Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 22:15 -21

The story in today’s gospel is always brought up when someone wants to show how Jesus was in favor of the separation of church and state.  You will hear echoes of it every time we have a presidential election, each side accusing the other of crossing the line, one way or another, between the religious sphere and the secular sphere.  Of course we also get this quote thrown at us everytime tax season rolls around, but that’s another story.  But if we look at the gospel carefully we might get more out of it. 

The first thing to notice is that the Pharisees and Herodians are working together.  This is probably why Jesus immediately recognized this as an attempt to trip him up.  The Pharisees believed in life after death, but they also believed in a Jewish state completely independent of outside influences; they believed in following 613 rules derived from the first five books of the bible; they had as little to do with the unclean as possible, and the unclean included non-Jews and several professions that even Jews might enter, such as tanning hides, being a soldier, collecting taxes, dealing with anything that might expose you to human blood.  And much like those of us living through Covid, they were always washing their hands.  The Herodians, on the other hand, were closely related to the Sadducees.  The premise was that there was no life after death.  The logical extension was that it best to live an untroubled life, which means going along with the ruling powers, forgetting about all those strange rules the Pharisees were always preaching about, and realizing that there was nothing special about being Jewish; it was just another tribal designation, like being a Persian or a Greek. 

Now Jesus exposes their hypocrisy.  He asks for a tribute coin.  Someone pulled one out of his pocket.  Jesus holds it up and asks, whose image and whose inscription is on the coin?  If we had the coin, we would answer as they did, “Caesar’s” but the inscription is not given in this passage from Matthew.  It would have been blasphemy to even say the words:  “Tiberius, the son of Divine Augustus”.  And for a Pharisee to carry around this coin would have been against their principles.  So either a herodian provided the coin, or a Pharisee who was sort of clueless.  

And finally we come to those widely quoted words, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.”  

If the coin belongs to Caesar because it bears his image, how can we tell what belongs to God?  What is stamped with the image of God?  You are right -- you and I, and every human being is made in the image and likeness of God, even Caesar.  In fact, if you are to believe the mystics like St. Francis, God’s image is all over nature as well, but especially in human beings.  We, according to the first book of the bible, bear his image and his likeness, which aren’t quite the same thing.  The image of God is how we appear.  We resemble Jesus as human beings.  A dog or a flower does not look like Jesus, but there is some hint of the divine even in them.  On the other hand, likeness is more to do with how our appearance and actions call to mind someone else -- If I say a particular grandson is a lot like his dad, I am not only mentioning the way he looks, but also the way he walks and talks, what he’s good at - those  things as well.  And human beings bear a likeness to our Father.  Again, if you look at Jesus you see how God would act as a human being.  

So what do we give God?  Everything, including ourselves.  There is no separation between Church and State, both belong to God.  There is no separation between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, as Saint Paul says, all are one in Christ.  

And that’s what the Church, what you and I are really all about.  God’s plan for mankind was clear at the beginning; we were to tend to the Garden of Eden; we were given powers over the animals; the plants served us effortlessly.  The image of Eden keeps recurring in scripture -- Ezechiel talks about trees that bear all year long and their leaves are medicine; Isaiah talks about God’s Holy Mountain where you can eat and drink without paying; the book of Revelation describes the heavenly Jerusalem -- all images of how God meant things to be.

Humans, of course, didn't cooperate and introduced division into the world.  Or perhaps they had help -- after all, the word “devil” comes from a Greek root which means “to divide”.  Anytime you see someone trying to divide human beings from each other, you see echoes of original sin, you see the hand of the devil.  And that seems to be happening more and more these days.  

But Jesus, who gives us the power to make the world over to become what God has in mind for it, did pray that all would be one, just as he is one with the Father.  The Church is meant to unite all people, not into some totalitarian community, but into a world where all the good humans are capable of can be exercised -- we will be in Christ then as Paul describes this state.  So Jesus is reminding the Pharisees and the Herodians and you and I that everyone belongs to God, and whenever we meet another human being, we need to remember whose image is on that person. 

