Year A 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

[SPEAKER_01]: A reading from the prophet is EQ.

[SPEAKER_00]: The word of the Lord was addressed to me as follows.

[SPEAKER_00]: Son of men, I have appointed you as sentry to the house of Israel.

[SPEAKER_00]: When you hear a word from a mouth, warn them in my name.

[SPEAKER_00]: If I say to a wicked man, we could reach, you are to die, and you do not speak to one that we could man, to renounce his ways, then he shall die for a sin, but I will hold you responsible for his death.

[SPEAKER_00]: If however, you do want a wicked man to renounce his ways and repent, he does not repent, then he shall die for a sin.

[SPEAKER_00]: but you, yourself, will have saved your life, the word of the Lord, the responses, over that today you would listen to his voice, harden out your hearts.

[SPEAKER_00]: Come ring out our joy to the Lord, hail the Rock who saves us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let us come before him giving thanks, with songs, let us hail the Lord.

[SPEAKER_00]: Come in.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let us bow and bend floor.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let us kneel before the God who made us.

[SPEAKER_00]: For he is our God and we the people who belong to his posture, the flock that is led by his hand.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that today you would listen to his voice.

[SPEAKER_00]: Harden not your hearts.

[SPEAKER_00]: As at Maraba, as on the day at Masa, in the desert, when your father's put me to the test, when they tried me, though they saw my work.

[SPEAKER_00]: A reading from the letter of St. Paul to the Romans, avoid getting into debt, except the debt of mutual love.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you love your fellow men, you have carried out

[SPEAKER_00]: all the commandments.

[SPEAKER_00]: You shall not commit adultery.

[SPEAKER_00]: You shall not kill.

[SPEAKER_00]: You shall not steal.

[SPEAKER_00]: You shall not covet.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so on are summoned up in the single command.

[SPEAKER_00]: You must love your neighbor as yourself.

[SPEAKER_00]: Love is the one thing that cannot hurt your neighbor.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is why it is the answer to every one of the commandments.

[SPEAKER_00]: The word of the Lord.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus hit his disciples.

[SPEAKER_01]: If your brother does something wrong, go and have it out with him alone between your two souls.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you listen to you, you have one back your brother.

[SPEAKER_01]: If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you.

[SPEAKER_01]: The evidence of two or three witnesses is required to sustain any charge.

[SPEAKER_01]: But if you refuse to listen to these, report it to the community.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if you refuse to listen to the community, treat him like a pagan or a text

[SPEAKER_01]: I tell you solemnly, whatever you bind on earth shall be considered bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth shall be considered loose in heaven.

[SPEAKER_01]: I tell you solemnly once again, if two of you on earth agree to ask anything at all, it will be granted to you by my father in heaven.

[SPEAKER_01]: For way two or three meeting my name, I shall be there with them.

[SPEAKER_01]: The gospel of the Lord.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of fitting that today on Father's Day in Australia, our readings are very masculine, they're very muscular.

[SPEAKER_01]: We often see the nurturing, gentle, maternal side of God, but the readings today remind us that we must not view God as some sort of teddy bear or granny or indulgent Father Christmas who asks nothing of us.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have to be careful not to try and remake God in the

[SPEAKER_01]: We need to come to know him and his will as he has revealed it in the law.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because they are so closely paralleled in a reading study, I want to focus our reflection today on how closely the theology of the Old Testament is to the theology of the New Testament with today's readings as an example.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because I think this is a prime example of how it is that Jesus came not to replace but to fulfill the law.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know that the love that Jesus preached was already preached in the Old Testament, but it always then end with Jesus and now always presupposed and presupposes the element of accountability.

[SPEAKER_01]: In our first reading from Ezekiel, we see Ezekiel is appointed to the House of Israel as the Sentinel to the House of Israel, and a Sentinel is like a Watchman, and just as in times of when the nation is under threat, a negligent Watchman who doesn't be job and warn of an impending attack will be held accountable for the fate of the people, so will the prophet or leader that fails to warn people of their sin, be held accountable for their sin.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so, if they ignore him, if they ignore the watchman, if they ignore the prophet or the leader or the priest, that's on them.

[SPEAKER_01]: But if he fails to add money to them, to tell them what he's sinful, well that's on him.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so, the underlying consequence of the failure of the watchman or the preacher is the same.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's death.

[SPEAKER_01]: In the first case, by the enemy of physical attack, when they kill everybody, and the other by the person losing the opportunity of salvation.

[SPEAKER_01]: and in the new testament, nothing has changed.

[SPEAKER_01]: If we think of James 3-1, he says that as teachers, we will be judged more harshly than normal people.

[SPEAKER_01]: And

[SPEAKER_01]: you as laity or also you are anointed priest prophet and king so you are also priests and so you will also be held to a higher high standard than normal people.

[SPEAKER_01]: There are three reasons for this because one we have a full and knowledge generally speaking so we cannot claim ignorance for the evil that we do.

[SPEAKER_01]: Secondly, we are supposed to model what we preach, we are supposed to model what we know and if we don't, the potential, because we are known as Christians or we known as priests or deacons or whatever, that we can lead others astray is greater, because they will point it us and say, oh well, he doesn't practice what he preach, preachers, and the third point related to this is that if we fail to teach the truth,

[SPEAKER_01]: we are sinning by a mission in not proclaiming the truth.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, why is this sinful though?

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, why didn't simply not volunteer to lead?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, actually by your baptism, you have already volunteered to lead and you did that, you formalise that at your confirmation.

