Twenty-third Sunday In Ordinary Time
MATTHEW 18:15-20 (Ezekiel 33:7-9; Romans 13:8-10)
As has often been noted, Matthew composed five major discourses attributed to Jesus. To have only five, no more, no less, seems to be based on a principle of Matthew that Jesus is the new and final messenger of God’s revelation just as Moses had been the first. Therefore Matthew envisions Jesus as the new Moses, or the “Prophet like Moses” of Deuteronomy 18:15-18. Tradition attributes to Moses the authorship of the Pentateuch, the first five books of our Bible, also called “the Torah”, a Hebrew word meaning “the Teaching.” Since revelation came through Moses in these five books or scrolls, the final revelation from the new Moses would also be delivered in five sermons. The five discour-ses are the Sermon on the Mount, chapters 5-7; Missionary Instructions, ch. 10; Parables, ch. 13; Community Regulations, ch. 18; Last Things, chs. 24-25.
This Sunday’s gospel reading is part of the Community Regulations. This catechetical instruction is concerned with correction of an offender who is also a Christian. Therefore,
“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.” The Old Testament background to this rule of community behavior is found in Leviticus 19:17, “You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason with your neighbor, lest you bear sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge against the children of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” Brother and neighbor are identical. Both meant a fellow Israelite. The meaning of a word or passage in the Old Testament helps to determine the meaning of a word or text in the New Testament. Thus the meaning of brother in this gospel reading is a fellow-Christian.
The first rule, strictly private fraternal correction, was already recognized about 200 B.C. by the author of the Book of Sirach, “Question your friend. He may have done nothing at all, but if he has done anything, he will not do it again. Question your neighbor. He may have said nothing at all, but if he has said anything, he will not say it again. Question your friend, for slander is very common. Do not believe all you hear. A man sometimes slips, without meaning what he says, and which of us has never sinned by speech? Quest-ion your neighbor before you threaten him, and leave an opening for the Law (the Torah) of the Most High.” That law would be Leviticus 19:17-18 quoted above. Advice from St. Paul, “Do not look on him as an enemy, but as a brother,” 2 Thess. 3:15. Nor should we forget the reward promised to those who bring back a sinner, “Whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his own soul from death and cover a multitude of sins,” James 5:20.
The second rule of fraternal correction is not quite as private as the first. “If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses.” This rule of the importance of witnesses is lifted in modified form from Deuteronomy 19:15, “A single witness shall not prevail against a man for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has commit-ted. Only on the evidence of two witnesses, or of three witnesses, shall a charge be sus-tained.” The Community Rules envision the failure of the approach with witnesses and provide a third step:
“If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the Church. And if he refuses to listen even to the Church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” What was so terrible about being a tax collector (Internal Revenue Service) and a Gentile, that is, a non-Jew? Recall that Matthew is writing his gospel some fifty years after Jesus’ public ministry, so it is difficult to know exactly what Jesus said and in what context. Concerning tax collectors, during Jesus’ ministry he associated openly with these men who were despised by their fellow-Jews for working as tax agents for the Romans, who, at the time of Jesus and the time of Matthew’s gospel, were occupying and ruling the Holy Land. Tax collectors were usually shunned from any social life with fellow-Jews, but not shunned by Jesus.
Concerning Gentiles, in most of Matthew’s gospel, the ministry of Jesus and of his disciples was restricted to Jews. For example Matthew 10:5, Jesus sends his disciples on their first mission, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles….” Also Jesus’ words to the Canaa-nite woman, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But at the end of Matthew’s gospel we read these words, “Go…and make disciples of all nations (Gentiles)….” Matthew does hint in the body of his gospel, beginning with the inclusion of four Gentile women in Jesus’ genealogy, that the ultimate goal of the Church’s miss-ion is to teach and baptize all nations. Matthew’s negative words about Gentiles is a holdover from the excluding statements in the Torah against nations other than the Israelites, for example Deuteronomy 7:1-5; 23:3-6. Matthew’s recommendation for those who will not “listen even to the Church,” is shunning or excommunication. So binding was shunning that Matthew says of the assembled Christian Community, “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. Shunning was for correction, to bring the sinner back. Therefore, “Whatever you unbind on earth shall be unbound in heaven.”
