23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Rm 13:8-10
Mt 18:15-20
The scriptures today are pretty clear: you are
accountable for your neighbor’s actions. If your neighbor is sinning, it is
your responsibility to talk to him about it, educate him if he is ignorant of
his sin, and call him to repentance and conversion. He may accept what you say
and change, or he may reject you outright, but if you don’t you try you will be
held accountable for the consequences of his actions.
Wow. I don’t want to do that. I don’t know how to do
that. Am I my brother’s keeper? Who am I to judge?
This flies right in the face of common wisdom today.
You live your truth and I’ll live mine, and people can do whatever they like as
long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else. But Ezekial and Jesus are saying that we
are all interconnected and responsible for each other. We are all called to
help each other work out our salvation. No man is an island, and we aren’t
saved individually but in community. We are one body, the Body of Christ, and
are all called to work together in that type of intimate unity. The business of
discipleship is the salvation of souls. A Christian admonition is meant to
guide someone who has lost their way back onto the path to heaven.
But if that’s the case, and the actions of each
individual affect the entire body, then it’s also in my best interests
personally to help the body be free of sin. Your sin has consequences not just
for you but for me as well. There are no private sins, no victimless crimes. My
sin affects you, and yours affect me. St. Paul says that the wages of sin is
death. Suffering and death are not the result of God’s actions but ours. We all
experience suffering and death, even if we are in a state of grace. Jesus suffered
and died, even though he was completely without sin.
Sin builds upon sin so that ultimately the
individual’s sin affects the whole of humanity. There are sins that you did not
commit that affect your life profoundly. There is individual sin and there are
corporate or societal sins. All the great isms of history. Racism, sexism,
Nazism. You may not be racist or sexist or a Nazi, but those collective sins
affect you whether you committed them yourself or not.
So it makes perfect sense that if we are all affected
by the sins of others, we are also responsible for trying to correct and
forgive those sins. The scriptures are also pretty clear on how we are to do
that. And it is all based around love and humility. We correct one another
because we have a profound concern for each other’s welfare, not just our
immediate wellbeing and happiness but our eternal happiness as well.
If you were here last week you heard Fr. Gray preach
on the idea of rebuking those in error. As you recall, last week’s gospel had
Jesus rebuking St. Peter. Get behind me Satan. That was pretty harsh, and Jesus
didn’t mince any words. Fr. Gray spoke of how difficult it is for us to
experience correction, to accept the rebuke. It is always uncomfortable to have
our faults pointed out to us, especially if we are called to change our ideas
or behavior.
This week we hear the flip side of that when we are
called to correct others. That is also a very uncomfortable thing to do. Most
of us do not like confrontation and avoid doing anything that may cause people
to not like us. But when we do rebuke, we so often do it poorly, and actually
drive people further away from us. So many people these days rebuke based upon
a difference of opinion or political ideology. We see it every day in the
cancel culture. It’s ironic that the more we talk about tolerance the less
tolerant we become of people who don’t share our own beliefs. That type of
rebuke or lashing out or downright meanness is not based on love, but on
hatred.
But I think most times we rebuke someone without
really thinking about it. We just react in the moment, and it’s
counterproductive. We are often harsh and condemning when we react in a
situation, and that is not the way to win someone over to the gospel. It’s all
in your approach. It’s all about your intent.
Ezekial talks about sin in general today, while Jesus
refers to how to treat the person who sins against you. In both instances, the first
thing you do is pray for the person or persons or institution that is acting
sinfully, especially if they are persecuting you. Love your enemies and pray
for those who persecute you. No lasting spiritual behavior change happens
without prayer, lots of prayer.
Next, make no assumptions, even if you know the
situation and person intimately, even if they tell you what they are doing. Do not
make assumptions based upon your limited knowledge, because you will never know
the whole story. Always start from the assumption of a person’s ignorance
versus malice. Even if you know the person is living a potentially compromising
lifestyle you really have no idea if they first know and believe it to be
sinful or even if they are acting sinfully in their situation. That is where we
can become judgmental. Do not make assumptions on individuals based upon their
age, sex, political affiliation, race, religion, or sexual orientation. Your role
is to gently and lovingly be open to hearing what they have to say and then
present the truth to them as taught by Christ and his Church. Our job is to
know, to inform, and influence, not judge and condemn. We are called to be
prudent, which means to act with the proper people in the proper time and
place, with the proper message.
