Today’s Old Testament readings show how a “vengeful” “Lord” polices people, “he remembers people’s sin in detail,” but the “Lord” also “could not refuse mercy.” Today’s Gospel reading has Peter wondering about sin and mercy, “If my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus diverts from the Old Testament Lord system, because his answer is to forgive everyone, all the time, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.”
Readings about Lords who police people’s personal sins and exemplify their mercy, are myths. In this context myth means fictional stories written to glorify such Lords. These myths are written by believers who care about Lords and believe the Lords care about them. Sin is therefore presented as personal fault and not as the sinful social structures Lords construct. Sinful social structures would include the military and its derivative sheriffs, National Guard, and ICE. These derivative Lords, usually drawn from the common people, don’t police the Lord class but rather, they police common people. The policing done by Lords includes two tactics. As shown in the Old Testament readings, society’s Lords are made synonymous with THE “Lord,” a vengeful deity who polices personal sin but shows his care through mercy, if we beg. Another tactic is claiming personal sin is disobedience to that Lord and his derivative Lords – not that sin is social structures, like the supremacist policing system the Lords operate. Common people are coerced to accept the sinful Lord structure and consequently live in a state of perpetual guilt, feeling the need to beg Lord’s and their police for mercy. We’re certainly not supposed to challenge the Lord system. We know that’s blasphemy and we’d be targeted, for example with malicious criminal investigations, termination of our talk show, law license, university position, government job, as well as denied our funding or our legal status, and even killed, though we’re unarmed. The Catholic Church, historically part of the Lord system, thus rarely addressed social sin. It began to do so and began to dare blasphemy during the Industrial Revolution. During this current week of Labor Day, as the Trump led GOP has been destroying labor – its collective bargaining, jobs, safety agencies, and wage protections – we remember the Church’s social encyclical, On the Condition of Labor (1891). The Church drew world-wide attention to the social sin of the Lord class, when it wrote about the appalling condition of labor for common people, whose attempts for relief were met with violent police. It wasn’t because conditions had gotten so much worse for common people, but because mass communication, including photography, had gotten so much better. The myth of the Lord system continues to be challenged in the modern era as common people’s suffering continues to be made horrifically obvious and so too the Lord class’ social sin. How do we forgive structures of sin? We don’t; structures aren’t human, like corporations aren’t people. Jesus’ admonition to forgive unceasingly, seventy-seven times, is how we lovingly respond to all the people who operate the social sin system, which includes common people. We challenge and convert its operators, holding its Lords accountable as needed. We thus collapse the sinfully structured society and establish a loving community in its place. This dynamic is currently happening across the U.S. For example, over the Labor Day weekend, 7 clergy were arrested for blocking ICE workers from gaining access to their office site in Vermont. In place of Militarism’s structured sin, this Vermont community is offering training for people to form observation teams on the streets and legal representation teams at court hearings. They’ve also established alternative homes that are new sanctuary communities. By structuring sin into the operations of society, Lords don’t limit their destruction. They universalize it. Common people who operate Lords’ structures of social sin are not immune to its destruction. It’s important we forgive common people and invite them to join us in a new Way when they realize they’ve previously been guilty of believing ancient myths about Lords.
“It is necessary for the oppressors to approach the people in order, via subjugation, to keep them passive. This… does not involve being with the people, nor [through] true communication. It is accomplished by the oppressors depositing myths indispensable to the preservation of the status quo: for example, the myth that the oppressive order is a “free society”… the myth that the dominant elites, “recognizing their duties,” promote the advancement of the people, so that the people, in a gesture of gratitude, should accept the words of the elites and be conformed to them; the myth that rebellion is a sin against God.” (Paulo Freire
Prayer: Beautiful Spirit, guide our imagination and our practices to create a new community together.
Question: How have I been a believer in myths about Lords?
September 13, 2026 Gospel Matthew 18:21-35 Twenty Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
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