[SPEAKER_01]: because it is our vocation, and if we refuse our calling, we are refusing to cooperate with God's will for our life, because we want to run our lives or make them easier, which is pride or sloth or both.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the bottom line is that we bear responsibility for one another and as leaders even more so.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we don't have time today, but in a future homily, I will go into this issue in some depth.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes we see or we make distinctions between social and personal sin.

[SPEAKER_01]: But these the separation of those two of the social sin and personal sin are not sort of necessary to pour.

[SPEAKER_01]: Paul says that the Christian is to faithfully discharge all his obligations, whether it is public duty or private relationships, so there are distinct years, but they are not separate.

[SPEAKER_01]: So there is no such thing as personal sin that does not hurt another on some level.

[SPEAKER_01]: In Romans Paul emphasises today the primacy of love, which fits with the teachings

[SPEAKER_01]: It's interesting in his letter that he places the law, the commandments adjacent to Jesus's teaching.

[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes you see people trying to kind of sideline the commandments or sideline the Old Testament and just look at the words of Jesus.

[SPEAKER_01]: But looking at what Jesus says does not mean that we ignore the Old Testament over law for that matter at all.

[SPEAKER_01]: The gospel all more properly Jesus provides us with the lens with glasses if you like through which to read the Old Testament.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's almost like some people think that after Vatican II it was a free for all that what went before Vatican II didn't matter.

[SPEAKER_01]: But Vatican II itself, in Garry Med Spez, is a painst to point out that it's so continuity with what had gone before.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so similarly the law sits behind the good news like a watermark.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's the minds, the demands of the law have not disappeared.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, how much more specific do we want Jesus to be when he said in Matthew 517, do you do not think that I've come to abolish the law or the prophets?

[SPEAKER_01]: I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so the divided community to whom Matthew is writing are instructed about what to do with those in the community who refuse to change their ways.

[SPEAKER_01]: And notice it's important that it's not directed to those who are weak and are trying and are struggling and are falling in.

[SPEAKER_01]: not really living a good Christian life because of weakness.

[SPEAKER_01]: But it's for those who are obstinate to remain in their sin.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the point is here that although this command to love your neighbour as your self was already understood explicitly in the Old Testament, in Leviticus 1918 it literally says love your neighbour as your self.

[SPEAKER_01]: When they spoke about the neighbour they were referring

[SPEAKER_01]: Paul expands this to include all people.

[SPEAKER_01]: If we look at our gospel today, the first thing that you notice in Matthew when Jesus provides guidance on how to deal with the dispute, he doesn't say, wait for the offending party to come and apologize and be reconciled.

[SPEAKER_01]: No, he puts on the one who has been offended to initiate contact.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we need to always give people the benefit of the doubt.

[SPEAKER_01]: They might not have known that the actions caused a fence or that they are in error.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, if you've been married for any length of time, you'll see this happen sometimes in the marriage where you have this mess of fight.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then you're kind of waiting for your wife.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, to make the first move, which he's waiting for you to make the first move, and who's going to break first start, who's going to be the bigger man or the bigger woman to actually initiate the conversation or to start repairing this, the sort of break that you guys have had as a result of this fight.

[SPEAKER_01]: and obviously in our household, it's my wife is like, well, you're the deacon, you should you the one who should crack first.

[SPEAKER_01]: But the point is that we have to initiate.

[SPEAKER_01]: As Christians, we have to initiate.

[SPEAKER_01]: We can't wait for the other person.

[SPEAKER_01]: But when we look at these stages of trying to get the person to reconcile with a personal discussion, discussion before the witnesses, the discussion before the whole community, all of these stages have as their purpose reconciliation, not punishment to the person, but reconciliation to bring that person back into the community.

[SPEAKER_01]: of the faithful.

[SPEAKER_01]: Even the final act of excommunication, you know, in the old age of Quarterty, the bell-booking candle, Bishop goes stand on the steps of the cathedoly, takes the Bible, the big book, he stands at shut, he rings the bell, names the person, they throw the candles down the ground, this big dramatic sort of stark action.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that, even that

[SPEAKER_01]: This drastic step is only to be taken in serious matters where the welfare of the community is at stake.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's not for people who happen to be continuously falling in sin.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's where they're actually trying to influence the community and are unrepentant.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus welcomed sinners and tax collectors, but only when they're repented of this sense.

[SPEAKER_01]: Salvation is offered freely.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's offered unconditionally, but it is not unconditional.

[SPEAKER_01]: We know that this disciplinary procedure that is described here, it goes back thousands of years to the dead-seek community if you look at Deuteronomy 1915.

[SPEAKER_01]: And for us, as Catholics, this would be the beginnings of the judicial process of excommunication which would later be codified in canon law.

[SPEAKER_01]: The last part of the gospel which talks about the binding and loosening is to show that the Christian community has the authority if and when it is needed.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because as I've mentioned before, you by virtue of your baptism, you were anointed as priests as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: Me and other deacons and priests will be held to a higher standard, but so will you to the level of your common priesthood.

[SPEAKER_01]: In your duty to bring salvation to those around you.

[SPEAKER_01]: At the judgment seat we will be asked, where is your brother?

[SPEAKER_01]: Where is your sister?

[SPEAKER_01]: So we see in the Gospel this progression from law to theology in Jesus and the law and the teachings of the church, the love that is implicit in the law is revealed.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because remember Jesus is both for formant of the law as well as the presence of the divine, as well as the presence of God, and so when we bring Jesus to others, we bring His laws with Him, and we will be held accountable on both those counts.

[SPEAKER_01]: Amen.