Everyone knows what shunning means. Whether it is a formal exclusion from a community or an informal avoidance (now commonly known as "ghosting"), today's Gospel reading at Mass has been used as justification for the practice (click here to read it). The common interpretation is after a set process, if someone is still unrepentant of a sin, give them the boot.
Pretty harsh, eh?
Truth be told, how does one handle someone who does hurtful behaviour and ignores it? How does one handle someone who is egregiously in the wrong and is introducing toxicity into the community? How does one handle a toxic relationship? Many of us look at this passage and think of our work environments and equate the steps with verbal warning, written warning, and termination.
Perhaps we need to drop that conditioning.
This passage is specific to people within the community of faith, within the confines of the Church. Our Lord is clear that when disagreements rise, we forgive, when behaviours persist, we talk it out, but this also serves as the corollary to, the refinement of the process of forgiveness. If there is a disagreement, we should in all love and charity try to work it out. If we cannot work it out, we need to bring in outside help from our brothers and sisters in the Lord. However, failing that, how do we reconcile "Gentile and Tax Collector" with "forgive seventy times seven times," both of which Jesus Our Lord has told us?
First, we should look at how we view "Gentile and Tax Collector." To Jews in the First Century the treatment they expected to be shown this group was shunning. Deal with them only when one is compelled by circumstance, either in commerce or taxation, but nothing beyond that. There is no social contact, no charity shown, no recognition, no acknowledgement of their humanity. This, however, is not necessarily what Our Lord meant. Yes, the Gentile and the Tax Collector were "outside" if you will, not necessarily trusted, but still loved by God, still among those for whom Our Lord died, still made initially in God's image, no matter how tarnished. No, if you read elsewhere, the Lord showed love and charity to such outcasts and called them to repentence.
What this means for us is that yes, when differences are insurmountable, when toxicity persists, the relationship must change. It cannot help but change. Trust has been violated. However this does not mean that the person be consigned to the Outer Darkness. The relationship changes from fraternal and familial to missional. The person becomes not so much a fellow worker and servant so much as one of those we are called to serve. This does change how we approach them, how we interact, but does not call for us to exclude them, to dismiss them, to turn our backs on them. No, they have shown themselves even more in need of the healing grace of Our Lord than ever before. They become even more in need of the Gospel of Peace, to hear the Good News and what that entails.
We in the Church have the power to bind, and the power to loose. We have the power to bind others more closely to us and to Christ, the power to loose people from the bonds of sin and error. How much better is it if we interpret treating the unrepentant as a Gentile and Tax Collector not so much as one to shun and consign to the Void but rather to redouble our efforts to show the redeeming love of God in Jesus Christ Our Lord, to seek that sheep that is lost and to return them to the fold? Not to let them slip under the waves, but to make every effort to rescue them by showing them the selfless love of God?
[Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons, "The Calling of St. Matthew" by Giovanni Paolo Panini]