23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Cycle A
Who Am I to Judge?
That seems to be the theme of our civilization today.
Who am I to judge?
The media and a lot of people have taken part of a
quote from Pope Francis and have turned it into an excuse for tolerating any
type of behavior. Whatever the crisis of the day is, whatever moral norms are
being turned upside down, it doesn’t matter, because we are not to judge, are
we? It’s a wonderful, all-encompassing excuse for not taking any responsibility
for our actions or the actions of other people. It’s not my fault, it’s not
your fault, it’s not anyone’s fault. We must be open and welcome and accept,
even celebrate, any behavior in anyone, because to do otherwise is to be
judgmental, and that’s bad.
It’s not only bad, it’s really hard to do sometimes,
because if we are seen as judgmental we risk a lot. We risk ridicule, usually
on social media, loss of friends, our jobs, and sometimes outright violence. Nobody
wants to be seen as judgmental. As long as what you do doesn’t infringe on my
rights, go ahead. It doesn’t affect me.
But is that true? Am I really my brother’s keeper?
What do we hear in today’s readings? The people of the
prophet Ezekial’s time believed that the consequences of offending God was
often death, physical death. They didn’t have the same concept of the afterlife
that we do. Therefore, the worst that could happen to someone was for them to
die. We have a similar understanding of the consequences of sin, however, ours
is based upon our understanding of eternal life. If we live a life of sin
without repenting, and die in that state, then we will suffer not only physical
death but spiritual death as well, separated from God forever.
So, as St. Paul says, the wages of sin is death. The
stakes are really high. The Lord tells Ezekial that it is his responsibility as
a prophet to warn people about those consequences, and try to turn them away
from their sin, so they will not die. If he does not, then not only will the
person die anyway, but Ezekial will be held responsible. That’s a high price to
pay for not being judgmental.
And Jesus builds upon this understanding of
responsibility in the gospel. He lays out a detailed process for dealing with
people who sin. 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. A young person
asked me once if something is a sin if she didn’t think it was a sin. At first
I thought that yes, there are some actions that are always sinful, in and of
themselves. Then after a while I came to the conclusion that that may be so,
but 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. If even that fails, take
it to the church. To the church? What have they got to do with it?
Jesus clearly states here that the church has both the
responsibility and the authority to judge questions of faith and morals. When
we sin, it affects not only our relationship with God and with those we hurt,
it affects everyone. It affects the church, the people of God. It affects the
entire world. Wow, when I steal that candy bar from the 7 Eleven it hurts
people in China? In a way, yes. Sin, especially unrepentant and unforgiven sin,
does hurt everyone. Like George Lucas said, there’s a disturbance in the force.
If only we could feel something when somebody else sinned, maybe we would be
more aware of the seriousness of sin.
There are sins that individuals do not commit that
affect their lives profoundly. When someone hurts us, it obviously affects us
personally. But how can what one person does to another that we are not even
aware of affect us personally? Well, how many of you own slaves? How many of
you are sexual offenders? None of us own slaves, but we are all affected by the
sin of slavery in this country that was ended over 150 years ago. Every day we
see the effects of racism, and it hurts us all and paints entire populations
with the same brush, because of the actions of others. And as Catholics, we are
all affected by the actions of a few clergy, aren’t we, even though we would
never dream of acting that way ourselves.
And if we are all affected by the sins of others, we
are also responsible for trying to correct and forgive those sins.
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.
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’s 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.
That’s what people do when they love each other. Jesus
wasn’t laying out a legalistic process for judging sinners. He was giving them
a lot of chances. He was 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. Most of us would just let it go and write them off.
We must always treat sinners with compassion, because
we are all sinners who need and want 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 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.
