Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Pharisees went to entrap Jesus. They disagreed with him, but they did not come to listen. They were not trying to understand what he had to say. They were not even looking for an honest conversation about their disagreement. They had already decided he was wrong. Now they wanted a reason to silence him, a reason to kill him.

And that decision closed them off to the very thing they needed to hear. The Lord gave them an answer worth thinking about, an answer that could have changed their relationship to the systems of power in their world. But they could not receive it. Their minds and hearts were closed because they had come only to trap him.

That same attitude has deeply infected our culture. We certainly see it in political discourse, and not just among politicians. We see it in ordinary conversations about politics. Too often, we are not interested in listening to one another, considering another possibility, or seeking the truth. We are interested in winning.

We decide that the other person is wrong, that their opinions are illegitimate. Then the only purpose of the conversation is to prove it. And often, even that is not enough. We are not satisfied with someone being wrong. We need them to look ridiculous as well. We may not execute people for their opinions, but we have no trouble destroying their character.

And it is not just politics. This attitude can enter every area of our lives. A conversation becomes an opportunity to dominate instead of an opportunity to listen. We no longer want to learn anything. We just want to be right. And when we live for the fight, for the next argument, we lose the ability to live in peace.

But none of us is right about everything. None of us is perfect. We all have something to learn. We all need to change our minds about some things and change our lives. If we approach one another as the Pharisees approached Jesus, we close ourselves off to that possibility. Whether the matter is important or small, we cannot discover the truth if we have already decided there is nothing for us to hear.

And this does not stop with our relationships with one another. The way we treat our neighbor eventually overflows into our relationship with God himself. If we cannot approach our brother with respect, with openness, with a willingness to listen even when we disagree, we will eventually bring that same closed heart to God. We close ourselves off to our neighbor, and then we close ourselves off to him. We stop listening to the very truth we claim to seek.

So we have to recover that willingness to respect one another. We have to acknowledge that we might be wrong, that we are not perfect, and that our neighbor, our brother, is worth hearing out.

That does not mean every opinion is equally valid or equally true. It does not mean we stop discerning what is right and wrong. It means we practice that discernment through honest dialogue, through respect and listening, and with the help of God.

We must open our hearts and minds to one another. We must cultivate a desire for truth that is stronger than our desire to dominate, stronger than our desire to appear correct. We have to want the truth more than we want to win the argument.

Then we will be able to hear God speaking to us. We will hear his truth above the noise of this world. And there we will discover peace and life. Those are the gifts our hearts should desire more than the satisfaction of merely looking right.