Tag Archives: Mt 18:15-20

Sins against you: prelude

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This coming Sunday is the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time. In our previous post, it was noted that Matthew 18 is considered one of Jesus’ discourses. The focus is on instructions for the community of believers. Within such a community there is opportunity both to harm and to care for others, and the health and effectiveness of the group will depend on the attitudes to one another which are fostered. While our gospel reading is Matthew 18:15-20, consider the following passage as a prelude to our reading. Continue reading →

Instruction for the Community

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This coming Sunday is the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time. The previous two Sundays have focused on the gospel narrative that is set at the site of Peter’s great confession of faith: Caesarea Philippi.  This is also the place where Jesus’ first passion prediction occurs which leads to Peter’s exclamation: “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you” (16:22) – in effect denying the revealed nature and role of the messiah. Jesus corrects Peter in v.24: “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” Despite his confession of faith and the blessing in response to it, Peter initially rejects the possibility that Jesus’ messiahship could involve suffering.  This leads to Jesus’ instruction to the disciples about the true nature of the cross and the willingness to carry it in accordance with the will of God. Continue reading →

Words spoken in Love

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Words have meaning, power, and consequences. The words today are pouring in from friends and folks across the nation, via text and email, letting us know that we are in their prayers as Irma bears down on the region. Those words of prayer are powerful indeed.

I should especially mention one email we received from the pastor at Beau Sejour, our sister parish in Haiti – wishing us well and that the whole community there was praying for our safety.

It is time such as these when people’s faith and expressions of faith rise to the fore. Maybe it is the very public nature of the crisis that brings their faith to the public forum. For I am often curious about people’s attitude towards faith and religion.  I will ask them if their faith is a personal matter – and almost always the answer is “yes, of course.”  Then I will ask if their faith is a private matter… and you can see in the hesitation, you can see it in their eyes – “Didn’t he just ask me that?”  Too easily we in the West equate the “personal” with those things that are private.  But that is not Christianity.  Christianity is a faith that is quite personal – “God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son.” It is very personal, because it is about Jesus who loved us, each one of us, personally, individually, and held nothing back from us – not even his very life.  It’s very personal.  But it is hardly private – it communal, it is in the open, it is commanded to go the ends of the earth and “teach them all that I have commanded you.”  To get face-to-face and share the good news. Continue reading →