Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 09/06/20 How Do I Look? Fighting For

Episode Date: September 6, 2020

Homily from the Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time. How do Christians fight? We all have experienced the temptation to see someone who has failed or someone who has hurt us as a non-person. But taking responsibility for the people in our lives means fighting that temptation. And it means doing what we can to fight for that person. Mass Readings from September 06, 2020: Ezekiel 33:7-9 Psalm 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9Romans 13:8-10 Matthew 18:15-20 Download the Homily Study

So a little while back, I came across his article that was written by a man named David Brooks in the New York Times. He had, he had, David Brooks, he wrote this article based off of a podcast that he had watched or listened to on NPR. And it was this really fascinating story. I thought it was fascinating. And so did he said, actually, as he listened to this podcast, it stuck with him for so long. He just haunted him. It's the story of this young woman. She was a punk.

She's the lead singer of a punk rock band. She was a punk. She was the lead singer of a punk rock band. One of her best friends, a man who was her best friend in the band with her, they're on the way to a gig, and on their way, the venue called ahead of time and said that they were canceling the show. And the reason they gave was because there was someone who had an allegation against this man in her band, her best friend, that said that he had sent an unwanted and explicit, inappropriate picture of himself to someone. And so he denied it and the other, the men in the band were like, whatever, we don't think this is true.

But she took it really seriously and she got back home. She was like seething and she wrote this long Facebook post basically denouncing this guy. And as David Brooks writes in his article, he said, the post worked. He ended up leaving the band and disappeared from the punk scene. He goes on to say that this woman, his friend, heard rumors that he'd been fired from his job, he'd been kicked out of his apartment, they had to move to a new city and that he was not doing well. And she's never spoken to him ever since. A couple years after that, I think it was like 2016, something similar happened to her where

another human being found out, another person found out about when this young woman was in high school, there was an inappropriate photo of another high school, one of her classmates that was leaked and that people could see and she had a basically made fun of this girl in this photo over a decade before this. And there was another post denouncing her. Someone had written this thing and it went viral and as David Brooks says, she too was the object of nationwide group hate. She was banned from the punk scene that she didn't leave the house for what felt like months.

Her friends dropped her. She was scared, traumatized, and alone and she tried to vanish. She said this in David Brooks article, she said, it's entirely my life. Like, this is everything to me. everything to me and it's just all done. It's over. She even said she doesn't know what to think of herself anymore. She said, I do feel like a monster. And the story doesn't end there either. It goes on for her, he says, he's just one man's life is ruined. Here's just one woman's life that's ruined. And so the interviewer on the podcast tracked down the guy who wrote the post about her

and asked him how he felt about ruining her life. And he said calling her out was like, he felt this incredible rush of pleasure in busting her. The interview asked him if he cared about the pain that he caused this young woman, and he's what he said. He said, no, I don't care. I don't care because it's obviously something you deserve. It's something it's been coming, and I literally do not care about what happens to her after this situation. I don't care if she's dead, alive, whatever.

You're just reading that article and hearing about these three stories of these three people, I just was wondering the question of, like, how, what do we do when we hear this story? Like, how do we look at the story? Like, sometimes I can't look at it and get angry, angry at the first person, maybe, like, I can't believe you would send a picture, look out of yourself, or angry at the people who, like, dogpiled him, angry at her, who dropped him or angry at this guy who, again, he says, I don't care what happened to her. I don't care if she's dead.

I don't care if she's alive, whatever. Maybe we feel this sense of satisfaction, like, yeah, good, they got what they deserved, like instant karma or, like, delayed karma. But how do we look at this? How do we look at this kind of thing? Because it happens all the time. This is just one story among thousands. How do I look at this?

That's what we're doing in this series, right? We're in part two of this five-part series. How do I look? And it's based it off by looking at St. Paul's letter where he says, do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, basically asking the question, are you looking at the world like the rest of the world?

are we looking at the world like Christians? There's a, as a famous Christian, his name was Chuck Holson. And Chuck Holson did a lot for prison ministry, did a lot for evangelization throughout the country, throughout the world. At one point, he said he would go to these places and, you know, places he would give a talk

to people who were Christians, even pastors and whatnot. And he would ask them, what is Christianity? And he asked them to tell them, what do you think Christianity is? And people would say, it's a religion. Okay, yeah, all the people say, relationship, so all those things. He said, out of all the answers that people ever gave him, no one really summed it up,

and he said it's summed up like this. He said Christianity can be summed up in one word. Christianity is a worldview. That the Christianity isn't just we look at the world like the rest of the world and we just believe a few extra things, but Christianity doesn't just change the way we see some things. Christianity, worldview, changes the way we look at everything. And how important this is because we realize that vision determines destination. that if I look at the world like the world, I end up like the world.

