09/06/26 Blind Spots: Gossip

0:00Welcome to Sunday Homelies with me, Father Mike Schmitz. I hope today's homelie inspires and motivates you, and I also hope that it leaves you hungry for the one who gave everything to feed you. If you want to get this, another Sunday Mass Resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up at ascensionpress.com slash Sunday, or by texting Sunday to 33777. You can also follow or subscribe on your podcast app for weekly notifications. God bless. The Lord be with you. We are your spirit. And reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew. Glory to you all, Lord. Chapter 18 verses 15 through 20. Jesus said to his disciples, If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have one over your brother. If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses,

1:00if he refuses to listen to them, tell the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector. Amen. I say to you, whatever you bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven. And whatever you lose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again, amen. I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by my Heavenly Father. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, they're am I in the midst of them, the gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord, Jesus Christ. By each devisee. So I don't know if you can remember the first time you ever heard a recording of your own voice. If this is one of the situations where I'm like, okay, hard dislike, hard dislike on that. I just do it with the shock, the shock of like, wait a second, that's what I sound like to other people. I do not like the sound of my own voice.

2:01And similar to, in videos, I remember that sense of like, here's a video of me. I'm like, wait, that's how I stand? I didn't see that angle ever before. I remember my little brother at one point, we were at the Mount of Beatitudes in Israel. We had a pilgrimage together. And he took this video of me walking by the Mount of Beatitudes. And I swear it was like footage of watching Bigfoot. I'm like, that's how I walk. Like, oh my goodness, that's so embarrassing. That's what other people can see. And I realized there are parts of yourself that you've never seen. Like, think about that. There are things about you that, that's you. Parts of yourself you've never seen. You just even think of your face. Yes, we've seen our face in the mirror. We've seen our face in photographs. We've seen our face in videos maybe or a face time. But you have never seen your own face. The way other people see it. The truth is, in some ways, you've never seen yourself. Like, you've never seen yourself look away from a mirror.

3:04You've never seen yourself fall asleep. You've never seen yourself sneeze. You've never seen the exact angle of the back of your head that if you were in church right now, people would be looking right at right now in this moment. And I think it's so funny because as people, we can be so preoccupied by our own appearance. We can be so preoccupied by what we can see. And it can ruin our day sometimes. They see ourselves in the mirror and like, oh my gosh, my ears, my nose, my face, whatever the thing is. And realize that's only one angle of you. There's many other angles that you could be disappointed in. That's not the call, obviously. The reality, of course, is there are things about us that are obvious to everyone. But there are invisible to me. The things about all of us that are obvious to everyone around us, but they're invisible to us. Those are our blind spots. It's there. I just don't see what's already there.

4:05So what we're going to do is starting today, starting this Labor Day weekend. We're starting a new series for the next number of weeks actually. We are going to dive deeply into this. This reality that every one of us has blind spots. In fact, I've been captivated by this reality for, I mean, probably a couple of decades, a number of years ago, maybe almost 20 years ago, I came across a sermon by a guy named John Henry Cardinal Newman. It was called on secret faults or on secret sins. Based off Psalm 19 where it says, from hidden faults, equip me, oh God, basically Newman pointed out that there are so many things in our lives that we are everyone else can see. They're obvious to everyone else, but they're blind spots to us. They're hidden faults to us. That there are some things in our spiritual lives that are obvious. And also there are some things in our spiritual lives that we dislike. There are some things in our spiritual lives we can see and we're ashamed of. But the blind spots are those invisible vices. The blind spots are those like acceptable sins. You know what we even say something like, well, I'm not angry, I'm just passionate. No, I'm not entitled.

