conflict into agreement, prayer and community, then says, "where there are two or three gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." The passage begins with two people divided by wrongdoing and moves toward people being gathered together again, which makes the direction of the whole teaching fairly clear. Truth is necessary, correction can be necessary and consequences can be necessary, but the aim is still reconciliation rather than finding the quickest possible justification for getting rid of somebody.