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Loving Correction

    Preacher: Father Mark Ervin

    Passage: Matthew 18:15-20

    Keywords: love, commandments, responsibility, accountability, correction

    Don’t get defensive when I tell you, but I once heard a very skilled and experienced school administrator tell a new teacher that parents will always lie for their children. They’ll say things to teachers like, “My child would never do that!” or “My child always tells me the truth” or a number of other, often-repeated declarative sentences. Maybe that was just one jaded person speaking, maybe not, but I’ve taught children and worked with families for more than two decades and there were a number of times when parents looked me straight in the eye—sometimes in the presence of their children—and lied. I don’t know why they did it, but they were all old enough to know better. Perhaps, sometimes, they lied because they felt it was more important to protect their children than to admit the truth. Maybe, but I don’t know for certain.

    Ezekiel understood a parent’s inclination to protect their children at all costs, but helping them avoid responsibility was never something he would do. Instead, he loved God and God’s people so much that he felt compelled to point out their wrong doing and failures, even if they didn’t want to hear about it – and most people didn’t want to hear about it. And because he was only one person speaking up and speaking out, it was easy to ignore what he was saying – and most people did precisely that. Yet, Ezekiel understood something important – that loving someone means holding them accountable for their actions or inactions. Loving someone means helping them to face the truth about themselves. Loving someone, no matter what the impulse to do otherwise, means always telling the truth.

    In principle we all know that lying, no matter what its motive, is wrong, but we often seem to find rationales for not being entirely truthful. St. Theresa of Avila once said that it is always evil to tell a lie even if it is for a good reason. Here we touch upon something that has always been a problem for us, and it’s something our Church comments upon often as we deal with the moral issues of our day—that we’re never justified in doing something that is essentially wrong even to achieve something good. That’s what Saint Paul’s is saying in our second reading, that love is always truthful. He writes that we should “owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another, for one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” We often hear that without really understanding it. He’s calling us to remember that God gave us the Commandments and the Laws of the Church to show us how to do what is godly and to hold us accountable when we do not. Not only us, but if we truly love God and others as Christ commands us, then we must also behave as God behaves by calling people, lovingly, to accountability for their behavior.

    Jesus talks about the same thing in today’s gospel reading. He’s telling us that correction is an act of love. As he taught it, all Christians share in Peter’s responsibility to “bind and loose” (“whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth is loosed in heaven”) – it’s not just Peter’s responsibility, but ours as well. The principle and plan Jesus presents is a method for searching out and bringing home those who stray from a godly path—to call people to a change of heart, behavior and direction. That’s what our faith is all about – it’s about a change of heart, behavior and direction. That’s an ongoing process – this change of heart, behavior and direction – but it’s also something that tends to break down over time. That’s why God continually calls us back – calls us to this change of heart, behavior and direction – precisely because he loves us. As Deacon Jerry pointed out last weekend, it’s God’s correction that demonstrates his love for us. He loves us so much that he won’t make excuses for us. Jesus tells his disciples elsewhere in the gospel, “Love one another as I have loved you.” Well, how does Jesus demonstrate his love? By challenging us, by confronting in us everything that is keeping us from God, everything that is leading us astray. That’s how he proves his love. Just like last weekend, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” God proves his love for us not by allowing us to go our own way, but by calling us to and holding us accountable to a higher standard. That’s exactly how we know that God loves us – because he refuses to shield us from responsibility. In other words, he refuses to lie for us.

    Perhaps we’ll remember that the next time we’re tempted to try to make things easier for someone close to us by shielding them from responsibility.