5:05I just know what I deserve. Or we say things like, I'm not worried. I'm just responsible. I just care. Or I'm not indifferent to God. I don't ignore God. I'm just busy. And the sins that we repent over the ones that we can see, but the dangerous ones are the sins that I've renamed. And so this reality, of course, is that those become our blind spots. Those, there are the sins that we hide, the ones we're ashamed of. But there's also those sins that they hide themselves. And we might even call them acceptable sins. Because we're not afraid to talk about them. We're not afraid to even confess them. Because we're not ashamed of them. And because we just think they're small, but they're not small. There's sins for which we've developed socially acceptable excuses. These blind spots in our lives. And I think it's fascinating. When do we talk about sin? Let's go talk about sin for just one second. Whenever we talk about sin, because we're going to talk about sin for the next six weeks, we talk about sin. A lot of people will have this objection. They'll say things like, well,

6:06how can that be a sin? It doesn't hurt anybody. First, two things about that. Number one, hurting someone has never been a criterion for something to be a sin. I just keep that in mind. That even that the word sin is an archery term. And it means to miss the mark. So if there's a target for life, if there's a target for our spiritual lives, target for our character, that's the bullseye. To sin is to not hit the target. Right? To sin is to miss the mark. To not hit that goal. To not be that person we're called to be. That's first, I actually, I didn't say this. There's a better definition of sin. It's not really definition. It's something I kind of formulated. And because sin, to miss the mark means like, it seems like I made an error. It seems like it just didn't do well. We have to realize that as Christians, sin is relational. As Christians, sin is personal. It's not just missing the mark. It's not just breaking a rule. Not just hurting somebody.

7:07Sin is when I say to God, God, I know what you want. I don't care. I want what I want. It's personal. It's relational. That's the first thing. Sin was never has to hurt someone to be a sin. But the second part about this is that our blind spots, our blind spots are those invisible vices, those acceptable sins. They often do more to damage not only our souls, but also our relationships with God with others. And that's why we have to look at these. So here's the first one today. So we're starting to actually start with the gospel. Here's Jesus. And what does he say? He says, okay, basically, if you're going to be at my disciple, if your brother sins against you, go and go and dot, dot, dot. Go on what? If your brother sins against you, go on what? His question, what do we do? Jesus says, go and tell him his sin or his fault between you and him alone. So what do we do? I think we go, and I think we tell. But I think we go and tell everyone, except for the person who's involved.

8:08And then this, this first blind spot, we have to look at this weekend is, is something that every one of us has been hurt by. This is the crazy thing about it. It's, it's, it's, it's something that every one of us hates when we see it in others. But we are willing to compromise when it's ourselves. We say things like, well, I'm just processing. The term is gossip. Say, no, I'm just processing. Which apparently means I need to tell three people what I, what they did so I can figure out how I feel about her. Like I can actually get, I can't, I don't, I don't actually know my feelings until four people get involved. And I get to share with them that, no, it's not processing. It's just gossip. We say, no, it's not gossip. It's just, I'm just concerned. I'm concerned. It being concerned is what, being concerned is gossip with a halo on. Basically, being concerned is this, is that sense of like, oh, have you heard about this person? I'm so concerned. You know, it's incredible how much information is required for our concern that we realize, if we realize that talking badly about someone is just repackaged as,

9:12this is just information. It's not gossip. It's, I'm just, I'm just telling the truth. It's not gossip. I'm just telling the truth. Which is interesting because, you know, there's two kinds of gossip. We have calumny, which is false. A falsehood about someone. We have detraction, which is a truth, a negative truth about somebody. And so, no, it's not gossip. I'm just telling the truth. Well, you're right. It's not calumny. Congratulations. It's attraction. But true doesn't mean mine to tell. It's not gossip. I'm just, I'm just praying for them. I don't know if you've ever had those in church where they open up, you know, prayers of the faithful to anybody for, for what else shall we pray? And someone's like, you know, well, pray for Suzanne and Bill because Suzanne, she found photos on Bill's phone that you don't want to hear about. Like, that's an announcement prayer. Like, all of those things are ways we've repackaged this deadly thing called gossip. It's called gossip. And I don't think it's overstating it to claim that gossip is one sin that has done more to devastate more lives, to destroy more relations, more friendships,

10:13to corrode more parishes, more communities, more campus ministries, than virtually any other sin. Because gossip is a poison. It poisons the culture. Poisons the culture. And when gossip is tolerated, it's one of those situations where it gives a signal. It gives a signal to everybody. Like, oh, this is here. You guys, I guess that's gossip is part of this friend group. I guess gossip is part of this that's tolerated in this family. I guess gossip is tolerated in this campus minister. The gossip is tolerated in this congregation. Gossip is tolerated in this community. And this is crazy thing. Gossip is the one sin where we can destroy someone's reputation. And it feels like we haven't done anything. I was just talking. You can even ask the question, are you supposed to say nothing? Like, Father, are you supposed to do nothing? Are you supposed to pretend that nothing is wrong?

