Today’s Scripture readings provide us with a strong challenge. Generally speaking, we don’t like having our faults and failings pointed out to us, and other people rarely thank us for highlighting their limitations. Yet in our public life we seem to have developed a taste for ‘calling out’ the faults of others and in turn people and corporations develop strategies to protect their reputations and deflect their opponents. Fault-finding is often equated with hypocrisy – those who are quick to find faults in others often don’t recognise their own blind spots. Yet in the light of bitter experience we find ourselves saying, ‘If only someone spoke up in time, much suffering and mistrust could have been averted.’
Our Gospel passage today reminds us that this was a dilemma that members of the Church have experienced from the very beginning. The early Church was born into a world where honour in the public sphere was one’s most important possession. Julius Caesar, was famously quoted by William Shakespeare, saying ‘I love honour more than I fear death’. Any offence against someone’s honour, whether deliberate or intentional, could possibly escalate into
the desire to salvage one’s
honour through violence and even murder. Such escalation would have damaging consequences for the life and mission of the Christian community.
Our Gospel passage immediately follows Matthew’s parable of the lost sheep. Whereas in Luke the sheep literally gets lost, Matthew suggests, by his choice of words, that the sheep deliberately strays through its own fault. But the shepherd does not give up on the stray for the sake of protecting
the 99 other sheep. He leaves them to fend for themselves while he goes in search of the stray. The parable is a model of how the Church is to care for its community members who go astray. It is a reflection of what God says to Ezekiel: ‘I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn back from their ways and live’. Fraternal correction is in principle life-giving, not punishment or humiliation.
The Gospel passage outlines a procedure in three stages which gives the possibility of anyone in the community acting like the shepherd. The first and most vital stage of the procedure is designed to prevent the conflict escalating. The offender and offended are to meet together. One can imagine this as an opportunity for misunderstandings to be ironed out, apologies to be offered, behaviour to be modified.
If good will is not restored however, a second stage is proposed. The offended party brings witnesses into the conversation. This is a serious move, and presumes the matter is not trivial and has the potential to damage the communion of the Church. The mention of witnesses suggests this has now become a legal matter, as it was in the Jewish tradition. If the witnesses are satisfied with the truth of the allegation and the offender still does not take responsibility, then the matter
is referred to the entire community for a definitive judgement,
because now the good of the community is at stake, and the community can be confident that the presence of Jesus will help them in their discernment.
If for the offender their honour really is more important than death, then they will be confronted with harsh reality. Their behaviour is incompatible with being a member of the community. To be excommunicated from the small family that was the Christian community was effectively to die, because the chances were that by becoming a Christian the offender had already forsaken his family and had no community to go back to.
Before we rush out of church inflamed with zeal to correct our brethren, we need to be very clear about our motives. Is our desire to correct founded upon anger or irritation, for example, or an attitude of moral superiority and a desire to condemn? Have we already excommunicated our brother or sister in our heart? When we look at the lives of the saints we discover that in their humility before God they are so aware of their own sins that they have little time to be aware of
the sins of others. They see themselves in their fellow pilgrim, and they correct by example
and encouragement rather than fault-finding.
The story is told of one of the early monks in the Egyptian desert who was asked by his fellow monk, ‘what is humility?’ He replied, ‘To do good to whoever does evil to us’. ‘And if we cannot do that?’ asked his brother. The old monk replied, ‘Then go away and try to keep your mouth shut.’