A
sermon based upon Matthew 7: 1-6
By
Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.
Flat
Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership,
Fifth
Sunday after the Epiphany, February 23rd, 2020
Charles
Schultz’s “Peanuts” and the Charlie Brown cartoons were always my favorite,
both as a child and as an adult. And it
certainly helps that the late Charles Schultz’s creativity was greatly impacted
and influenced by his own Christian faith.
I believe this to be one reasons his cartoons have had such endurance
and ‘staying power’.
For
example, in one of those famous cartoon’s, Linus has his security blanket in
place and his thumb resting in his mouth; he looks troubled. Turning to Lucy,
he asked,
“Why are you always so anxious to criticize
me?”
“I just think I have a knack for seeing other
people’s faults.”
Linus threw up his hands, “What about your
own faults?”
Without hesitation, Lucy explained, “I have a
knack for overlooking them.”
Schultz’
wit and wisdom found its source not only in humanity, but also from Jesus’ own ‘cartoon’. In today’s text, Jesus gives us a hilarious picture
of a person walking around with a ‘log’ in their eye while trying to find a
small ‘speck’ in another person’s eye. Jesus
makes the picture funnier, making people judge others look like they are
fumbling, bumbling idiots like Laurel and Hardy or The Three Stooges. Jesus asks: ‘How can you say to your
neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye, when there is a log in your
own?”
It’s
hard to miss the humor, but do we get the message? And what kind of message is this: “Do not
Judge?” At the end Jesus concludes
with an even stranger picture: “Don’t give what is holy to the dogs, and
don’t throw your pearls before swine!” What in the world does not judging others have
to do with logs, dogs, and hogs, and especially with pigs in pearls? Can you picture it?
DO
NOT JUDGE… (v. 1)
Let’s
begin with his command “Don’t judge!”
Who can actually follow that?
Even children at play can be very judgmental. On the playground children choose the ‘best’
to be on their team. Some are included,
others excluded. It can even be damaging
to young psyches; “We don’t want ‘four
eyes’ on our team!” He can’t
hit. She can’t throw. They can’t run. Pick her.
Pick him, but don’t pick them!
You know how it goes.
Children
can be brutal. For example, while visiting
a neighbor, five-year-old Andrew pulled out his kindergarten class picture and
began describing each classmate. "This is Robert; he hits everyone. This
is Stephen. He never listens to the teacher. This is Mark. He chases us and is
very noisy. And in the middle, this is me. I'm just sitting here minding my own
business."
As
disciples, Jesus makes our human tendency to judge others an issue in Christian
discipleship and it’s most relevant. God
has called us to be holy people, and to be live righteous lives as the salt of
the earth and as light for the world. Judging
what is wrong can be crucial and important, especially in a world like
ours. It’s more important now than ever,
“If you see something, say something!”
And that’s not just to promote right living, it can save lives too? But how do we ‘judge’ without being
judgmental? How do we say something,
without appearing to be condescending?
When we know that someone isn’t living by the standards we are, how do
we keep from judging them? As Jesus
implies, how can we promote what is right and point out what is wrong without
becoming hypocrites?
Once,
during a lecture on Christian Living at a New York Seminary, Christian Ethics
professor Stanley Hauerwas challenged those present: “We, the church, he
argued---we who follow Jesus Christ—should be happy and filled with joy so that
everyone who sees us will want the life we are living. They should want to follow Jesus because of
who we are and how we show Christ’s love.
We should, as Evelyn Underhill has said, be ‘contagious
Christians’. Unfortunately, we
Christians and we churches, and we preachers too, spend less time ‘infecting’ people
with Christ’s joy and more time ‘vaccinating’ people against Christ with our
poisonous, pious, judgmental attitudes.”
(Quoted
by Lucy Hogan in “Preaching the Sermon on the Mount”, Fleer and Bland, eds, p.
151).
Ouch! But he’s right. When we live right, do right, and preach
right, we can appear to have a high and mighty attitude that turns people away
from Christ rather than turns them toward Christ? Jesus’ warning goes to the heart of what it
means, as the saying goes, to hate the sin, but still love the sinner? In a world that is filling up and running
over with the kinds of sin and evil that send a whole nation ‘down the tubes’,
how can do we name the sin, without condemning the sinner? Even more
importantly, how can we become more ‘contagious’ as Christians, infecting
people with Christ’s joy more than we vaccinate people against Christ with
“poisonous, pious, judgmental attitudes.”
…YOU
WILL BE JUDGED
Interestingly,
this very kind of question of how to ‘love a sinner’ arose early in the history
of Christianity among a community of monks lived separated from the world. They were living in the Egyptian desert in an
attempt to leave the sinful world behind so they could follow Christ perfectly. One day, however, one among their brotherhood
had committed a serious sin. That sin threatened their community of ‘perfect’ living. The council met and requested the main Teacher
to attend a meeting to judge their brother. When the teacher refused to come,
they sent an urgent delegation to require his presence.
“Since you insist,” he said, “I will come in
half an hour.”