11:14Well, no, look at the gospel again. The gospel in the gospel. Jesus says, if you have a problem, do something. What do what? Say something to the person alone in private. He doesn't say if that doesn't help, stop. He says, if that doesn't help, bring along one or two other people. So you can, he doesn't say go immediately to the nuclear option, where everyone has to know. Jesus has to go back to them. It's not that this, whatever the thing is, can't become public. But the question is, what are you doing? What are we doing with our words? The scripture talks a lot about what we do with our words. In Ephesians chapter four, he says, no foul language should come out of your mouth. It says, but only say the things that people need to hear, things that will really actually help them. St. James, this is good for those of us who chew up for church and stuff. We think we're faithful, we think we're religious,

12:15we think we have this relationship with God. James chapter one, he says this, he says, if anyone thinks he's religious, but doesn't bridle his tongue, his religion is useless. No matter what you do in this church, if you don't bridle your tongue, if you gossip, what you do in this church is useless, his religion is vain, he says. So we know that. Okay, that's great. So why do we do it? I think that's a great question. Why do we do it? I think, well, one is, I usually gossip is interesting. I mean, let's be honest. Gossip is, if you have a piece of gossip, you have a piece of information, for a little bit, at least you get some attention, for a little bit, at least you get to be important. Another reason why we gossip is for the scientists say, it's called social cohesion. In fact, there was a ethno-lingus, his name is Philip Riley. He said this, he said gossip is the most important social channel for reaffirmation of shared values.

13:15It does something. You share this gossip and yeah, people are inside, people are outside, but that's the part of it. Is it, it makes us feel connection. That's what we gossip, that's what we listen to gossip, because we feel connected. It's one of those, it makes sin feel like intimacy. We gossip because we want to be included. And the quickest way to make an us is to talk about them. We just think about how many times, even growing up, maybe junior high, maybe high school, maybe college, at some point in your life, you just don't want to be left out. I mean, how many times did you go to the thing you didn't want to go to, just because you knew that there would be people there that if you weren't there, you would be excluded. That's one of the reasons why a woman named Mel Robbins, she said this, she said, if gossip, she said, if they're doing it with you, they are definitely doing it about you. That's one of the reasons why we gossip.

14:16Another reason we gossip is we just sit there and think, well, I need to let someone in, right? Like, I need to let someone know what's going on in my life, like what I'm going through. And that's not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing to do. But we have to ask at least three questions. What I need to let someone in, what I need to, we call it venting, what I need to get this out. We need to ask three questions. Number one is, am I simply just recruiting them to my team? Like, when it comes to this, I just need to say this thing that's really hard about someone else. Am I just recruiting them to my team? Am I just trying to get them on my side? Am I just trying to say, like, yes, I've been unjustly hurt and just, I want you to agree with me. Secondly, we have to ask is, whatever I'm sharing, is this mine? If I'm dealing with my stuff, yeah, I'm, I mean, I need to process what I'm going through. I need to process my emotions. That's fine. That's okay. But the story I'm sharing, is this my story? Or even is this my story to share? Or is this someone else's story? And it's not my story to share. And the third question we get to ask is, is this even relevant?