Of course, this assumes you actually know the truth,
and are not acting upon your personal belief, biases, or what you have always
thought to be true. Check it out and get your facts straight. When someone
posts something on social media that contradicts the truths of the faith,
especially if they profess to be Catholic, don’t attack them or ridicule them. Don’t
make it personal. Instead, post an applicable teaching from an authoritative
Catholic source. Call them to conversion. Inform, influence, and persuade. Let
the Holy Spirit do the rest.
If someone does something wrong that you are
personally aware of, you have a responsibility to talk to them about it.
Sometimes people are unaware that they have hurt you or that what they did was
wrong. There’s a difference between thinking something is a sin and knowing it
is a sin and doing it anyway. I think we have raised entire generations that
have no awareness that some things they think are natural and good are actually
wrong. It is our responsibility to inform them of reality, as we have been
taught by Jesus and his church. And, as Jesus tells us today, not just the
responsibility but the authority to do so.
But what if they don’t listen, or outright reject our
message? Jesus says we are to bring in backup. Take a couple of witnesses with
us and try again. In Jewish law, all it took to establish a case was to have
the collaborating testimony of two or three witnesses. Take Jesus with you. “Where
two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst them.”
If even that fails, take it to the church. Every sin especially affects the church, the Body
of Christ. Jesus clearly states here that the church has both the
responsibility and the authority to judge questions of faith and morals. When
he told his apostles, “Whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven and
whatever you loose on earth is loosed in heaven” he gave them the authority to judge
actions and establish laws that apply here on earth that are backed by the
authority of God himself. So, the Church must be involved.
Finally, Jesus proclaims judgment on the unrepentant
sinner. Treat them as you would treat a gentile or tax collector. And we know
how the Jews treated those folks. They had no contact with gentiles and they
ostracized and abused tax collectors. That seems pretty harsh and doesn’t
really paint a picture of a merciful Jesus.
But it’s not judgmental to give someone a chance to
repent. Several chances, in fact. And how did Jesus treat tax collectors? He
ate with them. One of them was actually an apostle. The door was always open,
but Jesus never pulled any punches with sinners. He always called them to
repentance and always forgave and welcomed them back into relationship with him
when they did.
That’s what people do when they love each other. Jesus
wasn’t laying out a legalistic process for judging sinners. He is telling us to
be persistent and gentle in calling people back into relationship. And most of
all, he is telling us to try, at least try. I think that many of us don’t even
take that first step when someone hurts us. We don’t have the courage to tell
the person how we feel and reach out to them. We keep quiet when we see
injustice and oppression in society. We don’t think we can make a difference. Most
of us just let it go and write it off. Or we just steep in our bitterness and
resentment.
We must always treat sinners with compassion because
we are all sinners who want and need compassion ourselves. Loving our neighbor
as ourselves means we treat them as we want to be treated, and nobody wants to
feel condemned and outcast. We correct our children all the time when they do
something wrong. We also punish them when necessary. We do that out of love for
them because we do not want them to suffer any long term harmful consequences.
That is not being judgmental, that is being responsible parents.
We are our brother’s keeper. We are all responsible
for one another. Remember that admonishing the sinner is one of the spiritual
works of mercy, along with instructing the ignorant, counseling the doubtful,
and bearing patiently those who wrong us.
We are all just beggars looking to be fed. And so we
must be there for one another. Just as we provide for the physical needs of
people we must also look out for one another’s spiritual needs. We do it out of
love. We do it because we want to be loved. The most loving thing you can do
for someone is help them get to heaven, to be with the God who created them. To
correct someone who sins is to show them the ultimate compassion.
It is to lead them to the thing that will bring them
the greatest happiness.
Happiness does not come from doing whatever we want to
do. Happiness comes from living as we were created to live, according to the
commandments of the Lord. Those commandments are not just a set of arbitrary or
oppressive rules. God set them up for us to guide us to him. Jesus said that we
are his friends if we keep his commandments. He then gave us the responsibility
and authority to help one another keep them.
That’s not being judgmental. Only God will judge us.
One day each and every one of us will stand before the Lord, alone, and there
will be judgment. That is the moment when we will feel the effects of the
gentle corrections we had received during our lives here on Earth. How we
reacted to those corrections will make all the difference. At that moment we
will also experience the joyful consequences of how we responded to those times
we were called to be loving to our neighbor. And that includes when we were
called to show mercy to the sinner.
For we will be shown mercy to the extent that we show
mercy.