When
he arrived, the Teacher entered the room carrying a leaking water jug on his
back. Members of the council asked, “Teacher, what is this?”
He replied: “All day long my sins run out
behind me and I am unaware of them. Yet despite my blindness to my own sin,
today I am being asked by you to judge the error of another.” When the brothers
understood the Teacher was implying, instead of condemning their brother, they
forgave him and said nothing more about his sin.
But
here’s exactly the challenge, isn’t it?
Their brother had sinned. He
needed correction and help too. To have refused
to point out his sin could have brought him and their community hurt and harm. If they overlooked his sin, he could have
continued in his sin and it would show that his brothers didn’t care about what
he did, nor did they really cared about their community. The problem the Teacher was pointing out was
not simple their ‘judgment’ of what was or wasn’t a wrong, but that they were rushing
to judgement without being open and honest about their own sins and failures. The Teacher’s point was that he, nor they,
were as perfect as they thought they were.
Maybe
it’s because people are feeling so much pain and hurt these days that our
culture today gladly hears Jesus words: “Don’t
Judge, lest you be judged!”
Political correctness is in vogue
and all the buzz. Today, it can appear
to be more important to be keep our mouths shut, to look the other way and to
be kind and nice, than it is to speak up about what is right or wrong. In an increasingly violent, cruel, and hateful
world, pointing out another’s wrongs or faults, might even be dangerous and
more trouble than its worth.
But
does this really promote a better future, when we allow no one to point out to
us what is right and what is wrong? Do
we really want to live in a world where nothing matters? Do we want a world where no one cares what we
do, and we are left alone to our own devices, where we overlook almost everything
so that we end up with no standards, no ethics, or we make no judgments at all?
THE
LOG IN YOUR EYE… (v. 3)
Although
Jesus clearly warns, “Don’t judge, lest you be judged, he also says a
couple of other very important things too.
We are only getting half of the picture if we stop with ‘Don’t
judge…’.
The
next thing Jesus says is exactly what the monetary Teacher implied. Before we ‘see the speck’ in someone
else’s eye, we must see the ‘log’ sticking out of our own. Again, it’s a funny picture, but Jesus is saying
something very serious. What Jesus means is that when we follow him, we
must never think that we are better than anyone or everyone else. Even when we have the light of Jesus shining
in us and when we something going wrong, we must still be careful in how we
address another’s failures or faults.
Besides, pointing out someone else’s faults isn’t what being a Christian
means. That’s the Holy Sprit’s job, not
ours. Besides, as Christians, we’re
supposed to be like Jesus. This means
that our primary work is to be about trying to rescue people from their sin,
not condemning or judging people about their sin. Judging people is a log in our compared to the
speck in them.
When
a few of us where studying about how to sponsor a Dinner Church in our
communities, Verlon Fosner, the founder of the Dinner Church movement, reminded
us that in this increasingly secular world, where Christians and churches are
less attended and much less understood, churches need to be more about rescuing
people than judging them. Making this
more specific, he explained that our primary agenda should be creating
opportunities to care, to love, and to listen to people and their struggles, rather
than focusing on fixing them. He also said
that too often we in the church have thought that it is our primary saving and
rescuing task to get people to confess their sins, then we can introduce them
to Jesus. But he advised, that if we
really want to offer healing and help, we need to bring Jesus to them. We bring Jesus to them, he said, when we,
through love and mercy, invite them to the healer. The path toward rescuing does not begin with
overcoming sin, but it begins with Jesus.
Jesus is the healer. We overcome
our struggles and our sins through him.
What
Fosner is saying is that we all need Jesus, before any of us can honestly
confront and challenge our sins and shortcomings. And this right way to confront and to challenge
ourselves begins when the Spirit of Jesus is with us. And if you’re going to point out any sin,
whether in you, in the world, or in
anyone else, you must be with Jesus so you admit your own sin first. For only when you put your own struggle and
weaknesses on the table first, can you talk to anyone about theirs. Fosner, in his Dinner Table Approach, called
this naming our ‘limitations’ first, which invites a safe place where someone
else can freely share their own ‘limitations.’ This is the only way we can keep
from becoming ‘hypocrites’ in our work and witness. And just like we would be patient and kind to
ourselves, we should show kindness, compassion and show consideration of others,
even when they have failed us.
Back
during the 70’s, I once heard the youthful Christian singer, Sammy Hall sing a wonderful
song in a Statesville church, that later Glenn Campbell recorded and made very popular. That song had a special message about not
being judgmental, even if we see someone ‘falling by the way’. Do you remember? It went:
If
you see your brother standing by the road
With
a heavy load from the seeds he's sowed.
And
if you see your sister falling by the way
Just
stop and say, you're going the wrong way.
You
got to try a little kindness, Yes show a little kindness
Just
shine your light for everyone to see. And if you try a little kindness
Then
you'll overlook the blindness. Of narrow-minded people on the narrow-minded
streets.
