23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year A
Ezekiel 33:7-9 Romans 13:8-10 Matthew 18:15-20
Matthew’s Gospel has been called the “Church Gospel” because it contains numerous sermons and parables which describe facets of healthy Gospel behavior for the fellowship of disciples of Jesus the Risen Christ. Today’s Gospel passage is nuanced and complex. It is not a controlling directive about how to behave, but it does exhort Jesus’ disciples to relate to each other in a manner at once adult and respectful and founded on loving truthfulness. Neither does this passage refer directly to an “institutional church” structure or organization. Indeed, the idea of “the church” of the Gospel narratives, and also of St. Paul’s letters, tends to be very communal-fellowship in style, and very intimate and familiar in practicalities. Such personal relationships are sacred in the Gospel, so only reverent and loving behaviors are to be expected as is clear in this text. Ever since the 4th Century Church inherited the Roman Empire’s administration, power, and wealth, however, many of the more intimate dynamics of the Church have diminished and the power and authority of Church institutional office-holders have increased. A theme we heard two Sundays ago is repeated in today’s text, i.e., that of “binding and loosing.” In Matthew 16, it was upon Peter that Jesus conferred the severe and heavy obligation to care for the other disciples (the Old Testament metaphor of “opening and shutting” from Isaiah 22; the Gospel version of that metaphor is “binding and loosing”). Today time, the same obligation to engage, forgive, and reconcile is conferred upon all Jesus’ disciples, i.e., the entire Church fellowship. A parallel communal conferral is found in John’s account of Jesus’‘ Easter night appearance in John 20:19ff. So, the ministry of reconciliation and peace-making is not limited to the forum of the Sacrament of Penance. Rather, it is a broad and wide command to all Gospel disciples to be active reconcilers and peace-makers, and to work to foster reconciliation on a daily basis in every human forum we enter. This might well be called “Gospel meddling” because it requires proactive, prudent, risk-taking by all the members of the Gospel fellowship we know as the Church. Too frequently among some of our less healthy devotional practices a “me and Jesus” attitude has developed. Well, in fact, such over-individualized embrace of Jesus along with an exclusion of other disciples looks to be what we generally label a heresy, i.e., embracing one part of the bigger truth taken out of proportion and out of context, to the neglect and the violation of the rest of the truth. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is a social Gospel. That is, it only makes sense within the Gospel fellowship, i.e., within the active, prayerful, loving, justice-oriented, grace-filled, and truth-seeking community of faith. It is that community which, by our ordinary and graced relationships, fosters balance, affection, respect, concern, and prayer with and for each other. Thus do we disciples demonstrate that they belong to Jesus, by our “love for one another” (see John 13:35).
Today’s text from Ezekiel is a glimpse of a prophet’s obligation in the era around the fall and destruction of Jerusalem and the Jerusalem Temple (ca. 598-586 BC). A principal aspect of the Ezekiel’s prophetic role was that of public conscience for all the Kingdom of Judah. Independent prophets (among whom Ezekiel was numbered) arose as and evolved into a moral corrective to the power of the kings of Israel and Judah. Then and now, kings (any power-holder) too easily consider themselves above the law and above justice. Prophets arose as a human conscience for king, prince, priest, and people. Even the Great King David was challenged by the great prophet Nathan for tempting, impregnating, and stealing the wife of his general, Uriah the Hittite, and then, for having had Uriah murdered and the murder covered up (2nd Samuel 11–12)! The prophetic task was always to reveal the truth, however embarrassing and inconvenient the truth might be. Ezekiel lived in dangerous times. The final destruction of the independent kingdom of Judah was at hand. It was the beginning of long-term subjugation of the Jews by Gentile empires for centuries to come and the beginnings of the great Jewish Dispersion (specifically in the Babylonian Captivity). It was also a period when Jewish leadership was not at the noble best it might have been. The leaders of the kingdom were often in denial of reality. They easily compromised their relationship with the God of their ancestors by playing in the delicate and dangerous games of international relations. At this task they were not very successful. Ezekiel had to meddle on God’s behalf in these dangerous circumstances. He was divinely appointed both conscience and voice to a people who really preferred not to have a conscience or to hear any critique of their poor behavior. The serious tone of this reading reminds us that truth-hearing and truth-telling really can be life and death issues. Political and religious institutions – and their leaders who fail to realize just how important their tasks are – put everyone at risk. Even today, political and religious leaders frequently behave as if they have no idea of what real, responsible, daily lives entail. Insensitivity, denial, ignorance, over-simplification, fear ... these are alive and well among leaders at very nearly all levels. What is a believer and a citizen to do?!
Paul provides a sort of summary response to this rhetorical question in today’s short passage from the 13th Chapter of his letter to the Roman Christians. Love of neighbor is the fulfillment of the law. Paul referred, of course, to the Law of Moses, and also, to the Law of Love commanded by Jesus. He selectively cited some commands of the famous Decalogue of Moses, but that was not “the law” which he preached. They were still in his day (and are still in our day) good advice, but Paul was a broad-minded and insightful believer who valued the profound gift of responsible freedom equally with his knowledge of God’s salvation. Paul exhorted the Roman Christians to actively love in ways which would be at once ordinary and extraordinary. Paul’s enthusiasm was all-consuming. He remembered all his life that he had been among the meanest, most cruel, and most zealous of religious fanatics. He repented of his former self most deeply when had his first mystical experience of the Risen Christ. Thereafter, not only did he claim Christ as the Savior, but he also appreciated that many others who had embraced Christ’s Gospel were willing to love him even though he had treated them “with murderous threats.” Paul’s life and faith were of the most intimate and personal sort, with Jesus the Christ and with his audiences. Ezekiel had intimate and personal encounters both with God and with those to whom he preached. Jesus’ teaching in Matthew demanded that Christians risk engaging each other, even if it offended feelings and self-righteous tendencies.
Indeed, we believers must live our ordinary lives in extraordinary ways. Our personal lives must be remarkably noble and attractive to others. It is through the active lives of honest Christians that the Gospel speaks to others and calls them to new life in Christ Jesus!