But if I look at the world like Jesus, then I end up like Christ. Vision determines destination. And so, how do I look? How do I look at stuff like this? How do I look at when someone's done something wrong? That's the big question. How does a Christian fight? When someone does something wrong, how does a Christian fight?

When someone fails, how does a Christian fight? Or another way to say this, and we can say it again. When someone does something wrong, how do I look at them? How do I look? I think our natural inclinations are like we look away or we dismiss Say just I'm not going to think about this or we disqualified say they're done or we dogpile and get as many people on top of them as we can or We just drive by drive by comments drive by criticisms And again every one of those natural inclinations

involves a temptation to look at the person as a non-person. Every one of them. Every one of those those natural inclinations is a temptation to look at the other as a non-person. Even looking away, it's so interesting, you might know the story in 1 Corinthians chapter 5. There's this occasion where here's St. Paul, he's right into the Corinthians. There are all these people in Corinth who have been converted to Christianity. Now if you know anything about Corinth at the time, Corinth was the had a reputation. If you were someone who was, um, was, uh, given over to licentiousness, given over to debauchery, given over to whatever, they would call you a Corinthian.

It's kind of like, like if you're like going to Las Vegas, like, oh wow, going to Las Vegas, kind of a place of scandal, the Sin City, they call it. That was Corinth. But all these people had become Christians, and so, like, okay, they're in now, they're part of the family, they belong to Christ, and now they look at the world, look at each other like Jesus. But there's a story that Paul recounts in 1st Corinthians chapter 5. He says, okay, here's what I've heard. that there is a person among you, one of your brothers, a Christian, in your community, in your parish, this small parish in the middle of this big city, Corinth, and he is living with his father's wife. And he says something, people in Corinth don't even do that normally. Like that's scandalous even for Corinthians.

Here you are Christians, and here's this guy, and he's living, he's having a romantic relationship with his dad's wife. And when he says to them, he says, and you don't do anything about it. Basically, it's kind of like one of those things where, like, you know, it's one of those open secrets. Like, we're just not going to bring it up. Yeah, we come together on Sunday. We maybe have prayer meetings and stuff and we're living, doing our lives, and we're maybe having a Bible study or so whatever they're doing.

But kind of like, yeah, we don't really say anything about this. It's just this toxic thing that exists in our, you know. And maybe someone's like, oh, yeah, I know that. That's just Dave, though. You know, he's just, I mean, he's a really good guy otherwise. And so we just don't bring up these big, difficult, awful things. We just pretend that it doesn't exist. Why?

Because I don't like looking at it. I don't want to say anything about it. Why? Because it's not my responsibility. St. Paul basically is saying in 1st Corinthians 5, Dave, I just gave him his name. His name is not Dave. Maybe it was, I don't know.

Dave is your responsibility. You need to do something about this because even looking away makes Dave a non-person. To not do anything about it, to not say anything about this, is treating him as less than. To say I'm not responsible for him

strips him of his personhood. You know, because we would say this in Scripture based on Scripture, there are two sources of responsibility that we have. Two sources of responsibility, there's also two motivations, and there's also two methods, but there's one goal. I'm the first reading, it's from the prophet Ezekiel. And we heard it. It's that God says to Ezekiel,

I've set you as a watchman. Like, I've given you a job. Your job is a prophet. So here's Ezekiel's job. it's a prophet. So basically, since you have this role in the world to call out evil when you see it, that means you have a responsibility. Your role equals the responsibility. So not a lot of us have the role of a prophet in the same way that Ezekiel had it. No, we are anointed prophets because we're baptized, but a lot of us don't have the exact same kind of responsibility that Ezekiel did as that kind

of prophet. Now, our pastors do, our bishops do, those people who are put in authority over us, they have a particular role, therefore they have a particular responsibility. to call out sin when they see it. In fact, how Ezekiel, not just the source of his responsibility is his role, but also then his method of responsibility is different, that he has to publicly call out sin, that what Ezekiel has to do, because his role gives him this responsibility, he has to publicly call out, no, he has to publicly call out public sin.

That's a very important point. Why? Because his motivation is justice. because the Lord God even says to Ezekiel, if these people are doing these evil things and you don't say something, you're not just not caring about them, you're not even being just because other people will see what they're doing and think that that's fine. And so you, Ezekiel, you have a role, therefore you have a responsibility in justice to be public about this.

