Watchmen over the House

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Introduction

The seasonal moment

Tomorrow is Labor Day. Strange name for it, in view of the fact that almost none of us labors on that day, as we all try to get in one last lick at summer before settling down again to labor in earnest. The day after Labor Day we all go back either to work or to school. The Nation’s yearly liturgy, which began with Memorial Day paying tribute to our war dead, burst into the fiery displays of the Fourth of July celebrating our independence. It tapers off now with the Labor Day weekend and ends finally with Thanksgiving--that mother of all the Nation’s feasts. After that, the Church’s liturgy takes over with Advent in preparation for Christmas 2005.

Labor Day here in Wisconsin along the shores of Lake Michigan is a definite turning point. Very noticeably we begin to move into fall with its riotous shades of red and gold. The fruits of the harvest now come rushing in. Labor Day weekend was always the time for old-timers to can tomatoes for all the spaghetti sauce for the winter ahead. In canning jars we captured the bounty of fall for the scarcity of winter. Lined up on shelves in fruit cellars and showing off their red beauty, the jars of tomatoes radiated a sense of bounty for the sparse months ahead. That, of course, was back in the old days when there were no supermarkets. Some of us, just for the sake of old times, still bother to can the fruits of fall. It’s a kind of liturgy with us, which doesn’t happen when you simply go to a supermarket where you can buy all the canned tomatoes you want with less effort and expense. Not everyone has the time for such liturgy, but it’s good to find time if you can. Finding time for things like that is living. On Labor Day, as we set ourselves again in earnest to the task of making a living, we remind ourselves that there’s a difference between making a living and living.

Watchmen

After these musings on Labor Day, we have to get down to the church assigned labor at hand—the scriptures for today. In the first reading the Lord God says to Ezekiel, “I am making you a watchman over the house of Israel. If I announce to you that some person is going down a death-dealing path, and you do not confront him about his ways and he dies, then I will hold you responsible”(Ez 33:7). “Watchman” here doesn’t mean one who keeps a sharp critical eye upon another. It means one who watches over another so that he doesn’t come to harm. It means one who is his brother’s keeper and guardian angel. One way to be such a watchman is to lovingly confront your brother, so that he doesn’t die in his death-dealing ways but comes to life. Down the Christian centuries this has always been called”fraternal correction.”

The gospel reading today carries a similar thought. “If a brother sins against you, go and confront him with his fault—just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won him over” (Mt 18: 15). Christian confrontation isn’t a function of rage. It isn’t to impart a good piece of your mind. That might be deeply gratifying, but it doesn’t solve a problem. My Irish friend always tells his Italian wife when she lets her Italian nature clearly express itself, “Honey, you’ve just become part of the problem.” I want to tell my Irish friend to be quiet. He has no idea of how deeply gratifying it is to tell someone off. But at the end of the day, he’s right: it simply makes us part of the problem. Christian confrontation is a function of fraternal love. It’s not for dishing out a good piece of your mind and winning over another. It’s for winning another over. The gospel says, “If the brother you confront listens to you, you have won him over” (Mt 18:15).

Watchman over a preacher

Over the years people have confronted me for various reasons, either personally or through mail. In the very first line of her letter one woman wrote, “Your sermons are the most offensive, anger provoking and obsessive sermons I have ever heard in my life. You seem to crave dwelling on pain, Nazi war camps, sexual perversion, and AIDS, to the point which makes me feel you are personally trying to work through problems of your own in front of a captive audience.”

You can’t get anymore confrontational than that. She, indeed, was venting her rage and was giving me a good piece of her mind. She, indeed, had become part of the problem. She didn’t win me over. She had, in fact, lost me. I still dwell on the unspeakable Holocaust and the Nazi concentration camps. I still dwell on the unspeakable event of 9/11 (next Sunday) with its mountainous pile of 2 million tons of debris in which were scattered 20,000 body parts. Down deep she might have felt she had won over me and laid me low by the blast of her words (she did, indeed, do that for a moment), but in the long run she hadn’t won me over.

We’re speaking of confrontation as a function of fraternal charity.

Here’s another letter. It was written by an elderly woman years ago. I’ve kept the letter through the years, so as not forget what she wanted to say to me. She was obviously well-educated and intelligent, so I couldn’t easily dismiss her words. She wrote, “Dear Father, I am sure you will receive this with the same spirit it was written -- in charity. (Recall the second reading today:”Owe no one anything but only to love one another,” i.e., owe no one a blast of your words but only to love one another.) Your homily last Saturday evening,” she writes, “was much too long. I agree with almost everything you said, but just one point would have been plenty. I am sure you are aware that the attention span of the American audience is very short, accustomed as they are to mostly the sound-bytes of this age, and not much more. Your homilies often bring up so many thought-provoking points, but perhaps they are more suitable for publication than for preaching. Did you ever think of publishing a book? I would be the first to buy it.” What a sweet piece of her mind that was!

