Today’s Gospel Tells How To Become The Best Version Of You

“As iron is sharpened by iron, so one person sharpens another.”

Another amazing text! I am sure everybody is waiting to hear this one because you know how we love forgiveness; you know how we love to tell people they’re doing wrong, we love to hear that we’re doing wrong; we love to have the opportunity for growth when other people point out weaknesses to us. We just sometimes can’t wait until the next person comes to us and says to us, ‘you know, I think you’re doing wrong you know because I think so so so. I don’t think you’re looking at this carefully you know.’ Correct?

You know the counterpoint of our present culture, Pope John XXIII when he was a senior seminarian, he used a junior seminarian to help him by pointing out the ways in which he was not living faithfully as a seminarian. So it’s not just that he would have welcomed feedback when it came, but that he actively solicited feedback from a junior to say to him the ways in which he can improve and the ways in which he could be a much better seminarian, a much better disciple, a much better man, and a much better man of God.

Feedback is the breakfast of champions. Feedback is the breakfast of champions, and one thing that is really clear in our culture today is that we’re starving for breakfast, or we are not champions. Take your pick. Which one do you want? In reality, we do not like feedback. We don’t do it well, and often when we do it, we make such a mess of it, that sometimes we cause more muddle than what was there in the first place. So let’s go through our gospel for today and let’s really try to hear and ask the Holy Spirit to help you to hear because this is not an easy text for us in our culture because our culture mitigates against so much of what this text is saying.

We live in this time of relativism where you have your truths, and I have my truths, and therefore if you see something, well you could see that because that’s your truth. If I see something different, well I could see it because it’s my truth. There is nothing like objective truth, and therefore you with your truth and me with mine, you stay to your side of the story, let me stay to my side, and let’s be happy together. With relativism, there is no consciousness that what we really should be doing between us is striving for the truth, and the truth has a name – his name is Jesus Christ. “I am the way the truth and the life,” Jesus said in John 14:6. There’s no sense that we should be striving for the truth, in other words, that what you have might be partial, and what I have might be partial, and unless we challenge each other to grow so that we can come to the next place where we come closer to seeing the truth as the truth really is. That is one of the great challenges that we have.

There’s a wonderful proverb – and I forget the number. I think is 19 – that says, “As iron sharpens iron, so too people sharpen each other and help them to grow in the ways of God.” (Ref. Proverbs 27: 17) If you don’t have somebody in your life that is as hard as you are against whom you are constantly interacting, then you’re going to get as dull as a butter knife, and when you get as dull as a butter knife, you know you’re going nowhere because you can’t cut anything. It is only when you have somebody who is as hard as you are – iron, and is willing to rub against you – iron, then sharpness happens, and that sharpness is what is required if we are going to live in the kingdom of God.

So when we say I’m okay and you’re okay, and let me just stay okay and so we don’t sharpen each other, we avoid all conflict, we avoid all forms of challenge, we stay in our corner, we let you stay in your corner, what we have is a flabby, soft society, where spiritually we are decaying and dying because there is no sharpness that is happening, and there is no sharpening up for the sake of God.