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 22: 1 -14

When I read what others have written about this story of Jesus, the king in the story usually stands in for God.  The wedding guests who at first humiliate the king by claiming they had something trivial to do and then the later ones who react with violence to his invitation nowadays stand in for people who reject the Church; either because of indifference or because of actual opposition.  Of course in the olden days, the ones who rejected were the Jewish people.  Maybe we’ve made a little progresso.  And then we come to the actual guests, who are rounded up from unlikely places; when this story is told by Luke, the king has to send his servants out a second time to the hedgerows and the alleys -- and we are those guests, we gentiles, we who are in the church, we who take our religion seriously or at least semi=seriously.  

But maybe there are problems with this standard interpretation.  One of them is that the king is certainly not like the God that Jesus preached about.  He is vain, easily offended, given to violence -- after all he burns a city down because of a few people who treated his servants violently.  And then after he finally fills his banquet hall, he kicks out one of the guests because he isn’t wearing a wedding garment -- not only does he kick him out, he does so after binding his hands and feet.  Is that how you imagine God?  And yet, I think that’s the way my grandparents imagined Him, and that wasn’t so long ago.  The idea that God is hot tempered, violent, and easily offended lurks in the back of our minds, I think.  

As I said before, we tend to see ourselves as the wedding guests who have been rounded up and brought to the banquet, wearing a garment given to us by the king.  But who else might we be?

I ran across an article about Amy Comey Barrett who has been nominated for the Supreme Court.  The article began with the statement, “I am a Catholic” and went on to say that her views were not Catholic; she was against abortion and euthenasia, and more than 50% of Catholics are not’ she opposed artificial contraception; 70% of Catholics see nothing wrong with it.  She believed that marriage was between a man and a woman; and about 50% of Catholics think that same-sex marriage is not a problem.  He went on to list a number of other Catholic ideas she had that many Catholics don’t.  Of course anybody who is adequately catechized could see how ridiculous this serious person was.  The beliefs of the Church, derived from it’s founder, from scripture, from tradition, and from the teaching authority of the Church which we believe is protected by the Holy Spirit, are not based on polls.  And maybe those who ignore the king’s servants, or do violence to them -- maybe those people and you and I have a bit in common.  We don’t mind being subjects of the king as long as we don’t have to do what he tells us to do. 

Or maybe we are the king.  Maybe we are easily offended because our self-image is fragile, or perhaps misguided.  We all start out life thinking we are the center of the universe, and some of us never move beyond that point.  But even if we do, it’s easy to give in to our instincts, which still tell us that.  And when we are offended, when we are dissed, or disrespected, maybe we resort to violence, perhaps only in our minds, but violence nevertheless.  And when we are disrespected we tend to overreact, just like the king who burns down the village, or throws out the man who refuses to wear a wedding garment.  Maybe we still need to work on virtues like humility and charity even toward our enemies.  

Or maybe we are the man who has been bound and cast into the darkness because he is not wearing a wedding garment.  Or maybe that is Jesus, who ultimately was stripped naked and nailed to a cross because he did not conform.  He resisted the authorities of his time, not in a violent way, but by pointing out where they were wrong.  He stood up to power and didn’t concern himself with the consequences.  He spoke the truth people didn’t want to hear.  And I guess I am not that person; I’m not brave enough.  But at the same time, maybe Jesus tells us about this man because he hopes that some of his followers will imitate him, even to accept martyrdom.  Because truth needs to be spoken, even when everyone else is lying. 

When Luke tells this story, there is nothing about the man who is thrown out.  The king does not commit violence.  It’s very different and seems to have a different point.  And I think that when Jesus told his stories, he wanted his listeners to think about them.  Our reaction to these stories is usually to grasp what we think is the point and go on from there.  But when you carry one of his parables around with you all week long, you come up with many different ideas.  So I am sharing some of mine with you.  