15:19Is it? I heard this as one of my favorite definitions of gossip. Is this gossip is speaking of someone's faults or someone's flaws with no intention of helping them at all? Gossip is speaking if someone else is false or someone else is false with absolutely no intention of helping them at all. But if it is, does it have the intention of helping someone else or helping yourself? Then there's no gossip. I remember talking to a man. He was one point, he was his first experience of leading a team. He was like a co-manager with a bunch of other managers. And at one point, he said he found himself talking with one of the other managers about one of their employees and one of their, you know, people's subordinates. And he said, we had to kind of talk about this guy. And you know, some negative stuff, you know, just that he was bringing to work. And he wasn't performing the way he wanted him to perform. And he said, I felt so badly because I felt like gossiping about that guy. The reality, of course, is if he's simply talking about his performance, that was his job. His job was to evaluate this person's performance and give him feedback to help him grow. If they started talking about his private life in a way that had nothing to do with his work,

16:21then that would be gossip. His gossip is what? Speaking of someone's faults or their flaws, with no intention of helping them at all. And it is so devastating. And here's a last little passage from Scripture. It's from Proverbs 16. I've started from Proverbs 6. Now, you're not often going to find a person in the Bible that says what God hates. There are some in the Bible. It says God hates these things. But Proverbs 6, 16-19, gives seven things that God hates. First couple, he says God hates haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood. But the final thing that Proverbs 6 says that God hates is one who soes discord among his brothers and sisters. God hates gossip. Because it's so deadly. Because when you think about this, even an apology doesn't undo gossip. There's a story about St. Philip near a year ago,

17:22who at some point, St. Philip nearer was trying to express the devastation that was dating quality of gossip. And someone had come to him and said, you know, Father, what do I do about gossip? I apologize already. And it seems like they're not really forgiving me. And St. Philip nearer, he said this, he said, okay, go home. You know, get a feather pillow. And take that feather pillow and go to, you know, a high hill outside the town. And top of that high hill, open the pillow out and shake out all of the feathers. And let the wind blow them all away. Come down the mountain, wait for a bit, and go back up and collect every one of those feathers. When you can collect every one of those feathers, then the gossip will be undone. But if you can't, there will never be a time when what you've uttered, when what you've said, when what you've done can be undone. Apologies, obviously, apologies matter,

18:23but they cannot undo the damage. So here's the question, what do we do? This is what we do with this. There's a man named St. Jefferson Fisher. Jefferson Fisher, I really like Jefferson Fisher. He is a lawyer down south. He has a kind of a slow, kind of fun way to talk in that. I don't share necessarily. He's a lawyer. And at one point, he said he was getting done with his work. And before he drove home, sitting in his car and he brought out of his phone, and he just recorded a quick little 30, 60 second message about communication. He's very good communicator. Just here's some principles for communication. Posted it on TikTok and Instagram and whatnot. And it just blew up. I mean, he's fantastic. He has a book. And he's talking about, he said, he said, here's three ways to stop gossip. I want to share those with you. But before I share Jefferson Fisher's three ways of stopping gossip, the reality of course is those are just tools. And we will not be able to use those tools unless we have three aspects of our character. Because we can get tools all every day.

19:24But unless we're willing to have a character change, those tools won't help. The first thing we need in our character is we need conviction. We actually need to realize that no gossip is deadly. And I just need to be able to let go of excuses. And the fact that I oftentimes tolerate gossip in my life. I tolerate that as a blind spot. And sometimes it's, well, it's not about, I'm not talking about people. I'm talking about like the company. I'm not talking about people. I'm talking about the church. I'm not talking about people. I'm talking about the leadership. And this is Dave Ramsey, big fan of Dave Ramsey. At one point Dave was talking about this. In fact, he said in his company, Ramsey Solutions, he says, we do not tolerate gossip as a culture for our company. He said that he defined gossip like this. He said, when a negative is discussed with everyone, oh, sorry, when a negative is discussed with anyone who can't solve the problem, that's gossip. It doesn't have to be just about so and so, or that person to this person. It can be about, I think the sale strategy is all bad. He says you get one, you get one strike.

