Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary, September 10, 2023 – Ezekiel 33:7-9; Romans 13:8-10; Matthew 18:15-20

Elton John famously told us that “sorry seems to be the hardest word.” But he was wrong. Sometimes it’s actually easier to say “I’m sorry” than it is to say “I forgive you,” although both of them are extremely difficult challenges.  In all of my years hearing confession, the thing people tell me most in confession is how angry they are. How angry they are. The second most common thing they tell me is how they can’t forgive somebody for something. So, these words are a really difficult challenge that Jesus has spoken this morning.

I did not become an altar server until after I had made the decision to apply to the Seminary. So, I was sixteen or seventeen years old. And back in those days, the Mass was in Latin. You  knelt to the right of the priest, behind him. Not only that, but there were side altars where priests said Mass privately while the public Mass was going at the main altar. For example, in this Church, there used to be a side altar to the Blessed Mother there and a side altar to St. Joseph over there. So, I was assigned one morning, early, to serve a visiting priest at one of the side altars. And, near the end of Mass, when he genuflected before turning around to give the final blessing, he farted in my face. And I never forgot that. I never met him, ever again, in my entire fifty-something years as a priest. He died a dignified Monsignor of the Catholic church. But everyone now and then, in the list of dead priests that we are expected to pray for on a regular basis, his name comes up. And when it does, I put him in the Prayer of the Faithful. So, it’s like revenge forgiveness.

One of my professors in college, a teacher of Latin, happened to be an alumnus of the same high school as me. He graduated from that high school in, I think, I don’t know, 1930-something and I graduated in 1961. But there should have been a bond between us, but it seemed to me that he went out of his way to embarrass me in front of my classmates in Latin class by calling on me for the most difficult passage or humiliating me when I got something wrong that was simple enough. And so, when it came time for graduation, I did not shake his hand in the row of professors. And I carried that grudge with me for such a long time. Well, it turns out that in one of the parishes that I was sent to serve in, his brother and sister-in-law were parishioners in that parish, I got to be very friendly with them because they, along with a whole bunch of other people in their group, had showed me the grammar school and the kids in the teen group. And so, inevitably, at some parish function, who walks in but my old professor. Thank God it was a barbecue. We were all outside. And we managed to sort of say hello briefly and then avoid each other for the rest of the barbecue. A long time after that incident - I was gone from that parish, that Monsignor was dead - I ran into one of the couples from that group and they said, “You know, it’s a great thing, whenever we happened to run into Monsignor so-and-so, he spoke so highly of you.” I said, “What?” “He spoke so highly of you.” I was carrying this grudge for all these years about somebody who was talking me up among his friends and neighbors.

In one parish where I served, there was a very strong and powerful charismatic group. I’m not big on the charismatics, but my job was to serve all of my people. Well, one morning after homily, a husband and wife from the charismatic group came into the rectory to challenge me on my homily and show me how mistaken I was, but to make sure I understand that they were doing this in love. They sat me down and each one held one of my hands while they tore my homily to shreds. And, after about fifteen minutes of this, I realized that they didn’t realize they were talking to someone with a master’s degree in theology and a better knowledge of scripture than they would ever have. I finally had enough, and I pulled my hands away and I ended the conversation angrily and threw them out. And we never spoke another civil word to one another the whole time I served in that parish. 

Forgiveness can be a very difficult thing. But the key is actually in love, not in forgiveness. Because we have very mistaken notions about love. Love is not an emotion. Love is an act of the will. It means simply this, that we desire the good of another. That we desire for them to have health, a good life, and eternal life with God. That’s it. That’s all love means. And so, the corollary to that is forgiveness means that, despite the wrong they’ve done us, we will still desire that they have health, goodness in their lives, and eternal life with God. Or, to put it another way, we do not desire their annihilation. We allow them to have been wrong without wishing them to be gone. 

So, what do we make, then, of today’s Gospel. Well, the problem is always context on Sunday morning. Because we don’t know what came before. We don’t know what came after this story. What comes just before this story is Jesus’ parable of the lost sheep. It’s only told in Matthew’s gospel and Luke’s gospel. Jesus says, “When the shepherd realized one of his sheep was lost, he went out searching for him, leaving the other 99 on the hillside.” When he found him, what did he do? He didn’t say, “You naughty, naughty sheep. Why did you get lost? Shame on you!” No, he rejoiced because he found the sheep that was lost. St. Luke doesn’t want us to miss St. Matthew’s point so, when St. Luke tells the story, he says, “… the shepherd left the 99 in the wasteland.” He left them in a dangerous place to go look for one more. And when he found that sheep, he put it on his shoulders. “Oh, my good sheep, I found you, I love you so much. And carried him home. That’s the story that comes just before this thing about meeting with your brother and trying to resolve things and finally calling in the Church.

Now, the thing about calling in the Church sounds a little bit like excommunication. Now, when I was in seminary, we studied Canon Law, before the Second Vatican Council. There were pages and pages of excommunications. By the time I was ordained, the Fathers of the Council had reduced them to just one single page of about nine or ten excommunications. Most of them were for such arcane things that you don’t even know what they are, and you’d never be able to commit them. Because the Church finally realized that shunning people for doing wrong was not the way to go.

So, what comes after today’s Gospel. After this whole diatribe about judging others, Peter comes up and says to Jesus, “So, Jesus, how many times do I have to forgive? Seven times?” And Jesus says, “Nah, not seven times. Seventy times seven times.” Oh, a whole bunch of times, huh? Hmm? Forgiveness is a real challenge sometimes.

So, what are we supposed to do? In our individual lives, try to continue to desire the good for the other, even when the other has offended you. And in our community lives, what? The best you can say is that Christians are called to people who stand on the side of forgiveness. Forgiveness in our family lives. Forgiveness in our Church life. You know, Pope Francis is always saying we should go out to the margins. Get yourselves dirty a little bit. The sheep smell.  Smell a little bit like them. Go out to the margins and find some people. In our community life, there’s always going to be arguments about the best way to do things. And sometimes we’re going to lose that argument to people we don’t like very much. But we should stand on the side of forgiveness. In our political life, stand on the side of forgiveness. You don’t have to like people in order to forgive them. In our global politics, stand on the side of forgiveness.

Jesus’ words are very often stern. But they’re hardly ever black and white. And, just like The Gambler said, you can always find an ace that you can keep.