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

 Matthew 21:33 - 43

In the early part of the summer of my sixteenth year I had no job and time hung heavy on my hands. I asked my uncle, who owned a farm, whether he had any kind of job for me. It so happened that he was short a worker and offered me the job of plowing a field. I knew how to drive a car so it wasn't a big leap to run a tractor; and with the plow you just raised and lowered it. And since there was no traffic out on the field I couldn't run into anything. So off I drove. When I got about half-way around the first pass, the plow caught a large rock which kept the blade from turning. I stopped the tractor and after much effort managed to get the rock out of the works. Then I noticed the plow was bent and still wouldn't turn. I walked back to the farmhouse and informed my uncle, and we went back to the tractor and ended up bringing the plow back to his shop. I drove the tractor home. As I took my pay for the day I asked when he wanted me back the next day. He told me that his hired hand was returning and my services wouldn't be needed. The vineyard was taken away from me and put in the hands of another!

If you remember the gospel from last week, Jesus was talking to the priests and elders of the people. Today he addresses a second parable to them. You remember how it all started: Jesus asked about whether John’s baptism was from God or from man and they replied, “We don’t know”. Then Jesus asked about the two sons, one who said he would not work in the vineyard for his father, but changed his mind and did; and the second, who agreed to work for the father, but did not. Jesus asks, “Which one did the will of the father?” This time they know the answer and reply that the first son was doing the will of the father. Jesus has indirectly criticized them for not believing John the Baptist even though sinners were being converted by his preaching. And then we come to this story.

In Jesus’ time, people knew that the scriptures often portrayed the nation of Israel as a vineyard. You see that reference in the psalms and in the prophets, particularly Isaiah. And you heard the first reading, which can be roughly summarized: God has done everything he can for his people, but they still aren’t bearing fruit, and that’s the reason he seems to have abandoned them. But last week and this week Jesus turns our focus away from the nation of Israel and toward the people who are supposed to be leading the nation.

Now when I look at this gospel, I am impressed by foolishness. The tenant farmers believe they have the right to the harvest, even though they are under contract to return a certain part of it to the one who owns the vineyard. When the landowner sends servants to gather his share, the farmers beat one, killed another and stoned a third. They must have let one get away, because the landowner decided to send out another delegation -- who were treated the same way. I wonder if the farmers ever stopped to think about who might be coming the third time -- perhaps a delegation of Roman legionaries with swords and spears. So they have shown themselves even more foolish.

And of course when they decide to kill the son, what did they expect? And Jesus’ audience catches on right away, as you can tell by their answer to Jesus’ question. “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end!” A very human reaction to Jesus’ story.

But pay attention. Jesus asks the question, but does not really answer it. Jesus’ answer is to quote the prophet Isaiah: “The stone the builders rejected will be the cornerstone. This came about from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes”. And he goes on to say that the kingdom of God will be taken from the current leaders of the people and given to those who will bear fruit.

We’ve mentioned the foolishness of the tenant farmers. But there is even more foolishness going on. The landowner, having had his legitimate requests not only denied but punctuated by lethal violence, sends his son. What did the landowner expect by then? Isn’t his thinking strange? That after what they’ve done, they will respect the son?

But in the apparent foolishness of the landowner, I think Jesus is telling us something about God the Father. He will not bring those wretches to a wretched end. Instead, he will simply move on, hiring new farmers and taking the vineyard from the old ones, and keep doing so until he finds some who will bear much fruit, who will honor the covenant.

God does not condemn; he doesn’t have to. We condemn ourselves. We are given everything -- first of all, life, then relationships, then all the natural world -- That’s God’s commitment. Then we are expected to use all we are given to bear fruit. The story even tells us that God only wants some of the fruit. It’s perfectly legitimate for we tenant farmers to keep some of the fruit we cultivate using the gifts God has given us. But to refuse to bear fruit for God, to use his gifts and our talents which he’s given us as though these belong to us and he doesn't have a claim on them is to take part in the killing of the son and to risk having the vineyard taken away from us.

The wonderful thing about being a human being is that God turns over the task of building the kingdom to us. We participate in God’s great work -- the making over of the world he’s given us to resemble the ideal that was in the mind of Jesus and is being carried forward by the Church. And the kingdom will come, that’s a promise. But if I don’t help build it, I’ll have no claim on it.. And my whole life will lose all real meaning.

Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 21:28 - 32

Most of the time when we look at this gospel passage we nod wisely and conclude that it’s better to carry out God’s will rather than say we will but then not do it.  And we can go for that, it’s reasonable.  But there are some deeper things going on here.  First, some context.  Jesus, who has been up north in Galilee for most of his ministry, has come to Jerusalem during Passover week.  At some point Pilate would have marched through town on a horse, accompanied by his soldiers, as a show of force, since with all those Jews coming to town, there was the potential for trouble.  But Jesus begins his visit by mocking Pilate; he rides in on a donkey, accompanied by crowds of people, probably most of whom are visitors to the city.  Jesus has cursed a fig tree as a prophetic gesture, and storms into the temple with a whip and messes everything up.  That’s when the religious authorities approach -- they recognize he is being prophetic -- and ask on whose authority he is doing these things?  And that’s when Jesus asks them whether John’s baptism was something from God or something merely human.  And they refuse to answer, saying “We do not know.”

That’s when Jesus talks about the two sons.  And this time they know the answer -- it’s the son who says he won’t but eventually does what the father wanted, he’s the one who did the father’s will.  What Jesus has done, in a way, is disguise his previous question to which they answered that they did not know, and their answer to this question says that they do know.  And he goes on to point out that tax collectors and prostitutes were reforming their lives in response to John’s preaching -- certainly a sign that he was carrying out God’s will -- whereas the Jewish priesthood who were supposed to be carrying out God’s will were actually creating barriers between God and the people.  Not only did they put a lot of burdens on the common folk, but if you wanted to offer a sacrifice, it could only be done by a certified priest in the temple, and you had to buy the sacrificial animal with temple money.  So you went to a money changer who took a bit off the top and gave you coins that did not have a picture of the emperor on them.  Most people under this situation could only offer a sacrifice on rare occasions.  And of course the passover season saw a tremendous increase in the sacrifice business, so the cost of those things only went up.  

And the chief priests and elders are squirming and go to scheming how to get rid of this trouble-maker, which will happen in a few more days.  

And the story should make you and I squirm a little as well.  Because one of the easiest things for a practicing Catholic to do is to substitute words for actions.  One protestant writer talks about learning to speak Christianese.  We know what words to say, what ideas to agree with, and as for action, well, because we aren’t living in a state of sin and are contributing to the Church and going to Mass on Sunday, we are doing way better than 90% of our fellow human beings, and God grades on a curve, so we are all right.

But Jesus deliberately names the tax collectors and prostitutes, and says that they are entering the kingdom of God before the chief priests and elders.  That is truly insulting, because the chief priests and elders had exactly the same attitude -- they were avoiding sin, praying a lot, tithing, fasting -- they spoke something like fluent Crhistianese, only Jewish.  And they knew God graded on a curve as well.

But Jesus’ point is that those sinners, those people who in the eyes of the Jews were the worst of sinners, had actually repented, and they recognized that repentance is not something you do one day, it’s something you work at all your life.  And repentance does not mean being sorry for our sins.  It starts with recognizing that we are lost, we are helpless, we are around for a few years and then we are gone.  I had an old professor who had accomplished a lot in the field of cancer research.  As we became friends he confided in me one day that he wished he had not wasted so much time on things that didn’t matter.  He wasn’t talking about recreation, family life, or all the many wonderful things that God surrounds us with; he was talking about watching too much TV, spending too much time on the internet, gossipping for hours over the phone with a friend -- even spending all day being so busy you can’t even stop to pray or meditate or ask where you are going with all this?  If you are like me, there is plenty of lostness in your life, and the wonderful thing about Jesus and his church is that there is an answer to this in the sacraments and the graces which are there for us to accept.

Because Jesus is not against people who speak Christianese; he’s against any pretend religion that allows its practitioners to be stagnant, that allows them to substitute words for actions.  Our faith is meant to be embodied; that’s what incarnation is all about.  And Jesus really invites us to be like both sons -- to say yes to God’s invitation and to carry out what he asks of us.  And if we did so, as that old song would say, “What a wonderful world this would be.”  Because the kingdom of heaven is at hand, waiting to break out through you and I.

Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 20:1 - 16

If you are a parent of a couple of kids close in age, or if you were a child from a family like that, you probably know how hard it is to insure fairness. A parent has to give his children things they need, and sometimes someone older needs something inappropriate to a younger one, or a girl needs something her brother doesn’t. And in that case, the brother still thinks if his sister gets something, he should as well. That’s why the story Jesus told in the gospel today almost always causes the same reaction in the people who hear it -- you and I are no exception. It isn’t fair, we say. Well, it turns out that this is an instinct, even present in animals. My grandchildren live with a nasty little dog and a quiet, shy cat. If there is food to be had, the dog is right there, hoping for a scrap. Now if you hand a little scrap to the cat, the dog goes into a more aggressive begging mode. If you keep feeding the cat, the dog begins to bark and snarl, at you and the cat. It isn’t fair, he says.

And if we are honest, we look at that landowner and say, it isn’t fair! Equal pay for equal work is fair. Equal pay for unequal work is not. Rewarding hard work is fair; excusing laziness is not fair.

And there is a reason that most people react to this story by saying, “It’s not fair!” It’s because we see ourselves in those laborers who have been out in the sun all day, working their tails off, for a good wage, it’s true, a wage that can feed their families for a while, a wage that can maybe buy them a little leisure, a wage that was worth a day’s labor. But what if we are the workers hired at noon, or late in the afternoon? We would be ecstatic if we received that wage! We had expected little or nothing from our day seeking work, and the landowner has given us a good wage by any standards, a wage we clearly did not earn. It may be the people who only worked an hour or so went out and threw a party, while the workers who spent the whole day sat snarling like my grandchildren’s dog, empty of the joy they should have had, because after all, they had worked productively, they had received their just wage.

And I think most of us see that the landowner represents God in this story by Jesus. I do as well. But what are the implications? The landowner is not considering what is fair and waht is not. He wants those who took him up on the invitation to work in his vineyard to have a living wage, to be able to take care of their families. And I think Jesus tells us this story, and tells many of his stories, to make us realize that there are instincts in our very nature that as Christians, we are called (and given the grace) to overcome. Because if we are children of the Father, we want to look like the Father. And the Father is not concerned about fairness.

Being concerned about fairness has a purpose, but not the one you might think. Fairness is involved when we consider immigration, for example. We want people to wait their turn and not jump the line. That’s only fair. Fairness is involved when we think about taxes -- we all want to pay what we owe, and not one penny more. Fairness is involved when I’ve worked very hard and very effectively in my job, but the boss’s lazy son gets promoted over me. And I’m sure you can think of example after example where the fairness instinct kicks in, several times a day for some of us.

Let’s face it, we can all recognize when something is fair, if we have all the details. It’s an instinct. But what is our Christian response? I think we need to try to be more like the landowner in Jesus’ story. We need to base our actions not on what is fair, but what fulfills the needs of the greatest number of people. Perhaps some of you may have read the report from the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce recently which maintained that, based upon the current system for distributing educational funds, wealthier school districts were receiving an excess compared to poorer districts. It turns out that one of the major reasons for this has to do with a sliding scale that requires every district to fund some of its educational costs, with the state picking up the rest -- and the formula says that the funding level can’t be less than the year before, and that the maximum a district has to pick up is 82.5% of their costs. What is fair? We could argue all day. But we overlook the important question -- are the kids being given a quality education?

Fairness is related to justice; justice by itself is heartless. The landowner, and God, are not nearly as concerned with justice as with mercy. And that’s what we Christians should be thinking about when we think something is not fair. God does not care about fairness.

Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 18:21 - 35

When we hear this very familiar parable, our first impulse is to see the ruler as a stand-in for God. He forgives the servant a huge debt, but the servant then goes out and refuses to forgive a fellow servant who owes him spare change. And of course the ruler takes back his forgiveness and sends the unforgiving servant off to be tortured until his unpayable debt is finally payed -- basically, never.