And in fact, we see this in Galatians chapter 2. I mean, it's kind of embarrassing story about our early church, but what was happening? Well, in Galatians chapter 2, St. Paul recounts the time when he had to correct Saint Peter. What was happening? Peter was visiting, he was living with a lot of Gentiles, non-Jewish people, but when Jewish, and he would eat with them, he would dine with them, he would have fellowship with them. But when Jews showed up, Peter kind of was like, well, I'm going to stay away from the Gentiles and I would actually now live kosher. But when

the Jews weren't there, he didn't care about living kosher because Jesus had told him you don't have to, you know, you can eat of all the food that you wouldn't have eaten if you're eating kosher. And St. Paul realized that here's Peter who has this public role, who's giving, in some ways, public scandal, he's misleading people. He wasn't teaching anything inerrant, or he wasn't teaching anything wrong, but he was just living in a way that he was called to live differently. And so what did St. Paul say?

He says in Galatius Chapter 2, he said, I publicly opposed, publicly opposed Peter to his face. Because Paul had a role. therefore he had a responsibility. Peter was giving bad witness in public, therefore Paul had to correct him in public for the sake of justice. And in doing this is so remarkable.

In doing this, this is not an insult to Peter. To ignore it would be an insult to Peter. To ignore it would be an insult to the people around to Peter, but to address this acknowledges the fact that Peter, actually, I'm calling you higher. Peter, I'm fighting for you. So for Ezekiel, his role gave him the responsibility. The kind of sin was public, therefore the correction had to be public because of justice.

But here is the interesting thing. In the gospel, Jesus gives us an entirely different kind of situation. Where someone doesn't necessarily have the role that gives them the responsibility, but they have a relationship that gives them the responsibility. That's the second source of responsibility is a relationship. Jesus says, he says, if your brother sins against you, Again, that word means, brother means brother. Brother means this is someone you have a relationship with.

If your brother sins against you, here's what you do. The source of your responsibility is that relationship. But this is so remarkable. The motive isn't justice. The motive here is love. If your brother sins against you, go to your brother. What are we tempted to do? Remember, sometimes we're tempted to look away.

Sometimes they're tempted to dismiss. or other times we're tempted to disqualify the person. Like, listen, you crossed me, you're done. You're dead to me. Or we're tempted to dogpile on the person. Like, get everyone involved on this thing. Or we're tempted to do this, what I call like drive-by correction where you just kind of like take one moment, one beat,

and just kind of say, here's all the things you did wrong. I'm leaving. But what does Jesus say? All of those, all of those things, they treat the other as a non-person. And Jesus says, when your brother sins against you, again, your relationship gives you this responsibility. You have to do this.

You have to go to your brother in private. The first step is personal and private. The first step is personal and private. Because it's not there to shame the other person. It's not there to wound the other person. It's not there, again, to dogpile on the other person. It's there because it's personal. You need to fight to see them as a person and it's private.

If that doesn't work, Jesus says, bring one or two other brothers along with you, other people in the family of God with you so the testimony can be accounted with two or three witnesses. two or three witnesses. But you think about this, like bring someone else in this. It's not, it's no longer merely personal. It's now personal and it's persistent. Because a lot of times, what do we do? Once we correct someone and they don't take it, we just give up on them. We're like, okay, I'm done. But Saint Jesus is saying, he's like, no, no, don't give up.

Bring people back. This is worth fighting for. Think about this. What other relationship do we have in this world where we might bring a third party in to save the relationship? That when the relationship is one where people have been hurt. What's one relationship that's in this world that we might bring a third party in because we're saying like, no, this relationship is worth fighting for, it's worth saving. It's, it's marriage. How often are there husbands and wives who's just like we are just at odds? We have just hurt each other too often. We've just grown apart too much, but we're not going to give up on this. We're going to bring someone else in because not so I can win, but because this relationship is worth.

fighting for. Too often in marriages and friendships and in co-worker relationships, the other becomes a non-person because in my mind they're just a monster. In my mind, they're the person who hurt me. In my mind, they're beyond forgiveness. But Jesus is saying, no, if you go to that, it's personal and private, but then if that doesn't work, be personal and persistent. Don't give up on this, this relationship. And this is what Jesus is saying about the church. Us as Christians coming to each other, be personal and persistent. If you need to bring someone else in to mediate this, to heal this, it's important.

