Today’s readings: Ezekiel 33, 7-9; Romans 13, 8-10; Matthew 18, 15-20.
Rules are normally taken to be codices and laws that need to be respected and observed for the sake of order. Every institution has its own rules and this is how even the Church as a Christian community is still envisaged by many: a club with proper rules that just need to be observed. Sort of, take it or leave it.
St Benedict, in his Rule, explains that in a community built on love, rules are not to be seen as impositions from outside. They are ‘regula’ which regulate the system just as our metabolism needs to be regulated to function regularly.
According to St Matthew’s gospel, Jesus gave Peter and the apostles the authority to bind and loose, which means the authority to expel individuals from the community and to readmit them. In today’s text, Matthew establishes a clear rule for the exercise of this authority. Rules by themselves do not suffice.
It may sound paradoxical, but what is mostly highlighted in today’s Scriptures and so specific to the Christian community that originated in Christ Jesus, and of which we already have an inkling in the Prophet Ezekiel, is the rule of forgiveness, the practise of mercy institutionally and at the level of interpersonal relations. Mercy, of course, is not to be confused with feeble indulgence or a laissez-faire point of view.
Cardinal Walter Kasper, in his recent book Mercy. The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life, laments that the extensive breakdown of Church discipline is one of the weaknesses in the contemporary Church. He writes that one can misunderstand and misuse the word mercy not only in the personal realm, but also in the institutional realm of the Church.
The case reported by Jesus in the gospel recalls, and is meant to counter-balance, the Rule of Qumran, a monastic community which lived on the outskirts of society but which was characterised by a rigourism which excluded sinners from the community. Jesus is moderating that austere attitude with the authentically gospel ideal of brotherly correction.
Ezekiel’s prophecy is in this sense iconic when he writes that he was appointed “as sentry to the House of Israel”. The task of the sentry is to arouse and keep alive within the community the sense of responsibility for the other. The House of God needs to be guarded, protected, not simply from outside threats or challenges, but even, and mostly, from internal conflicts. Brotherly correction is a vital element and it goes beyond the demands of the law.
In his Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis is very clear about this: “It always pains me greatly to discover how some Christian communities, and even consecrated persons, can tolerate different forms of enmity, division, calumny, defamation, vendetta, jealousy and the desire to impose certain ideas at all costs, even to persecutions which appear as veritable witch-hunts. Whom are we going to evangelise if this is the way we act?”
Harsh words indeed! Because the Church, particularly in today’s world more in need of witnesses than teachers, is called to evangelise more by its being than by its preaching. The Church’s mission is primarily to serve as sacred space where love, forgiveness, empathy, acceptance and compassion are seen and experienced as possible. All this has to be seen rather than just preached.
The Church is the House of God situated on a mountain for everyone to see. Like Jesus himself it easily becomes a sign of contradiction. Because of it, many are saved; because of it, many are lost. The less suitable it transpires as a community capable of conveying God’s love and mercy, the more people can be saved in spite of it rather than thanks to it.
The words of Jesus about binding and loosing confer on the Church a vital mediating role in the lives of so many people. Is the Church up to that assignment? It is the culture of mercy, properly understood, that makes of the Church what Christ meant it to be.