This passage stands in striking contrast to the way we so often communicate today in the era of Social Media. The internet and social media, originally touted as powerful means of staying in touch with friends, have all too often become environments filled with anger, vitriol, insults, and even cruelty. People can write or say things on the internet in ways that they would never do in person. Compassion and empathy are rare in social media communications today, especially in discussions of old bugaboos like religion and politics. The anonymity and distance of the internet have made civility, manners, charity, and forgiveness obsolete.
Jesus has a different message for us here in Matthew’s Gospel: “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother” (Mt. 18: 15). The most important word in these lines is the verb “listen”. And the unspoken and necessary attitude for doing this successfully is “love”. The virtues of courtesy (manners), respect, and civility are all rooted in the recognition of the other’s infinite dignity, as a person made, like ourselves, in the image and likeness of our Creator. It is for this reason alone that we must learn and practice the art of real, serious listening, of real understanding and compassion.
We know ourselves and how we, on occasions, have uttered some sharp rebuke, an insult, even a cruel word against a friend, or our brother or sister, a wife or a husband, when we were caught up in the throes of our own anger, or hurt. We know intimately how powerful an emotion anger is and how it seems outside of our control. We have experienced the pain of hurtful division that often results from such behavior. And we have felt the real repercussions of a guilty conscience after doing so. As always, Jesus is giving us the means to understand, and to respond to such things more humanly, more in line with our better angels. It is the attitude of love that makes this way possible, that gives it its real power. We’re talking here about the kind of love that Jesus commands of us, that is, the same kind of love that he loves each one of us with, even in our brokenness. Why? Because he still sees the beauty within us.
The alternatives are also very recognizable to us. They arise when there is an inability to forgive, or a stubborn, prideful refusal to accept forgiveness, to resolve a situation. They come in the form of long-term resentment, which is nothing less than unresolved anger. Resentment has a tendency to explode out of us with frightful, even terrifying force. The worst impulses are manifested in temptations towards revenge, which can lead to even greater moral errors. This never ends well. When anger arises out of attitudes of pride or arrogance, it can transcend the bounds of cruelty with an unwarranted certitude. It can literally shut down our ability to listen, and our ability to see the other’s pain and to respond to it with empathy and compassion, and more powerfully, with forgiveness. Jesus is aware of this problem in the other direction, too: “If your brother refuses to listen (to you, to the witness of others, or even to the Church), then treat him as you would a gentile or a tax collector” (vs. 16-17). In other words, the other’s choice is out of your control. But if you listen and forgive, you will have honored the duties of love, compassion, and empathy. That is all that God asks of you.
Jesus’ warning is very clear too: “Amen, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (v. 10). This is the immense responsibility of love that Jesus enjoins on each one of us. It is our duty in love to forgive one another, to offer the freeing gift of forgiveness that allows ourselves and the other to come out of the darkness of hurt, anger, and sin into the light of God’s grace again. If we are the one who has caused harm and the one we have harmed comes to us to forgive us, and we refuse, that is a moral failure on our part, and that error is on us, not on them. In other words, my forgiveness toward the one who has harmed me “looses” him or her of their error toward me, and that error is, then, also “loosed” in heaven. If I refuse to listen to the correction or the forgiveness of the other, then it is I who bind myself with that error in heaven as well.
Jesus is giving us a method, a way of handling these difficult and often hurtful situations. The first thing needed is the humble ability to see the other as our brother or sister, to see and love the good in them that may, at the moment, be hidden behind all of their anger and pain. It is this Christ-like love that gives us the ability to listen to the pain in the other, or maybe even more importantly, to really hear the other’s attempts to correct us when we have erred against them. This is how we “love our neighbor as ourselves.” This is a learned behavior and an act of faith. We gain this, of course, through the regular practice of prayer, reflection on the Word of God, and the active practice of mutual love and respect.
Lord, we pray that you grant us the wisdom to practice your ways of love. We pray that you give us the grace of strength to bear one another’s burdens. Grant to us the courage to let go of our false pride and to practice self-surrendering love toward those who have caused us harm in any way. For it is in You alone that we can find the peace that is beyond all understanding. Amen.
More to Explore
SKM: below-content placeholderWhizzco for FHB