Due Process

[A reflection on the Gospel for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, September 6, 2026, which may be found at this link: https://lectionary.episcopalchurch.org/lectionary-post/130?date=2026-09-06&year=Year%20A%20%2F%20II ]

It seems that summary conviction is the rule of the day. A sound bite or social media blurb hits the public and immediate judgements are formed, based on the various types of bias to which each recipient (yours truly included) is susceptible. A clever meme exploiting a factoid concerning a personality or issue seems to cover the globe, and in its wake condemnation rears its head within the half hour. The only difference between now and prior to social media is the speed of delivery. The speed of snap judgement has not changed in millennia. Those of us who remember the days of newsprint and party-line phones (look them up online if you have no idea what those are) remember juicy gossip spreading within twenty-four hours, national news a little slower, and international events had to wait for the six-o'clock news, but the harsh judgement was still immediate.

And so was the call for immediate consequences.

The Law of Moses introduced to Israel a concept of due process. Serious crimes had to be corroborated by witnesses. Lesser offenses called for immediate restitution. Grace, time to make amends, was not something for which it was noted, so when Our Lord called for His followers to adopt a posture of grace and to offer a period for repentance and restitution, that may have seemed a bit odd. He first demanded that differences be resolved if at all possible, between the disputants without involving anyone. If that did not resolve the issue, then it would be brought before some of the elders, people noted for wisdom and discernment, to hear the issue and perhaps to offer advice for resolution, but mostly to bear witness to the event. If it were still unresolved, then and only then would it be submitted to the assembly of the faithful, Holy Church, for its judgement on the matter. Then, and only then, could a judgement be issued and a settlement enforced. And the penalty? Not death. Nothing monetary. Just treat the offender as an outsider and not part of the fellowship, someone kept at arms length, dealt with as situation demands, but no longer close.

Among many believers today, especially those of us who preach inclusion and forgiveness, that seems harsh, unloving, and even un-Christian. Indeed, for those who do practice this discipline, it is harsh, unloving, and even un-Christian. Passages like this must be balanced with others like St. Peter's question of Our Lord whether one must forgive his brother his offenses up to seven times, and to which Our Lord replied that seven times was insufficient, but to forgive seventy-seven or seventy-times-seven (the Greek is a little vague here), a reference back to the legend of Lamech, a figure from the Book of Genesis noted for being particularly and viciously vindictive and vengeful. Our capacity to forgive is to be as infinite as Lamech's incapacity to forgive.

So how do we reconcile this? We have a conflict process that ends in, let's face it, excommunication, and a command to forgive lest we not be forgiven.

I think it is more than a via media, a middle-of-the-road approach. We must hold each other accountable for wrongdoing. We must protect each other from wrongdoing. However, we must also be ready to forgive each and every time. When the offender asks for reconciliation, we are bound by our relationship to God to forgive. That does not mean we let repeat offenders happen; we still need to provide safeguards. Still, we do not permanently write people off. Even St. Paul in his seeming inflexibility in the First Epistle of the Corinthians advocates mercy for the offender in the Second Letter to that Church to prevent the utter discouragement and destruction of the individual.

Care. Deliberation. Mercy. Forgiveness. Accountability. These all form part of the teaching of Our Lord. We have the power to bind and the power to loose. We also have the responsibility to use that power wisely and in accordance with Our Lord's teachings, all of His teachings. The goal is reconciliation, forgiveness, protection, and healing. Chaos and destruction, the hallmarks of our tendency to make snap judgements and permanent consequences, should never be our legacy.