So, Fr. Peckman...call no one on earth your father. Says so right there in the Gospel today. Certainly many other Christians would say that calling a priest a father is just proof of our devilish nature here in the Catholic Church. I guess, then, the male parental units are going to have to find something else to be called as father, dad, papa, pops, and all are names whose etymology inevitably leads back to some form of father. While we are at it, we better find a new name for those who instruct children. We can't go around calling people a teacher. While we are at it, we have to throw mister and all variations out as they are variations of master. After all, this passage must be a 1st century list of trigger words and microagressions! Or maybe not.
To understand this passage, you must put it back into its passage from Matthew. What Jesus is talking about is far greater than what we call people?
God the Enabler
Let's look, for a moment, at the 1st reading from the prophet Malachi. Malachi is prophesying in the time immediate to the return of the exiles from the Babylonian captivity. Jerusalem is in shambles and the temple is as well. Rebuilding is hard work. However, the priests have facilitated a spiritual sloth among the people. It is to the priest that God speaks. The priests have allowed the people to bring sickly and blind animals to make their sin/peace offerings. The people are withholding the thanksgiving sacrifice or giving mere crumbs. They suffer. The priests have allowed the people to deaden the relationship with God. Their dead relationship is producing the only crop it is capable of producing. The priest are permissive enablers and are presenting God as a permissive enabler. Instead of exposing the people to the love of a merciful and just God; they hide Him behind a weak and permissive idol. They poison the well from Israel was to drink.
God the Hater of Man
Let's jump to the Gospel. Jesus is once again coming down on the scribes and Pharisees. They look down their noses at the riff raff. They use the Law of Moses as a weapon to keep these people in line. Their God is an angry God is waiting for you botch it up. The empty the law of mercy and love. Their God is a God to be appeased with minute obedience. They, too, have created an idol...an angry idol...in place of the true God. They, too, poison the well from which the Jews were to drink.
In either case, the religious authorities in question have usurped the role of God and made a god that looks just like them. They have created an authority independent of God which serves their own ends. In this passage, Jesus isn't being a word Nazi...He is telling us, especially us who have shepherding roles, exactly what He expects of us. Our authority as those who minister in Christ's name is delegated from God, not something we fashion and shape for ourselves. For when we do, we mislead those placed in out care.
Teachers with Authority: Clergy
Who has this authority? Within the Church, there are two groups of mention. The first is obvious: the clergy. As a pastor, I have no authority independent of my bishop, who has no authority independent of the Church who has no authority independent of Jesus Christ. How Jesus reveals the Father and His will is the final say. I am obligated to preach in this way AND act in this way as well. The qualities of Christ are to become my own. I cannot cobble together an alternate version that is more palatable. I am not to form a Christ more to the liking to my dispositions. No priest, nor bishop, nor Pope has the authority to teach or act in a way that obscures the Gospel or overturns it. They are the keepers of the keys to be sure...but those keys only go to one door. For me or any other cleric to do otherwise, would be to carve a false idol and place it to be worshiped. For me or any other cleric to do so would be to poison the well at which the flock is to drink. It is for this reason that the Scriptures tell us that the harshest judge will fall on the shepherds.
Teachers with Authority: Parents
However, I did say two groups, no? That second group is the parents...especially you, dad! When you had your child baptized you promised God and the Church that you would be worthy guardians of the light of Christ entrusted to you. You agreed to be the first and best teachers of the ways of the faith. No more than I or any other cleric can present a false god, be it an angry or permissive god, can you as parents. You, too, are obligated to make sure the well from which your flock, known as your family, drinks, is kept free from the poison of sin. No more than I or any cleric can you produce a false idol in place of God. As your children will follow your definition of God and faith long before they follow mine or any other cleric, the impetus is on you. Together, as partners, we try and make authentic disciples of Jesus Christ who will become the leaders we need. To do this, they must drink from unpolluted waters.
Not My Will...
I will be honest with you. In my return to the Catholic faith, the main predication was that I did not want a God in my image and likeness. I am all too aware of how limited I am. I am too aware of my sinfulness and frailties. I am aware that my love, patience, and faith all fall short. The God presented us by Christ and in the Scriptures is a God who does love us and wants what is good for us, even when we don't want what is good for us. He allows us to choose to love or not love. This is why when we choose not to love, it is sin. When we set up an idol and call it god...we court disaster for ourselves and for others.
There is an additional problem when we poison the well. It truncates people's ability to face the horror that comes with life. The morning this post was written, a gunman walked into a small Baptist Church in Texas and killed well over 20 people. What are we to think of God? Was angry God punishing this crowd? Was permissive God too weak to stop it? If we have these dysfunctional images of God, we will come to these conclusions. Truth is that God will do what He always does, come in and scoop us out of the wreckage left by other people's sinfulness and wrath. It is the danger of free will. the same free will by which we are loving and heroic is the same free will by which we are dangerous and destructive. The same free will that can love God is the same free will that can form idols.
So many problems we have in our churches come from these false idols and poisoned wells. Be wary of the purveyors of such idolatry. Beware of the cleric who present a just God without mercy, or a merciful God who is unjust. Mercy and justice cannot exist without each other. The priest of Malachi's time present a unjust god, the scribes and pharisees presented a merciless god. As those entrusted with authority, we must avoid these false idols...both in words we say and in the actions we do.
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