Scripture readings for the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Ezekiel 33:7-9
Psalm 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9
Romans 13:8-10
Matthew 18:15-20
Václav Havel gave a speech at the Vatican in 1999. Somewhat controversially he quoted John Hus, the Czech Reformer who was burnt at the stake in 1415. St. John Paul II, also in 1999, called it a "cruel death" and expressed the Church's "deep sorrow" for Hus's execution. That too was controversial to some.
But that's an aside; what is important is what Havel said, what he quoted: "Therefore, faithful Christian, seek Truth, listen to the Truth, hear Truth, love Truth, speak Truth, uphold Truth, defend Truth until death; for Truth shall deliver you from sin, from the Devil, from death of the soul, and in the end, from death everlasting."
Now Havel was not really a believer. He was baptized and raised Catholic, but he was not religious; he had a sense of Being but that was about it. Playwright, imprisoned political dissident, democratically elected first president of the Czech Republic after the so-called Velvet Revolution, Havel was not religious, but he was moral and, in a way, spiritual. Which made him a better politician than most, better even than many politicians who do call themselves Christian.
Because he understood the necessity of truth. "I merely take the side of truth against lies, the side of sense against nonsense, the side of justice against injustice," he once wrote. Again, as I said, he was a better politician than most.
But that too is an aside. What has always impressed me and convicted me when reading Havel's words was how he expected Christians to be people of truth. He assumed it; he assumed that everyone knew Christians are truthful. Even when it was plain that Christians weren't acting like it, still Havel clearly expected that Christians, if they would be faithful, would always be truthful people, that they would always "live in the truth" as he liked to put it.
Which, despite the tragedy that Havel himself never rediscovered the truth that is Jesus Christ, is the lesson and the reminder for us, the lesson we Christians sometimes must relearn repeatedly, that we simply cannot be Christians if we are not fully people of truth.
And it's the recurring lesson in this Sunday's readings. God's warning to Ezekiel, the "watchman," is blunt, forthright. He says to him, "when you hear me say anything, you shall warn them for me" (Ezekiel 33:7). The prophet is to speak the whole truth of God to the people, what St. Paul later called the "whole counsel of God" (Acts 20:27). To avoid speaking the truth, a prophet would not only be irresponsible, but he would also "die for his guilt" (Ezekiel 33:9).
But it's not just prophets that bear responsibility for the truth. From Psalm 95, when the people of God, that's us, hear the voice of God, the voice of truth, we shouldn't harden hearts "as at Meribah," that is, when they put God to the test and almost killed Moses (Psalm 95, Exodus 17:1-7). If the prophet must speak the truth, we must do our part and receive the truth.
St. Paul, however, talks about love. "Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another," he writes (Romans 13:8). But isn't that the same as the truth? St. Aelred of Rievaulx, the medieval Cistercian monk and spiritual master, once wrote that we always owe our friends the truth because "without it the word friendship has no meaning."
What St. Paul teaches us here is that the truth we speak is the truth of God – inexhaustible, merciful, open to suffering. Like Jesus, we speak truth in love, without aggression or violence, ready to suffer at the hands of those to whom we speak, forgiving them even when they know not what they do.
Which is love that requires incredible strength. And here we come to the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus is talking about the nature of the Christian community, that Christians should be so truthful to each other that they are willing to speak truth to one another, including difficult truth. "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault," Jesus tells his disciples (Matthew 18:15). To put it simply, a believer should be willing to speak truth to a fellow believer even if that means calling them out for their sins.
Now we should note here that the words "against you" do not appear in many ancient manuscripts; that is, it's possible Jesus is saying something even more radical, that Christians should call each other out whenever a believer sins and not just when they sin "against you." This takes Christian commitment to truth further, beyond the interpersonal and into the communal. It suggests that we should be willing, in love, to call out a fellow believer whenever he or she fails to live according to the truth of Christ. This takes truth-telling to a whole other level.
And what if that was what Jesus was saying? What if he was saying we should be fully truthful like that? If so, we'd really want to be sure that our hearts were not hardened to the voice of the Lord. We would also really want to be sure that we recognized and received true prophets and not false ones. We'd also want to be sure we know how to speak truth in love.
And maybe that's the point, exactly the renewal we Christians must seek.