But I don’t think the ruler is a stand-in for God. After all, Jesus just told Peter that his followers were to forgive “seventy times seven times” in other words, they were to live a life of forgiveness. But if God only forgives once and then takes back his forgiveness, how is that an example for us? One authority thinks that what Jesus is describing isn’t forgiveness at all, but rather, has to do with false forgiveness -- something that comes from power, from selfish motives, something that comes from anything but the heart. The ruler is in a position where he can forgive or condemn; he has all the cards. Whatever he does, his servant is at his mercy. To be sold into slavery along with your family is humiliating, but so is being forgiven a debt you could never pay, and in a society where saving face was more important than it is in ours, the humiliated servant lashed out the first chance he got -- to a servant over whom he had power. And when he chose not to forgive his fellow servant, the only reaction of the ruler to save face was to take back his false forgiveness, to prove to everyone that his servant could not make him look like a fool. It’s kind of like when a parent gets angry at a child for something the child deserved, and then the child goes out and kicks the dog. And Jesus is describing a false forgiveness, one that can be taken back. The only problem with my interpretation is that Jesus says, “So my heavenly father will do to you, unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.” But maybe my interpretation is still valid -- maybe I can’t receive God’s forgiveness unless I make room for it by letting go of the resentment and ill feelings I have toward someone who has done me harm.

But we need to understand what forgiveness is. It is not denial, it is not saying that some serious harm done by someone to me is nothing; it isn’t Christian to say, “That awful thing you did, it’s OK.” Jesus didn’t tell the money changers that what they were doing was OK, he fashioned a whip and drove them out of the temple. He didn’t tell the Pharisees who laid heavy burdens on people by their rules and regulations that that was OK. He compared them to a whitewashed tomb. Forgiveness is not tolerating an evil in our midst, unless there is no recourse.

Forgiveness is not a shortcut. True forgiveness still requires repentance and spiritual transformation, often on the part of the one doing the forgiving as well. Grace is not cheap, and even though God’s forgiveness is freely offered, it comes only because Jesus has paid the price for it on the cross. We may be able to let something go, and that may be a good thing psychologically for us; but the true healing of the relationship requires a response from the brother we want to forgive.

Forgiveness is not the same as healing and reconciliation. There are situations where I may forgive, but things will never be the same in my relationship with the one I forgave. Healing may take longer than forgiving; reconciliation may never happen in some situations, even though it’s always the job of the follower of Jesus to be open to the possibility. Forgiveness is the beginning of building up God’s kingdom, not the end; because if we have not forgiven, we are stuck, we can’t move forward, we are letting ourselves be controlled by the one who offended us.

Finally, real forgiveness is not easy. One writer said “Forgiveness is the way to unburden yourself of the constant pressure to rewrite the past.” Henry Nowen said “Forgiveness is the name of love practiced by those who love poorly. And we all love poorly. … Forgiveness is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.”

Holding on to anger about the harm done to me does nothing to combat evil; in fact it probably feeds evil. Forgiveness is saying, “What you did is not OK, but I refuse to be connected to it anymore.” It’s about freedom, really, freedom to escape the past, to live in the present, to look forward to the future without carrying all that festering resentment along with me.

There are some of us who can forgive more easily than others. It has to do with our temperaments. Saint Jerome wrote hundreds of letters many of which survive. It’s pretty obvious that he had a hard time forgiving people -- and he knew it, but he kept trying all his life. He even used to hit himself with a rock when his anger was getting the best of him. At his canonization, Pope Clement recounted all the great things Jerome had done, but said that the stone was the reason for his becoming a saint.

And we should never forget that Jesus tells us that God’s forgiveness of me is conditional; we pray, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” It isn't that God doesn't want to forgive me; it's that when I don't forgive I'm causing myself pain; I'm imagining how I can get back at my enemy; I realize that while I don't forgive my prayers are just words – being an unforgiving person is probably something like being in hell. God doesn't put us there, but doesn't stand in our way if that's what we want.

Twenty- third Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 18:15 - 20

I really like to avoid conflict. And yet I’ve met people who seem to enjoy it. Fortunately there aren’t too many of them. But there are two natural responses to conflict -- fight and flight. I usually choose flight. In my career as a physician, though, there were times when I had to correct a person who reported to me in the chain of command. I would bring the person into my office, close the door, and in a calm voice, express my concern about a particular behavior. Naturally the individual would deny that there was a problem, and point out that other people did worse. I would point out other instances of the behavior in an attempt to show that this was a habit. And back and forth it would go, until we grudgingly agreed that the person would try to modify his behavior, even though he didn’t think it was a problem. And things didn’t change very much at all.

