Matthew 18:15-20, 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

When was the last time you received feedback, sisters and brothers? Was it from family or friend, or from officialdom? How did you take it? Was it a bitter pill, but swallow, you did anyway, because it was true and necessary? Or was it so one-sided and unfair, it just made you sick? Did the feedback eventually help your personal and relational maturity? Or, did it make you regress–because no matter what you did for improvement, some people upstairs were really just out to make it hurt a little for God-only-knows-why?

Let’s do the other side. When was the last time you gave someone feedback? Was it based on a real, lived, and direct witness to the person’s work and ways? Or was it based merely on old impressions and hearsay, or worse, based on your personal taste? If you’re to be brutally honest to yourself as feedback-giver in officialdom, do you let someone off the hook more easily because you like the person? And are you more exacting on someone who rubs you the wrong way?

Today’s Gospel is about feedback-giving. But did this passage really come straight from Jesus? Some scholars believe that it’s about fraternal correction in the early Church after Jesus, in the Matthean community, specifically. This is plausible because, consider the line that says: if your brother sins against you and if he refuses to listen to you even if you take two or three witnesses along, “tell the church.” Well, when Jesus was still around, there was no such formally constituted “church” yet. So, this four-step community feedback mechanism must’ve been engineered only much later as the Jewish-Christian community grew. Four steps: talk to the person in private. If he doesn’t listen, get two or three witnesses. Kung wa epek pa rin, tell the church, meaning, the elders. Kung matigas talaga ang ulo, exclusion, or what we now call, excommunication, which was a real practice in the early Christian communities, even before the existence of popes.

Now if these verses were not Jesus’ exact words, are they untrue? Well, no. The four-step process of feedback-giving was most assuredly inspired by Jesus’ brand of forgiveness. Unlike Temple officialdom that immediately excluded offenders as impure, evil, abominable, the Jesus principle was different. Give sinners not just a second chance, but a third & a fourth as well. If the sinner still refuses correction, cast him out. (By the way, if someone stops respecting anyone in the community, well then, he’s the one who virtually casts himself out, right? That’s the spirit behind excommunication we do not often see. By repeatedly doing something offensive to the whole community despite constant correction, an offender virtually says, “I don’t respect and believe in this community anymore.” Eh, ano pang ginagawa mo ‘jan? You’ve actually excluded yourself already. The guys upstairs just make it official.) But anyhow, give sinners room for correction. Assist them in their conversion. Wait for their improvement. That was the Lord’s forgiveness principle: that his friends give each other a long leash. Jesus believed in his heart that there was always help for sinners to heal. There was always room for sinners to become better versions of themselves.

But sisters and brothers, let me share with you what I’ve really observed all these years in many institutions, lay and religious alike. The people who have most difficulty, the worst aversion to receiving feedback are the feedback givers. Hindi ko alam kung napansin din ninyo. Pero kung sino ‘yung matagal nang nasa katungkulan, at nasanay nang nagbibigay ng feedback, at namihasa nang nagdedesisyon sa buhay ng mga nasa ibaba—aba’y ‘wag na ‘wag ma-feedback-an ang mga ‘yan, at maghahalo ang balat sa tinalupan. In English, the iskin will mix with the facial! I don’t think it’s uncanny. The higher we go up the pecking order, the more rarified the air. Breathing rarified air seems to make our egos so fragile. So, when we receive negative feedback without our ever asking for it, we get angry, we get defensive. And some, they get even.

‘E pa’no ‘yan? Even Jesus himself asked for feedback. “Peter, who do people say that I am? Eh, ikaw? Kayo? Who do you guys say that I am?” I don’t think Jesus was clicking for likes, shares, and thumbs-ups. He was never narcissistic. He asked for feedback. Isang napakamakapangyarihang tao, dared ask for feedback, never assumed he was beyond reproach. “You are the Messiah!” “Shhh! That’s not what I mean! Don’t say that!” Imagine? Jesus?

Ganda ‘yung salitang feedback. Real, sincere, and loving feedback nourishes. It feeds sinners back the nourishment that their hearts and souls had lost, so they can regrow, rehabilitate into goodness. Bad feedback feeds, too, but only the giver’s ego. Kung baga, Christ-like feedback helps the receiver float. Pharisaic feedback makes the giver gloat.

So, when was the last time you were given feedback, sisters and brothers?  And when was the last time you gave it? Were you the floater or the gloater?