Today’s first reading and Gospel describe accommodations made to religious practice as a result of changed social situations.  The prophet Ezekiel experienced his prophetic vocation as quite different from that of his predecessors.  In today’s first reading, Ezekiel received a command from God to warn erring individuals in the hope that they would return to faithfulness.  The unusual nature of this command is probably not apparent to us. 

Prior to the Babylonian Exile, the prophets preached to the whole People, including the Royal Courts.  The prophetic message was one of communal repentance and reform.  The Exile changed profoundly the practice of religion.  The displacement of the People and the loss of the Temple eroded the communal identity of the Israelites.  During Ezekiel’s lifetime, there was very little corporate identity left among God’s People.  As a consequence, Ezekiel was commanded to preach repentance to individuals rather than the whole People.  Individual repentance and reform probably seem like the norm to us but to Ezekiel, it was an unavoidable accommodation necessitated by a drastically changed religious landscape. 

Today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel is a reflection of a growing awareness in Matthew’s congregation that a shared values system could no longer be taken for granted among the baptized.  This passage of the Gospel outlines a strategy for dealing with conflict among church members.  Again, a progressive process of conflict resolution probably sounds familiar to us but to Matthew’s congregation, it was a necessary adaptation to recurring incidences of tensions and disagreements among congregation members. 

As the changed situations that precipitated these accommodations by Ezekiel and Matthew have become somewhat normal in our experience, I don’t think these Scripture passages offer us practices to imitate so much as lessons about how to adapt to on-going change.  Ezekiel’s call to individual repentance and reform is rather common in Christianity today.  Matthew’s process for conflict resolution, on the other hand, might be somewhat outmoded.  Both of these, however, are stark statements about the necessity to adapt to the social changes that affect the practice of religion. 

Today, in our country, religion has been completely swept up by the polarization that has coopted politics, commerce, and even casual conversation.  In Catholicism, we can no longer take for granted a shared image of God let alone a shared values system.  On a recurring basis, I find myself completely shocked by off-hand comments from Mass attendees; the comments range from portraying God as an impersonal, vaguely benevolent force in the universe to portraying God as a vengeful cultural warrior eager to smite all who disagree with the one speaking.  Neither of these two extremes is an accurate portrayal of the God who reveals God’s self in the Scriptures.  It isn’t even accurate to conceive of God as a happy medium between the extremes of being mildly disinterested and chronically victimized. 

There remains a lot of talk about reconciliation and resolution of conflict between the many disagreeing parties in our society.  I agree with, and support, these attempts at reconciliation.  I’m skeptical, however, that they will bear fruit.  Rather, it seems that our current situation is the realization of a plan somewhat analogous to Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal.  

Today’s Gospel passage might well have come to fruition in our time. Jesus promised his disciples that if two of his disciples agreed in prayer about anything, God would grant it to them. We, as a Church and a society, have agreed to distrust, criticize, and denounce one another. Consequently, all have received the mutual condemnation and distrust for which we’ve prayed. 

Sadly, our agreement to abandon the notions of truth as objective and morality as obligatory undercut the premise on which our extreme choice for individualism rests. When truth is redefined in terms of personal opinion and individual experience, the Tower of Babel is recreated as the single, shared project that causes the isolation and estrangement of every person from every other. Quixotically, we as a Church and a society are completely united in our complete estrangement from one another. 

As Jonathan Swift suggested almost three hundred years ago, it seems not to be the case that society has too little freedom, or too little wealth, or too little happiness.  It might rather be the case that society has over-imbibed and become intoxicated by pleasures and excesses. 

The Scriptures suggest a palatable way out of our self-imposed exile.  Today’s Psalm tells us, “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”  If it is a radical proposal to ask the baptized to desist from their mutual condemnations and, instead, listen for God’s voice, it is considerably less radical than persisting in the folly that each individual is sole arbiter of the truth.