23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
We are now at the end of the summer and the schools and many other things in our locality are trying to get back into the new way of doing things. There is a great deal of change and It seems to me that time waits for no one and this is true enough when you stop and think that it is now 5 months since the youngsters were in school and so many things that we take for granted closed as a result of COVID19. But we are returning slowly to what is good and we know that we will have to journey along the road with the COVID19 virus going into the future whatever it brings. We bring ourselves and all we are doing and going through to god knowing that he is with us through it all.
In our Gospel passage for this Sunday St Matthew recounts Jesus’ instructions to the disciples about how they should deal with a brother who does something wrong. This same instruction applies to us and our dealings with other people in the here and now of today. This passage is very different from those of the two previous Sundays. They were dramatic stories, marked by deep emotions and with deep implications for the characters involved.
This is a little gem of a passage but with little drama, a very practical, common-sense teaching on that most common and most prosaic of community problems – conflict. It is a great wisdom teaching which continues to be valid for us in our own time. Management has become a science today, and Jesus’ teaching stands up well as a model of how to “manage” conflict in any situation. It is the duty of the disciple we are told to point out the error and even if our correction might not be well received. St Matthew wants to let the Christians in his community know how to deal with those who drift away from the teaching of Christ or blatantly contravene the commandments. And he chooses those words of Jesus which most stress the authority and the competence of the Christian community, the Church, to deal with these cases: Whatever you bind on earth shall be considered bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth shall be considered loosed in heaven. However, there are some safeguards built into this teaching on reproving those who go astray. Jesus says that first of all you must have it out with him alone. This might lead to a speedy solution and the person’s good name is preserved. Yet it seems from the gospel reading that the only sanction is that the person be excluded from the community of the Church. That is surely the meaning of the words: treat him like a pagan or a tax collector treat him as an outsider.
But in considering such matters we must be very careful; for getting all worked up about the behavior of someone else can frequently be a sign of something else, something much closer to home. Belonging to a community implies that we are involved in the life of its members. This is not a charter for the legion of the curious, but a procedure for a caring community to follow. It is a way of handling wrongdoing and hurt. Encountering the truth about another person and ourselves is daunting because it makes us face up to the other person and ourselves and the weaknesses that are part of us and all we are. We should not be afraid to encounter the truth about ourselves and others as we deal with the world around us these day’s knowing that Jesus is making the journey with us .
Fullerton T 