TWENTY-THIRD SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME YEAR A

Ezekiel 33:7-9; Romans 13:8-10; Matthew 18:15-20

If your brother/sister does something wrong…

Jesus is speaking here to his disciples about correction within the community of believers. The manner of this correction is aimed at preserving communion even if, ultimately, the offender refuses correction and shows himself to be outside the communion of the Church.

It is important to note immediately that Jesus is not just giving advice. Jesus well understands that even in the Christian community there can be individuals or groups who threaten communion, and since communion is the hallmark of the Christian community it must be dealt with sensitively, justly and firmly. In any given society, group, community there are people whom we tend to brand as trouble causers, they are never settled, they hop and hop and jump here and there to “disturb the still waters”. You will meet them and they too need our attention so that they can be helped too, because we often forget them in our prayers and programmes.
If your brother/sister does something wrong go and have it out with him, alone, between your two selves.

This would appear to be an exceptionally simple and self-evidently sound instruction. I imagine there would not be a single person, even you who is reading this reflection who would disagree with it. And yet, I also wonder if it is not the least listened to instruction Jesus ever gave?
Remember that this counsel is aimed at only one thing – preserving communion (fellowship) – the larger communion of believers (which can easily be fractured by poorly handled disputes-especially in marriages, offices and in our civil courts) and the ‘re-entry’ of the offending brother into that communion through repentance.
Therefore Jesus desires that we first of all approach our brother/sister: and have it out with him/her, alone, between your two selves. Notice Jesus’ insistence: Go (to him/her)… alone ... between your two selves?

This ‘going’ is not always easy to do but we must remember it is our brother/sister. We are going to speak with one who shares with us in the loving communion of the Church. He/she is family and family issues need a deep reflection and sobriety lest many years of quarrels takes us no where except makes us less dignified in the eyes of God. No one, nobody should ever disfigure the image of God in our brother/sister.



We have all experienced those who go stomping off to have it out with someone they are angry with; perhaps we have done it ourselves. Going to a brother/sister is a very different kind of going than that. We go to present our difficulty to him/her in an honest, loving way and we listen with great openness to his response. We are alone and his dignity is respected (and should we prove to be the one in error then our dignity is respected too).
To do otherwise than follow this teaching of Jesus is fraught with dangers for our brother/sister, the community, and for ourselves. Our brother/sister has a right to dignity, to proper correction and to the opportunity to reform himself. When we act hastily in anger, or fear, or even self-righteousness we run the risk of depriving him of all this and of ourselves becoming even more guilty than he is.

Jesus is aware of the dangers of a false step in the very beginning of this process of correction and so, I repeat, he insists that we should go alone and speak with our brother/sister that is the way out if you can’t keep to your cacoon.
Naturally this requires a certain degree of personal maturity and a great deal of true Christian love. The temptation is always to tell ‘others’; to get it out of our system. Unfortunately, what we tell others goes into the system and soon extraordinary damage can be done out of all proportion to the initial wrong.
Only when individual communication with our brother/sister bears no fruit despite our best efforts should we ask that others become involved, and only when this, too, fails should we tell the community. It will then become clear to our brother/sister that he/she has placed himself/herself outside of the communion of the Church. We have then ‘had it out with him/her’ in the way which Jesus commands and in the way which preserves our innocence.

The practical implication of all this for us as individual Christians in this Sunday is the duty we all have to bring our behaviour into line with the gospel. All of us, including myself, have failed and still do fail from time to time in this matter of correction. If we are looking for some area of our lives in which we can improve we should take today’s instruction from Jesus very seriously. There would be a lot less gossip in our community and there would be many more deeper friendships because the truth is that we often build the strongest and best friendships with those who have corrected us in a proper way.

Best wishes to you all as you reflect on these wonderful message of God.