Loving Correction

In this morning’s gospel, our Lord told a parable about a marriage feast. In its context within the gospel according to Saint Matthew, it is a parable about Jews and Gentiles, about God inviting all of humanity to the wedding feast, our communion with the risen Lord. But the parable, alongside the reading from Saint Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, tell us a few things about correcting others, specifically who should be correcting others, who they should correct, and how they should be corrected. 

First, I think it’s important to say that there is no shortage of incorrect people in this world. Even among those who call themselves Christian, there is barely a condemned heresy that has not been brought back and adopted by some group of people. Additionally, there is scarcely a sin that it is not just tolerated, but often celebrated by someone. There are even those within the Church itself that either through ignorance, or the deception of others, or even malice desire to convince others of the truth of their lies. And there are those within the Church who desire to cling to their sins with impunity. But the correction of others must be done with the desire that the other person be saved from their errors and sins.

In the parable, there were those invited to the wedding feast that would not come. We can see in these people those who are outside the Church. They may know about the Church, but they are not within it. The same servants who invited them to the feast are not the ones to correct them. It is the King, it is God, Who deals with them and their wickedness. The parable tells us that the King sends His armies to bring His judgment to them. So we leave the judgment of those outside the Church to God. This doesn’t mean that we don’t speak about the errors and sins that will try to work their ways into the Church from outside, but we are better off presenting the truth and the good that the Church gives us, than to focus on correcting those outside who may not have eyes to see and ears to hear. 

The Lord also tells us about those who have been invited to the feast whom He described as both good and bad. They have specifically been invited to the supper and have shown up. Some of the people who enter the Church have the most wicked pasts. They have done evil things. There are also those who have tried to live good and moral lives and sought to know the truth before coming to the Church. This invitation is to all, and they are all welcome, but they must be properly attired. If after coming to the Church, we persist in our wrong beliefs and in our sinful acts, we soil our wedding garment, our baptismal robe, and may even find ourselves cast out, made an outsider, even though we have been invited, and have shown up. The man without a robe was the one cast out of the feast, and in this case it is the servants of the King who remove the man, not the King’s armies. There are times when the clergy, the hierarchy of the Church, have to correct someone, even cast him out, but even still it is in hopes of their restoration and salvation.

The parable speaks of Baptism in the image of the wedding and the wedding garment, and it speaks of the Eucharist by the image of the feast with the fatted calf. Saint Paul speaks of the Corinthians as anointed by God and sealed with the Holy Spirit in their hearts as a guarantee, he is speaking of Chrismation, the other of the mysteries of initiation into the Church. And then to those who have received the Holy Spirit and must hold onto the guarantee given to them, he speaks about the correction of those who are in the Church.

Saint Paul talks in Ephesians 4 about speaking the truth in love. Some people get irritated when this quote comes up because it is sometimes used to shame people into being nice in lieu of speaking the truth, but what Saint Paul is talking about there  is the way that correction should be made in order for infants in Christ to grow into full maturity in Christ. It is specifically about discipline and correction, but it points to how important it is for discipline to come from love. 

 There is a reason that people don’t generally spank, ground, or give time-outs to other peoples’ children, and that is because there has to be a relationship of love in order for the correction to work. It is the knowledge that we are loved that lets us learn from discipline, and it is the desire to please the other that encourages to change. Saint Paul tells the Corinthians that he doesn’t want to make them sorrowful, he wants to teach them, he wants to help them to maturity. At the end of the epistle reading today, he said, “For out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote to you, with many tears, not that you should be grieved, but that you might know the love which I have so abundantly for you.”

To correct another, to discipline another should never feel like winning, it should never feel like owning someone, or destroying them. It should cause us anguish and affliction; there should be sadness in our hearts over it. Saint John Chrysostom, commenting on this passage, described a father whose son has gangrene. His son is being eaten away by a disease that will kill him. And so the father has to operate, to cut out this wound and to cauterize it. (Kids be grateful that your parents could take you to a doctor who uses anesthetic... ) But the father is pained both because his son is diseased and suffering, and because he must do this terrible thing in order to save his son. Attacking your child with a knife and with a burning iron would in another context be seen as hate, but in this case it is a sign of excessive love.

To be fair, there are examples of great prophets and saints who have confronted the evil in others and didn’t seem to love them in this way. The Prophet Elijah taunted the prophets of Baal and then slew them. Saint John the Forerunner railed against the sin that Herod committed by taking his brother’s wife. But we also see Saint Peter rebuked for cutting off the ear of the servant of the high priest when they came to arrest Jesus, and we see in Saint Paul how zeal without knowledge led him to persecute Christ because he wanted to do for God what he mistakenly thought was right. Our zeal must not lead us to think that we are doing what is right when our hearts are far from God.

So who should we correct? Everyone with a wrong opinion or sinful behavior? Those outside the Church have a God Who desires not the death of a sinner but that he should turn from his way and live. They will stand like everyone else at the dread judgment seat of Christ, but not at our judgment seat. We don’t leave them to their fate, but we also don’t need to correct them. Rather, we demonstrate to them why they too should accept the invitation to the Wedding Feast. We remind them that both good and bad have been invited, and they should take the invitation seriously. 

We correct those who have been baptized into Christ, who have received the gift of the Holy Spirit and have been sealed with it, and who have come to the Lord’s supper and partaken of the Precious and Holy Body and Blood of Christ. But we are not all given the charge of correcting every Orthodox Christian, even though many of them are wrong and many of them are still held captive by their sins. For the most part, we are not good shepherds, or even good hirelings. We don’t care for the sheep, we don’t love them, and so we will end up causing more harm than good. 

We correct only those whom we love, and it should cause us pain and sadness to do so. If you love your children and godchildren, correct them when they sin, when they are in error, that you may turn them back to God by your loving direction. Likewise if you love your fellow parishioner and it grieves you to see them going astray, do what you can to embrace them and draw them with you to the truth. When you see someone say something wrong on the internet, however, don’t join them. I guarantee that you don’t love that person with the kind of love that will bring about their repentance, and you will only lower yourself into the same abyss that they are in. 

I am not saying that only Bishops or Priests should correct people, but they do share in Christ’s priesthood. They have received grace which enables them to be like the Good Shepherd and help to safeguard their flock. I am also not saying that we should be happy that there are people in error and sin. Certainly we should mourn for the state of the world and even the Church. I am saying that unless you pray for the whole world with tears and pain in your heart, it is not your job to correct them all, and doing so will only enslave you to pride, vainglory, hatred, and judgment and condemnation of others. Saint Paisios said “if you want to help the Church,. It is better to try to correct yourself... Judging others is easy, whereas working on yourself takes effort.”

So put your efforts into correcting yourself. Learn to love others. Form relationships with them. Let them see in you a good reason to want to follow Christ. When you have done this, you will know better how to correct others in a way that will benefit them, and as Saint James tells us in his epistle, “he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins.” This is only possible through love. Your salvation and that of your neighbor will be achieved in a relationship of love, not niceness, but a deep and sacrificial love that grieves over the brokenness of the other and desires their restoration.