There are a few things in the gospel that Jesus was extraordinarily clear about, and one of them was that it is very, very dangerous any time we think we are in a position to judge the sins or the faith of other people. You can think immediately of Jesus telling the people who were ready to stone the woman taken in adultery that only if they were without sin themselves should they be throwing a stone. You can also remember he pointed out how eager we are to point out the speck in someone else’s eye when we can’t see the log in our own. He was pretty clear about all this. But if you spend any time on social media or reading the news you’d think these passages from the New Testament hadn’t made much of an impact. So many Christians more than ever seem to make a sport out of pointing out how thoroughly bad other Christians are. As my father used to say, people are constantly passing up opportunities where the right thing to do is to say nothing, and get your own house in order.
But then we come to today’s gospel, which says that going home and minding your own business isn’t always the answer. Because today Jesus says that when there is a breakdown in the community, when you have been wronged or others have been, you can’t just shrug and leave it alone. You have to put yourself out there and call it out, not to get revenge, not to shame someone else, but to try to heal the division and address the injustice. Because in the Kingdom of God that Jesus wants his people living in division is never from God, and we shouldn’t let it fester. Its not that there won’t ever be disagreements, because sometimes that’s inevitable. But Jesus wants our community to handle conflict differently than other people do. We sit down and we talk about it, even when we don’t want to. It might sound like today he is encouraging a church where people are always calling one another out, but in a way, look, he is suggesting something much calmer. Public denunciation is the last step, the very last resort. The first step is conversation, listening, and convincing one another that something is wrong that needs addressing. That’s not division. That’s church the way Jesus wants it.
This sounds really simple, but these days, it isn’t. I’m not being very original to say that we live in polarized times. The times are so polarized that maybe someone will get really angry even with my saying that, and tell me angrily that these aren’t polarized times. We know we have Catholics divided from one another with opinions about the church and its future, who’s Catholic enough and who isn’t. We are also all divided by politics, maybe more than any of us can remember. Even here among one another there in this great parish or in our own families there are things we can’t and don’t talk about for fear that we’ll discover how deep our divisions really are, for fear that we’ll get angry or someone else will. And yet, when there is injustice in this world, and there is, things that need addressing, things in the church that do need changing, we can’t sit there. Somewhere in between judging everyone on the one hand and saying nothing to anyone on the other, there is a path of conversation and slow progress, a path that doesn’t always work, but that is the way Jesus wants this community of believers to operate. St. Paul says today that love does no evil to the neighbor, no matter what. And that is the path that even in a world with things that make us angry needs to be the path of believers. Division and conflict and sniping are a scandal to a world that would still love to look to us as a model of how people can live together in love. Jesus wants us all to be a sign to the world of how to do this.
So what is the way out of this? How do we become people who are a healing presence to one another, people who can solve problems even if we disagree? Here is one hint, and it’s based on those Jesus stories I mentioned right at the start. The people who are good at working their way forward in these difficult times are people who know and understand how often they themselves have failed. They are people who know what it is to have been wrong, they know they have sinned and they know they have been forgiven. It’s only people with a sense of their own need for repentance, people who know how often they have needed to begin again and again, who can find a way to see that we are all imperfect sinners. Everyone in this world has that in common. It’s not that we need a paralyzing sense of guilt for what we have done, just a sense of how we are in the same boat with everyone else. Just maybe, we can see something of ourselves in the life of another, even someone very different from us. Repentant people are the ones who can talk with others without alienating and judging them. They know they’re in no position to be throwing any stones. They know just how much grace God has offered them, and that God in his infinite mystery loves even their opponent just as much. It’s not an easy path. It doesn’t always work. But over and over, it is the way this kingdom gets built, a repentant people dealing with other people just as flawed as we are.
The old joke about today’s gospel passage is that when two or three are gathered there are at least four opinions. That’s just the way we all are. We are not all the same. But God loves it when people are gathered, even when we are sitting six feet apart, or receiving communion through a car window, or simply talking with one another about what needs to be fixed in this world. If we stick together, God will give us a future that will surprise us.