But then he says, you know, and if they don't listen to them, then bring it to the church. And I think this is being personal and patient. Because it's, I mean, how many times he keep coming back to someone and say, okay, this is the wound, this is the hurt, this is the pain that you're causing, and I'm not going to make you a non-person, I'm not going to dismiss it, I'm not going to disqualify you that I'm here to love. That's the thing. How do Christians look? How do we look at the person who hurt us? Well, we look at the person. And how do we fight with the person who hurt us? This is the key thing. As Christians, we fight for them.

I don't know if we ever, ever find ourselves fighting against them. As Christians, we are always fighting to see the person or always fighting for the person. That's the goal every time. Jesus says, if he listens to you, you have won over your brother. That's what winning is. How do we fight? We fight for. How do we win? We win if we win them.

If we win the person. That's one of the reasons why I think those who work in the pro-life world are not just those who fight to stop the evil of abortion, but they're the ones who are fighting for the parents who have even been tempted to have an abortion or have had an abortion. They're fighting for them. They're saying, no, the goal is not to stop you, the goal is not to defeat you.

The goal is to win you over. those who fight for pro-life aren't just the ones who want to fight to stop the evil of abortion. They're also the ones who want to fight, who are fighting for those who work in the abortion industry. But to do that, to fight like that, to fight like, to look like a Christian, to fight like a Christian, it takes courage and it takes time. It's not this drive-by correction where I just kind of throw up my criticism or throw up my correction. And I think it takes more love than most of us have. I think looking like this takes more love than most of us have.

because this kind of fighting hurts. I think sometimes if we offer correction to someone and fighting for them hurts them more than it hurts us, then I think we're doing it wrong. If I'm going to offer correction to someone because it's my responsibility because it's either my role or my relationship and it hurts them more than it hurts me,

then I think I'm doing something wrong. And this is the last thing. It can be really tough for a couple reasons. I think one is because we know we're broken. Jesus even says, he says, before you remove the splinter from your brother's eye, take the beam out of your own eye. And we wonder, like, when can I say something? When should I not say something? But how do I say something when I know how broken I am?

I think what Thomas Aquinas says, St. Thomas Aquinas, he said this. He said, maybe you've discovered, or maybe it's been presented to you that this brother or sister of yours has this wound, has this sin, has this brokenness. But you also realize that you are guilty of the same thing. How could you possibly correct them? He says this, he says, but if we find we are guilty of the same sin, we must not rebuke our brother,

we must not rebuke our sister, but instead we must groan with them and invite them to repent with us. If we've realized that I'm broken in the same way they're broken. That often happens, right? We see the wounds in others that we recognize we have in ourselves. If we find we're guilty of the same sin,

we find we're broken in the same sin, same way. We must not rebuke them, but must groan with them and invite them to repent with us. I think that as difficult as this call of Jesus is to realize that either our role or our relationship gives us this responsibility, it's important to note where Jesus ends here. Because where he ends is it doesn't work. Where he ends is, yeah, you were there, you went there and you fought to see the person you You fought for the person and even after all of that, even after going to them personal and in private and personal and patient, personal, persistent, in the end, it doesn't work.

After all that, it fails. I think we just realized that's the risk that you could lose. You could lose a brother. You could lose a sister. You could lose a friend. But sometimes that's the greatest gift you can give to somebody. Years ago, I remember, it's the last thing, it's a longer last thing. I remember a priest who was assigned to this parish that was just,

had a lot of brokenness in it, and they weren't living as Catholics when it came to worshiping God. They weren't living as Catholics when it came to their own private lives, and this priest is such a big heart and such a kind man, a courageous man, took time. He kept going to these people's houses who were living in irregular relationships, and saying that's completely fine. And he kept going back to their homes, go back to the homes, just like, I'm calling you, come back to church, come back to the parish.

And at one point, the bishop of my friend said, Father, at some point he need to just point to just point out to them where they're standing, that they're standing outside, that they're standing outside the church. You didn't put them there, you just pointed it out. that that's where they were. And that's what Jesus is saying today.

That even after all that, they're not listening to you, then you treat them as a Gentile or tax collector. What's that mean? That means not someone you hate because Jesus loved Gentiles. He loved tax collectors. The Gentiles and tax collectors are people who are standing outside. And sometimes one of the ways we fight for people is by pointing out where they're standing.

So how do I look? Always, even in the midst of evil, I look at the person. And how do I fight as Christians? Always, even when there's evil that needs to be stopped, our fight is always for the person. The fight is always to see the person. The fight is always not to win the argument,

but is always to win the person.