Many years later, though, I was not adapting to some new procedures in our department, which had been imposed by the health care system I worked for. I was resisting not on principle, but largely because I did not like being told what to do by people who weren’t physicians. Then one day I got called in by my superior, who was accompanied by a member of the administration, and I was told in a calm voice to adapt. I began to make my excuses. My boss said we weren’t going there; we had invested a lot in the new system and my choices were to adapt or to think about finding some other place to work. I adapted, and after a while became a “super user” who taught others how to negotiate the procedures involved.

Today Jesus invites us to go into those situations which I would rather avoid, situations which we can expect will cause adrenaline to flow. In the original Greek, the gospel says “If you fellow disciple sins (and we aren’t sure whether the words “against you” were in the original)” go and point out their fault, just between the two of you, and if he listens, you have won him over.” The really important point is that your goal is to win your brother or sister over -- to get them to stop the sin. What you are supposed to do is done out of love, because you want that brother or sister in heaven and you know that if they persist in the sin, this makes heaven less likely. That’s why you escalate; if your little talk doesn’t work, get someone to go with you, The importance of this step is two-fold; you want to show the sinner that this is serious, but at the same time, you want to make sure they see the sin the same way you do. And if this doesn’t work, go to the whole assembly. Because we are our brother’s keeper; we all have an interest in his salvation; it really matters enough to put us into this uncomfortable conflict.

Now Jesus isn’t saying that we should go around looking for trouble, going up to people on the street and telling them to put on their masks, for God’s sake! Jesus is clear about what he is talking about is fellow disciples; people who have already committed to following the way of Jesus. Our obligation to people of other religions or no religion at all is different. That is why logic and appeal to moral principles almost never works; ultimately conversion requires a good example on our part and the grace of God on his. The point Jesus is making is that we in this church, St. Mary’s in Longmeadow, are responsible for each other.

Now what happens when someone doesn’t listen to the Church? Jesus tells us to treat them like tax collectors or gentiles. What does that mean? Do we shun them, have nothing to do with them? That has been one interpretation. In Amish communities being shunned is a terrible experience. You are treated as though you don’t exist, even by members of your family. That sometimes makes the shunned person come back into the community. Shunning works, sometimes. But think about how Jesus treated gentiles and tax collectors. He healed the servant of the centurion; he healed the Syrophoenician woman. He commended Naaman the Syrian, who had been healed by Elishsa, and the Widow of Naim, who had been saved from starvation by Elijah. And tax collectors. He was notorious for eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners. And the man who wrote the gospel we have just been listening to was a tax collector. If we are going to treat those who are sinners and refuse to change their ways as Jesus did, that means that after we’ve done everything we can to get them to put the sin behind them and return to the community, we still hold out hope, we still never forget that they are brothers and sisters, that they are always welcome in the beloved community to which they once belonged.

Jesus says some other things in this gospel passage that make more sense when you realize he is talking to his disciples, not the world at large. “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven...” In Judaism of that time, binding and loosing were things that only the authorities could do. Jesus is telling us that the authority is given to our community. And the same is true of his promise that where two or three are gathered together in his name he is there. He promises that he will accompany his disciples as they work together to bring about His kingdom. And the promise that if two of us agree about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father? That's a hard one, and we could spend a few hours on the subject of unanswered prayers. But I like the story of the little boy who told his parents he wanted to be a cowboy when he grew up. Years later, when he graduated from high school, he said he wanted to be a lawyer. His father bcame very upset. “We've scrimped and saved all these years to buy you a ranch so you could be a cowboy!” his father yelled. “But dad,” why did you listen to me? I was only five years old” replied the son.

So we have heard Jesus giving us clear directions about some of our responsibilities to each other. On this Sunday we should ask ourselves whether we are following what he has commanded us to do.