As I assist my 6 year-old grandson with first grade via virtual learning, I watch his very wonderful teacher correct the children when they get a math problem wrong. Last week they were reviewing basic number sums, trying to figure out the combinations of numbers that would add up to 6 or 7 or 8. Sometimes a child would make a mistake and say something like “6 + 2 = 7.” This teacher was absolutely marvelous in the way she would correct him. She would say, “Let’s see if you are right. Let’s count.” She would hold up her whiteboard with little circle counters on it and have the child count “one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight.” Then she would say, “You had it almost right. But when we count it out, you can see that 6 + 2 = 8, not 7. You’re learning.”
This teacher was both patient and clear about what the right answer was. Everything about her said, “Your learning is very important to me. I will help you. I will not rush you. I will not embarrass you. AND I expect you to work until you get it right. ”
It was clear to me after a week and a half of school via computer, that, via computer or not, these children are going to get a good education this year.
Correction
In an atmosphere like this classroom, children will learn to be careful with answers, but not to be afraid to make a guess or ask a question. As adults, we have most likely had good experiences like this with learning–and some learning situations where we learned to be afraid or ashamed when we were corrected.
Sunday’s readings taught us that we have a responsibility to love others—and that loving others includes “fraternal correction.” We heard the basics of how to do it. Today our readings tell us more.
Correction is a theme in both readings today. St. Paul is correcting the young Corinthian church for how they are handling a tricky situation: one of their members is openly practicing incest. In the Gospel, Jesus is correcting the Pharisee’s understanding of Sabbath.
Correction—or “feedback”—can be tricky. As a supervisor of young therapists, I must give corrections frequently. I hope my message is the same as the first grade teacher: “Your learning is very important to me. I will help you. I will not rush you. I will not shame or diminish you. AND I expect you to work until you get it right.” How can this pattern help us know when and how to give fraternal correction?
Understanding the Sabbath
In the Jewish culture of Jesus’ time, keeping the Sabbath was a hallmark sign of living the Jewish faith. In the Torah, there were thirty-nine activities specifically forbidden to be done on the Sabbath. These generally were activities related to creating something—baking bread, making a garment, making leather, building a structure. The logic was that on the Sabbath, God ceased from creating; God wished his people to also cease from creating on the Sabbath. Instead, very similar to the Church’s encouragement to us today, people were to worship and study God’s Word, to spend time with family, to extend hospitality to visitors, and to rest.
The religious leaders of Jesus’ day focused on the details of keeping the Sabbath, rather than its intention to follow God’s lead and “cease” to create. Thinking about the meaning of the rules of the Sabbath that way gives a new understanding of the incident in today’s Gospel where Jesus asks a man with the withered hand to stretch out his hand. As he did, it was healed.
Jesus was not giving a new meaning to the Sabbath or skirting Jewish law when he healed the man. Healing was not creating. It was not building or sewing or tanning or baking. It was restoring goodness. You might remember in Genesis 1, God kept saying as he created each day, “And God saw that it was good.”
When Jesus healed on the Sabbath, he was doing good…never forbidden on the Sabbath in the law. It was the legalism of the Pharisees that, de facto for many people, created evil (absence of good) with requirements beyond the law which were oppressive.
In this Scripture passage, Jesus succinctly and effectively corrected both the Pharisees and the general understanding of the crowd. He showed, “It is good to do good on the Sabbath, not evil.”
Paul’s Correction of the Corinthians
Incest was forbidden in Jewish and Roman law and by Greek culture. While the situation was an incestuous relationship with a stepmother, it was still forbidden. Paul is correcting both the wrongful situation and the understanding of the community of how they should handle such ethical matters.
He says, “And you are inflated with pride. Should you not rather have been sorrowful? The one who did this deed should be expelled from your midst.” Paul was clear about the solution: with the intent of leading the person to repentance, they were to expel him from the community.
It is important to remember that at this point in development of Christian processes and standards, there was no sacrament of reconciliation. Going to confession to clear up the wrong was not an option. Paul is saying: this man is not a practicing Christian if he is living with his father’s wife.
Paul is correcting the man. He is also correcting the Christian community. His follow up comment about “clear out the old yeast” indicates that Paul might mean “one bad apple spoils the barrel; to keep themselves clean of sin, they had to keep the standard of morality in the community.
Applications
Corrections are not judgments or prophecies. They are corrections: “instead of this, do that.” They are meant for instruction. The examples today in Scripture show God’s way of giving them includes: They come from a person who knows what is correct and has the authority to correct. They are given clearly, logically, without shaming. They are given with the expectation the one corrected will profit from the correction.
I am comfortable giving corrections in my family and in my professional life. I am less comfortable as a Christian in a culture of polarities and chaos. I do not have authority, as a priest or bishop or pope has. I do have the authority of my baptism and community membership. I can make fraternal corrections.
If I do, today’s readings tell me I need to make them clearly, from a basis of sound authority of Scripture or church teaching, and I need to do them in a way that helps open the one corrected to accept the correction, as well as serve the common good. Not an easy balance.
Prayer:
Lord, give me eyes to see and mind to understand what is Your vision and standard for what I see go on around me today. If there is a situation today where I can clearly express Your standard in a way that is corrective, help me to do it. Save me from pride. Save me from judgment and shaming. But, also, save me from cowardice. Lead me, guide me.