She didn’t lose me. She won me over. Looking back on that Saturday night homily I saw she was absolutely right; it was far too long. Even to this day, I am ashamed at its length. Ashamed that I was thinking more about my own very important thoughts than about the assembly before me. They had come to Saturday evening Mass. They were prostrated by all the labors and problems of the past week. They were anxious to get their Sunday Mass obligation out of the way and get on with all the customary things one gets on with at the end of a week. I am ashamed that I didn’t have compassion upon the crowds as Jesus did.

That wise and loving lady didn’t put me down and win over me, but she did, indeed, win me over. This might come as a surprise to some, because of her to this very day I have a tender conscience about the length of the homily and about “one point only.” An old homiletic professor used to tell us kids, “Three points, three sermons, two points two sermons, one point one sermon.”

Watchman over the house of Israel

Before Hurricane Katrina blew all over our TV sets and flooded the daily news this past week with its astronomical disaster, the breaking news was the Israelis’ historic withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The State of Israel, as watchman over the house of Israel, lovingly but painfully confronted its own people—Jewish settlers sitting on land that didn’t belong to them but to Palestinians. That was a moral wrong that had to be corrected. As long as Jewish settlers were living in good style on those territories that belonged to Palestinians (while they themselves were living hopelessly in terrible quarters just outside those settlements), there could never be a true path to peace.

In that historic withdrawal the State of Israel, as watchman over the house of Israel, reluctantly and lovingly confronted its own brethren and called them from a death-dealing path which was always generating acts of Palestinian terrorism against them. At the end of the day, that compulsory withdrawal was an act of fraternal correction calling Jews both to right a wrong and to pave a path to peace. As for winning over the settlers who were forcibly removed, that perhaps will be take a little more time; but it will come, because justice is always a winner.

Watchman over the house of Islam

In the beginning we spoke about the Nation’s liturgy: Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day and Thanksgiving. Something new, I believe, is seeking to insert itself into the national liturgy. There is a movement afoot seeking a congressional resolution for an annual commemoration of 9/11, 2001.

I’m never pleased with the expression of 9/11. In itself it is so utterly stripped and purged of its stark reality. Its stark reality refers to nothing less than that apocalyptic event in which two 747’s, as weapons of mass destruction, smashed into the Twin Towers in Lower Manhattan bringing down not only mortar and bricks but three thousand innocent human beings. 9/11 refers to nothing less than that apocalyptic event which caused a heap so mountainous that it took a ten-month operation working day and night to haul away 2 million ton of debris containing 20 thousand body parts. 9/11 refers to nothing less than that event which changed absolutely everything for us, so that nothing, just nothing, is the same anymore. 9/11 refers to nothing less than that event which ushered in an age of terrorism which now preoccupies us 24/7, consumes all our psychic and financial resources and robs us forever of a simple abiding peace which we used to take for granted. 9/11 refers to nothing less than that event which, to the utter consternation of most religious people, was perpetrated in the very name of Allah himself. None of all those overtones or undertones is heard in the harmless expression 9/11. It’s important to remember and not to forget that next week, when we will commemorate that apocalyptic event for the first time on a Sunday.

As part of the unfinished business of 9/11, it is now time for us to put away the political politeness which seeks to let Islam off the hook. We ask, because we really want to know, where are the Islamic watchmen to watch over and fraternally correct the house of Islam? We ask, because we really want to know, where are Islamic clerics, imams and ayatollahs and just plain ordinary Muslims to fraternally correct their own extremist brethren? It is not sufficient for any of them to say merely, “This is not what we stand for.” That’s too paltry and bland. That’s too half-hearted in comparison with that apocalyptic event. We expect something far more magnanimous than that from them.

At the end of the day only Muslim watchmen can watch over and correct Muslims. So far those watchmen aren’t numerous enough, and their voices aren’t loud and clear enough. At the risk of being politically impolite some of us wonder whether or not there are down deep in Islam itself roots of violence, terrorism and intolerance, of which it must purge itself. Just as Christianity had and still has roots of violence, terrorism and intolerance within itself, of which it has tried and still keeps trying to purge itself.

Conclusion

A gentle breeze and breath

Ite missa est. Go, the mass is ended. Go forth and be watchmen over your house. Watch over each other. Take care of each other. Be guardian angels to each other. If your kids or your spouse are all caught up in our culture of things, correct them and call them into the Spirit. If they are shackled by all the cultural addictions that surround them, correct them and call them into freedom. If they have succumbed to the me-me-me culture all around them, and they walk right by a man waylaid on the road to Jericho or stranded in the Superdome in New Orleans, correct them and call them to compassion.

Correct them not by the blast of your words but especially by the gentle breeze and breath of who you are—one who is in the Spirit, and one who is free and one who is compassionate. That’s what wins a brother over. Sometimes it takes a little time to win over a son or a daughter or a spouse. That’s because the gentle breeze and breath of who you are becomes a seed planted in them, and it takes time for it to germinate and blossom. That can’t be rushed. All you can do is possess your soul in peace and wait.

Finally this last thought: the best way to call people to life is not by calling them down but by calling them up; by telling them not just what’s wrong with them but also what’s right, as that kind little lady told me that my homily was far too lengthy. But because she liked what I said, and she’d be the first to buy my book and read it.