True Love Practiced In Christian Community

Twenty-third Sunday in Course 2023

If you have paid attention, over the years you have heard many times from preachers that with your Christian identity, your baptismal covenant, you were made, like Jesus, prophet, priest and king/ruler. Those are your missions in life, to pray for yourself and others, to share the Gospel with a world that is in desperate need, and to take responsibility for those you lead. You then image Christ in your world today, and spread His blessed healing in our crippled society.

The prophet Ezekiel heard what that meant for him in his situation. He was a Levite, a member of the priestly family of Israel. But as a leader, he was forced into exile in Babylon along with all the other elite, when God engineered the fall of Jerusalem to the king of that foreign land. In Babylon, he prophesied to those exiles. His brief was simple. The enemy was not Babylon. The enemy, then and now, is sin. If his people sinned, they merited death–at least eternal punishment in hell. Same with us. The prophet’s brief is this: warn the sinner. If the prophet hears the warning and does not pass it on to warn the sinner, both prophet and sinner merit the punishment. But if the prophet hears the warning, cautions the sinner and the evildoer keeps on with his misbehavior, the sinner will be punished but the prophet would be rewarded.

Do we have that mission in our day, as prophets to our culture, our neighbors, our friends, our kinsmen? Yes we do. St. Paul reminds us that we should have no debts to anybody, other than the debt of love. And that’s not the love that hippies used to spell “L-U-V,” which was a mealy imitation of true love. St. Paul gives us examples of practical ways to love our neighbor as ourselves: “You shall not commit adultery, murder, theft. Don’t even yearn after another’s spouse or property.” Love means to do no wrong, and instead to become helpers to others.

So what do we do, as prophets, when we see the opposite of love being done by one person to another? The community that saved this Gospel story about advice given to the apostles by Jesus seems to have used this very ordered procedure in cases of disputes. First go to the guy and share your complaint. If he doesn’t reconcile, take a couple of members of your community and have another discussion. With no good result, take it to your whole congregation, and if that doesn’t work, treat him like someone not in your congregation. That means, of course, treat him like someone you still want back in the church. Of course, this is the basis of our long-standing practice in the Church, and Christ’s authorization for excommunication. Over all this protocol we see the previous line from the Gospel: “it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.” There is no permission given here to be mean or rude, but neither is there any reason to think we need to change Church dogma or refuse to recognize sin when it occurs.

Now that’s Christian love, spelled “L-O-V-E.” See the sin, respond to it in charity, and always, always pray, especially for folks who make themselves your enemy.