What
I love about that song is that it works both ways, just like Jesus’ words
do. It’s not only reminds us not to be
‘narrow-minded’ judgmental people, but it also reminds us that we should show
kindness when we stop and say to someone, ‘Your’re going the wrong way!” Did you catch that? And where does this attitude of kindness
come from? How do we overcome the ‘blindness’
of seeing someone else’s sin but failing to see or admit our own? Kindness
grows in us when we realize that the judgement we dish out, will be dished out
back upon us. ‘Kindness’ overcomes ‘blindness’ when we, as
Jesus says, first see the ‘log’ in our own eye first. When we face, understand, learn about, and
confront our own ‘limitation’ or struggle first. When we realize how much we also need
kindness, we will then be able to see how much others need the same. This is why we must ‘see the log in our own
eye first’. As a wise childhood saying goes:
“There is so much good in the worst of us, And so much bad in the best of us,
That
it hardly behooves any of us To talk
about the rest of us.”
YOU
WILL SEE CLEARLY… (v.5)
But
seeing the log in our own eye, and then showing kindness those who struggle in
sin, doesn’t mean that a wrong or sin shouldn’t be confronted at all. This is why Jesus concludes that after we ‘take
out the log from our own eye’ we can then ‘see clearly’ ‘to take
out the speck from our neighbor’s eye.’
This
reminds us that Jesus surely isn’t saying that we should never confront sins,
deal with hurts, become accountable, seek fairness and work toward justice in
life. If we didn’t confront wrongs, relationships
would remain in ruin and fellowship with others would remain shallow, if not
impossible. Ignoring sin or wrongs was never
Jesus’ intent. Jesus’ point is that we only
do this as fellow strugglers.
During
the 1930's a woman came asking the great Gandhi to get her little boy to stop
eating sugar; it was doing him harm. He gave a cryptic reply: "Please come
back next week.” The woman left puzzled but returned a week later. The Mahatma
said to the young fellow, "Please don't eat sugar. It is not good for
you." Then he joked with the boy for a while, gave him a hug, and sent him
on his way. The mother, unable to contain her curiosity, lingered behind,
"Bapu, why didn't you say this last week when we came? Why did you make us
come back again?" Gandhi smiled.
"Last week," he said, "I too was eating sugar."
We
only confront sin and wrongs, with the understanding that we are sinners too. This is why I want to conclude with two
assumptions Jesus had, which supported his command not to judge. The first assumption that we aren’t God. And because we aren’t God, we are never able
to judge completely or absolutely; only God can. This is the main reason we shouldn’t judge others. Of course, we have to confront wrongs and damaging
sins, but if we starting judging others we are playing God, and that puts us in
danger of God’s judgment. The second assumption
is that there is only one righteous judgement that we can make now---that
judgement is love. Now, this doesn’t
mean we let every thing go in the name of love, but it means that love is the
only way that God judges, because God is love.
Scripture says that we are “all sinners” and “no one is
righteous, not one single one”.
And
what has God decided to judge the world?
Scripture says that he has turned all judgement over to the Son. “For God so loved, that the gave his only Son,
that whoever believes in him, will not perish, but have ever lasting life.” The judgement God pronounces on the world is
that God is love, and that we are sinners---we fall short of that love. And in a situation like that, God has offered
us forgiveness—all of us. Through the
life and death of Jesus, God has offered the world his Son, as the final
sacrifice, the once and for all offer to forgive our sins. This is what I mean, that love is how judges
the world right now.
This
does not mean there isn’t a final judgment, a time when God will make a final
judgement based upon the deeds we have done, and the life we have lived. Scripture, both among Jews and Christians, has
always asserted God’s right to be the final judge. But for now, right now, in our lives, God’s
judgement is love---and our Judgments must be also be offers of forgiving love
toward one another. In the parallel passage to Matthew’s, Luke’s
gospel adds a clarifying word about forgiveness: “Do not judge, and you will
not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you
will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you. A good measure,
pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the
measure you give will be the measure you get back." (Lk. 6:37-38 NRS)
Interestingly,
for those of you who are familiar with Shakespeare, will remember that one of
Shakespeare’s plays is named for this passage in Luke, “Measure for Measure”. In that play Shakespeare tells of a Lord who
goes away, and leaves his assistant Angelo in charge. Angelo begins to rule in very harsh, condemning,
unforgiving ways, and is remined by one of those he harmed, that he might
someday need God’s mercy which God provided in Christ. The lady warns in Shakespearian language:
“If
He, which is the top of Judgment, should But Judge you as you are?
O,
think on that; And mercy then will breathe within your lips, Like man made new.” (Measure for Measure Acts 2, Scene).
This
is something we all should think on, and our judgements would be ‘made new’
too. When Jesus said, “God did not send
to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him….”
(Jn. 3:17), why would we ever dare think that God has sent us to do what the Son
didn’t do? Our job is to get the ‘log’
out of our eye, so we can help our neighbor with their ‘speck’. We only help our neighbor with their ‘speck’
because they have come to us, knowing that we will love them and not condemn.
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