Twenty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Most of us don’t actually have much experience living in community.  We think about our spouse or our children, but the idea of thinking first of the community around us is somewhat foreign.  After all, we’re Americans.  The foundational stories of the United States feature the rugged individualist.  And so it is no wonder that we are not as attuned to the larger community as we are to our own selves and families.

Therefore, this passage from Matthew is hard for us to put into the context of community, to which it belongs.  The concern in the story is about the overall health of the community, which in Matthew is small and young and fragile and new.  The sins that are to be corrected are worrisome because of the effect those sins have on the community itself.  It’s not so much about “you sinned against me,” but about the health of the whole.

Sadly, these verses are more often used, now, in a way that I don’t believe Jesus was advocating to his disciples.  I don’t think Jesus had the idea that we should go on television or on our blogs or otherwise stand in our various bully pulpits and call people out in public because we believe they are sinful and wrong.  For one thing, Jesus advocates addressing one another privately.  And for another, standing in judgment of one in the community is the very antithesis of what Jesus in Matthew is about.

For in Matthew’s view, it is accepted that there are both “wheat and weeds” in the community and that it is God’s job, not ours, to sort that out in God’s good time.  Constant weed pulling, Jesus told his disciples in the parable of the wheat and weeds, was an unhelpful disruption to the community.  Tender shoots of green wheat were liable to be damaged by all that digging around to pull up the weeds, he said.  Leave them alone and let God sort it out.

And yet we sometimes feel it our duty to call out others in public and even to shun those who we deem to be weeds.  We like to keep things stirred up and look to align ourselves with those of whom we approve and castigate those of whom we disapprove.  Which, of course, is about puffing ourselves up and not about building up the community of God.

The Gospel stories show Jesus again and again standing with those whom others shun, whom others disapprove and ignore.  He stands with the outcast and the broken.  He dares the “righteous” to throw the first stone, provided they are without sin themselves, which of course they know they are not.  He touches lepers and allows women to touch him.  He says that the poor and grieving and imprisoned are blessed.

Yes, we offend one another.  We hurt one another.  We are sinful creatures one and all.  We all stand in need of correction.  None of us is pure.  None.  And so, let us read on to see that the next thing Jesus says is to remind us that where two or three are gathered in his name, he will be in the midst of us.  These words bring us back to the true sense of sacred community, where we gather around Jesus.  Jesus is among us.  Thanks be to God.

Paul A. Magnano

Pastor