23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time (07.09.14)
Overcoming Isolation
An infrequently appreciated effect of culpable personal sin is the isolation and sense of shame it brings to the sinner. After all, we don’t openly broadcast our sinfulness! By burying our sin within ourselves we create barriers that, in turn, further our isolation. The principle barrier is between our self and God. Like our forebears, Adam and Eve, we try and hide from God thereby choosing to isolate our self from the only One with the power to heal us. (Genesis 3:9-10)
Repeated sinfulness results in a lessening of openness. This, in turn, can put a strain on close relationships such as between husband and wife or close friends. This is no accident. From Satan’s viewpoint an isolated, self-injured person is vulnerable and more easily manipulated! As Jesus is dedicated to communion, Satan is dedicated to division. A superficial look at today’s world shows just how deeply we are trapped in the kingdom of evil and that, in the words of St. John, is where we are. (1 John 5:19)
This Sunday’s Matthew Gospel text (18: 15-20) may appear to appeal to people’s ‘due process’ or law inclined outlook. People resort to law more readily than they do to dialogue, “I’ll sue!” being more often heard than “I’m willing to discuss.”
We may come to a different appreciation of this Gospel extract if we start with the final sentence where Jesus says to his disciples –
“For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”
In saying this, Jesus reveals his bedrock principle of ‘communion’, the very antithesis of isolation. Jesus repeatedly emphasises the importance of his communion with his heavenly Father throughout the Gospels. Perhaps the best recognised of the texts is John Ch.17: 19-24 where Jesus is praying aloud to his heavenly Father:
“For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified. “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.”
Jesus is the dialoguer. “If your brother or sister sins against you, go and tell them their fault between you and them alone.” Equally, it stands to reason, we must be prepared to hear out those who believe they have a claim against us. There can be no communion without a mutuality of openness, respect and patience.
Jesus develops his teaching by allowing for the possible failure of the one-to-one dialogue. He then suggests a group dialogue.
Since 1899 the international Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) has been based in The Hague to promote arbitration and the resolution of disputes
There is also the International Court of Arbitration for the resolution of international commercial disputes based in Paris with more than 100 members from 90 countries.
Matthew’s Gospel text has Jesus developing his dialogue strategy by saying, in effect, that where the one-to-one and the group dialogue have both failed then we are to put the matter in contention before the community. The contemporary equivalent would be the employment of sanctions in an attempt to bring the irreconcilables to reconciliation. Again, the communion aspect of community involvement is maintained.
Finally, when all else fails, Matthew has Jesus say that the malefactor or malefactors should be treated as ‘pagans’ or ‘tax collectors’. Matthew, being himself a former tax collector, would have known at first hand the painful impact of being ostracized.
But note, Jesus, early on in his ministry, makes a point of courting the ostracized among whom are the tax collectors and pagans. Moreover he draws them within the circle of his close collaborators. Jesus chose to dine at the home of the notorious tax collector, Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10) who had gone out of his way to have sight of the preacher from Nazareth. Jesus’ dialogue with him prompts Zacchaeus to make a new start. More than that, many other ostracized people and the outcasts join Zacchaeus and Jesus at table.
Much of Matthew’s Gospel in chapter 5 exemplifies the emphasis Jesus placed on conversion and communion as the pathway to true community. In verse 45, for example, Jesus’ teaching is reflected in our extract for this Sunday:
“But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. “For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?”
Initially, this Sunday’s Gospel extract may have come across as Jesus promoting a legal process for dispute resolution. Quite the reverse is true. Jesus emphasizes his preferred course of developing communion in collaboration with the community.
The final reference to pagans and tax collectors is a reminder that Jesus, in his public ministry, went out of his way to reach out to those regarded as renegades. In the quiet of our personal examination of conscience we may well find reason to be profoundly grateful to Jesus’ preference for communion as opposed to the isolation, which so often results from condemnation.
Much is spoken and written about the fall off in the numbers of people availing themselves of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The private pain of culpable sin and its resulting isolation can drive people from the Church thereby depriving the community of their presence and participation. The second and third forms for the celebration of Reconciliation help end that isolation by involving the community. Have they been sufficiently promoted in your experience? In the final sentence of Matthew’s Gospel extract for this Sunday it’s as if Jesus was reaching out to all peoples. There is no restriction or qualification for being numbered among the – “two or three (hundred, thousand, million!) gathered together in my name” – other than a desire to be in communion with Jesus and therefore in communion with His body on earth, the Church.