20:26You can gossip once. You get one warning. After that, you're fired. He says in our company's culture, we don't tolerate gossip. He says in a company though, of course, like any situation, any family, any congregation, any campus ministry, you're going to have problems. You have to address those problems. But gossip is when a negative is discussed with anyone who can't solve the problem. He said the way you solve the problem is you feed it up the food chain. You address it. We have to have that conviction that gossip has no place in my life. Not a gossip about a person, gossip about a company, gossip about a congregation, have to have that conviction. Second thing I need is I need courage. Any one of us knows this because every one of us has been in a place where someone's gossiping and we didn't know what to do or we didn't know what to do, but we're afraid to do it. It goes, we know this. The truth is, even if I've chosen not to play, that doesn't mean they're going to stop. So I have to be willing to not only be convicted that this doesn't belong in my life, but also I have to have the courage that I may not play.

21:28And they'll keep on going. And the third thing I need to my heart, their character I need as I need love, St. Paul's headed to the Romans today. Romans chapter 13, he says, Oh, nothing to anyone except to love one another. We realize love can be difficult that love wills the good. And if I love someone, it means sometimes I may not, may not be able to speak. And if I love someone, it may mean sometimes, I have to say the hard thing. And it's vastly harder when I have a problem with a brother or a sister to go to them directly in private and address it. And it is to go to everyone else. What does Jesus say about this? He says, if he listens to you, you've won your brother. The goal is to win, not win an argument. The goal is to win your brother. So I need these three things. I need conviction, I need courage, and I need love. And then Jefferson Fisher says this. Because if someone around you is getting married, because if someone around you is getting here, this is the one that's free.

22:29If someone around you is gossiping, here's three things you could say. Number one, he says, you just say, I don't have an opinion on that. Someone's going on and on about, did you hear about someone so they're doing this? You know, I don't have an opinion on it. He even said that, I love how he said this. He said, he said, if they keep going and keep going, just say their name. Hey, Mike, you know, I got to say, I don't have an opinion on that. And you don't have to have an opinion on something. Remember, years ago when OJ Simpson was on trial, and he'd be a few of this example before, when OJ Simpson's on trial, and people were saying, what do you think? Was he guilty or not? I'm like, I don't know. I have not followed the court case. I've seen headlines. I have no idea. I have no opinion on that. It's a way to shut down the conversation. I'm not going to play. Second thing he says, you can do this. He can say, someone's going on and on about, have you, oh my gosh, have you heard about faith? Like, I don't know. There's something going on with her and her boyfriend. I'd want to do to say this. To say, well, do you want to talk to him about it? Trees calling? He said that almost always deflates the situation,

23:32that sense of, like, no, I don't want to resolve the issue. I want to talk about them. I don't want to talk to them. I don't want to solve the problem. I just want to spread the rumor. And I remember something that Tom Holland, you know, Spiderman, one said, Tom Holland one said this. He said, he said, if you have a problem with me, text me. And if you don't have my number to text me, then you don't know me well enough to have a problem with me. Someone's gossiping. You know what? You want to talk to him about it? And third thing he said is, he said, when someone's gossiping saying, I'm processing this, like, I don't know. Have you heard about Mitch? He's doing all these things. Just say, huh? He doesn't sound right. Because that sense of, like, you know, I know Mitch. And that doesn't sound like him. He says, just watch how quickly, how quickly the conversation comes to a close because it's just a kind, polite, but courageous way of saying, I'm not playing. It's like, you know what? You don't have an opinion on that. Hey, should we call him? Want me to talk to him about it?

24:33Or just, hmm. And then the sound right. All of those are ways that we can actually live love. And this is the last thing. Again, for the next six weeks, we're going to be looking at these blind spots. And there's going to be, there's going to be these acceptable sins that we just tolerate in our lives. But if we're going to actually be like Jesus and live like Jesus, we need to have those three characters in our heart. We need to have conviction that I know this. I'm willing, I get the behavior that I'm willing to tolerate. I'm not going to tolerate this in me or anyone else. I have to encourage, either not say or to say the thing, the only those things that build up people around me, things they need to hear, things that will really help them. More than anything else I need love. I need enough love for the person in front of me or the enough love for the person who's not in the room right now. To do the hard thing.

25:36That's what these next six weeks are about. But, I'll be coming more like Jesus by opening our eyes to our blind spots.