We're Not Allowed to Say… “It's Okay, Just Ignore That”

These are everyday sermons, usually not the same sermons Deacon Michael delivered on Sundays.  He takes the liberty of personally addressing the people who came to the 6:30 communion service, whom he loved so much, and who loved him.

Deacon Michael was a history major. His home was filled with many history books. This is one of the sermons where his love of history shows in his analysis.

IF YOU LIKE, READ ALONG WHILE YOU ARE LISTENING:

One of the things about, I guess, being human, is, like I said this morning, it would have been so much more fun to just stay in bed, warm, snuggled up, knowing that it was nice and cool outside.  Or just... you know, I spent, who knows, six hours up here yesterday, why do I want to come back?  I'm tired.  I don't have anything to say. 

In our lives, and the Corinthians exemplified this completely, but in our lives, we hear the word of Jesus Christ, we face situations, and we go, "Oh...!  I don't want to do that."  Or "The circumstances are such that it's all right."

Like the man St. Paul was arguing about.  His father obviously married a younger woman.  His father died and she was really nice and beautiful, and the man said, "Why can't I marry her, too?"  And the Corinthians were filled with this kind of temptation.  "Oh, I don't really want to assume all the burdens of God that comes from the Jews, he's too strict and something.  This other religion, you know, look at that.  They go out and their idea is to worship Dionysus and go out and get drunk three nights a week.  Those people I like.  They are all there.”

But in our lives there are temptations as well.  Not the temptations to affirmatively do evil, but not to do what is right.  And these temptations many times are as horrible in result, as doing something actively evil.  It's almost a sin of omission, but it's, "Oh, it's all right!"  Because it's not that I am doing something wrong, it's just that I am not doing something I should do.  And we have these things that are barriers.  One of the biggest problems that we face as a deacon sometimes is we are kind of in between. 

And it's very easy when it is someone who is very adamant coming out of the congregation [saying], "Well, we need to have this!"  And you just go, "Ooooh...[groan]!"  I don't want to do that but I don't want to listen to him or her.  I'll just go ahead and do it that way, even though I know it shouldn't be done that way.  And one of the things that we see in the institutions, and we see it in the Church, is, for example, there is the crazy story of the policewoman who went into the wrong apartment. [A story in the news at the time.]  I don't understand that at all.  Where did she get the key and everything else?  And she shot the guy.

The immediate reaction of a policeman is to protect other policemen.  Now they haven't done it.  She is going to be indicted.  That is not the problem.  But, there is a reaction to protect.  And in that situation where you have someone who has done something actively wrong being protected by others, they can say, "Well, I didn't do it [protect a comrade].  I just didn't take the active step."  Sounds like the Church.  Something wrong is happening.  "Well, its all right.  He's one of our priests.  We'll take care of him.  We'll send him off to therapy,  We'll move him to a different parish.  Nobody needs to know about it.  We'll protect him."

That is an affirmative wrong.  Jesus did not go in front of the Pharisees and Sadducees when they were trying to trip Him, oh, it must have just been the Pharisees, trip Him in the synagogue, to do something on the Sabbath.  He did it.  Because they were allowing themselves to be blinded to what is good.  There is nothing wrong with healing somebody.  But they said, "Well, If you work on the Sabbath you are violating this law.  If you do this you are violating this law, and therefore on the Sabbath if we see somebody doing [caught in] a situation it is better for us to ignore the person in need than do something."  And Jesus says, "No."

We are not allowed... “not allowed” is probably the correct way of describing it… from St. Paul, what he is writing, and from the teachings of Christ, to go into our world and say, "I am Catholic.  That means I do good things."  But we are not allowed to say, when Michael does something wrong, "It's all right, Michael, I'll just lift up the corner of the rug and sweep it under the rug."  We are not allowed to justify what is wrong by just saying, "Well, it's inconvenient for me to do that.  It would be embarrassing.  He's one of ours.  I wouldn't want to do that to Betty.  Betty is such a sweet lady, even though she has had multiple husbands all of whom died under suspicious circumstances.  John [her present husband] is old enough already; I could just (he snaps his fingers)". See Betty, I could really be mean.  But do you see what I'm saying?  There's something more.  We are not allowed to simply say, "It's all right."  Because how are you loving neighbor?  If you see something being done by Michael to someone else, or by Betty, our serial murderer, how can you say, "Well, it's all right.  We'll just sweep it under the carpet."

"It's all right for this man who really liked his stepmother, because otherwise he is just a really holy man.  It's all right for our deacon not to do the things he is supposed to do, because, you know, frankly, Jeannie would rather do them."  It's not right.

And that is one of the things that we have to keep in mind, and many times it's the thing that presents itself more often than the option of doing something evil.  We don't have the... most of us are old enough that we just don't have these tendencies anymore, or the energy to do the evil.  But we don't have the option to look and say, "Oh, I just won't do this affirmative thing.  I won't do what I should do.  I will not pay attention to what someone else is doing and I won't solve the problem."

The problem that we have at that point, is if that's our approach to the world, how are we loving our neighbor?  We're not.  We are allowing evil to exist and damage to be done when it's within our power to do what is right.  And it's not easy.  In fact it's much, as I said, many times it is much more difficult than to, it's more difficult to not ignore what is wrong and do something about it, than to simply not do something that is evil.

9/10/2018