Foundations for Kingdom Life: First Things First

August 1, 2010

Williamsburg, Iowa

Luke 6:39-42

“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; 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.”

He also told them a parable: “Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit? A disciple is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully qualified will be like the teacher. Why do you see the speck in you neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.

As most of you are aware, I had my shoulder operated on about two weeks ago. The problem was less severe than we thought before the surgery and the recovery was much quicker, and I thank God for that. You see, I kind of like to be able to do things for myself, and that’s a problem when you’re in a sling. For the first week I even needed help bathing. I had to have help cutting my food. I had to have help tying my shoes.

I don’t like to have help, but I can’t imagine how I would have managed without my wife, Lee, there to help me. I might grumble about not being able to do things for myself, but I’m grateful for grace, for having someone there who is willing –and able- to help me do what I can’t do for myself.

That’s really what this passage is about, I think. Bear with me and I think you’ll see what I mean; it’s not the way this passage is usually understood. Generally we hear, “do not judge and you will not be judged,” and we tend to stop right there.

As I think I’ve said before, do you notice that most people don’t apply this passage to themselves, they apply it to others? Rather than tell themselves, “don’t judge her” or “don’t judge him” they say, “don’t judge me”, but that isn’t what Jesus is saying here.

Jesus is not setting up a “don’t ask/don’t tell” policy. He is not saying that others have no right to tell us what to do. This passage is not about our right to privacy. If you think about it, this should be obvious. The whole point of the sermon on the plain is to establish foundational practices for living as members of God’s Kingdom. What Jesus has just said earlier in this section about loving enemies, doing good, and lending without expectation of return makes no sense if Jesus is now saying do whatever you want.

Our problem is that, mentally, we add words to what Jesus is saying. We tend to hear “do not judge and you will not be judged” as meaning “do not judge and you will not be judged by other people” and so we feel justified saying “Don’t judge me and I won’t judge you.” We have a problem hearing what Jesus is saying because we’re not first century Jews.

Because of the holiness of the name of God, it was common, and still is among orthodox Jews, not to refer directly to God. That’s why Matthew’s gospel, which was written primarily for Jews, refers to the Kingdom of Heaven rather than the Kingdom of God. Because of this reluctance to refer to God directly, throughout Scripture you see the use of a figure of speech called the ‘divine passive’. When they heard a passive verb phrase like ‘you will not be judged’ it was understood that the agent of the judging is God.

Jesus is saying, “Do not judge and you will not be judged by God; Do not condemn and you will not be condemned by God; Forgive and you will be forgiven by God.” Unlike the way we want to interpret this passage, Jesus isn’t saying that what we do doesn’t matter. He’s saying that what we do matters a great deal!

What we do matters a great deal, but we have to be careful here too. Jesus wants to be very clear that as his followers, as members of the Kingdom of God, we need to live lives that are distinctive. What we do matters because we represent the one to whom we belong. The Bible uses a word for this distinctive way of life; it’s called holiness. We are to be a holy people, a people set apart.

Unfortunately, we have two problems with the idea of being holy. The first is that we know we’re not. We know that we stumble and fall. We know, as Paul puts it, that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We know that we’re not holy but we have a tendency to think we have to be holy in order to be saved. We tend to be anxious that we’re not holy enough for God to love us and we tend to feel guilty that we don’t really want to try to be holy enough.

On the flip side, we can tend to think we’re at least more holy than that other person. We look at the suicide bomber or the drunk or the prostitute and say, “Thank God I’m better than that.” We tend to look for people who seem to be worse sinners than we are so that we can feel better about ourselves.

We seem to be caught between a rock and a hard place. We have the sense that we’re supposed to live holy, distinctive lives while knowing that being holy doesn’t save us. On the other hand, we need to be careful about trying to live holy lives because then we tend to look for those who aren’t doing so well so that we can feel better about where we are. So what are we to do? Why should we try to live in a distinctive and holy way?

I’m pretty sure Jesus knew that he would be misunderstood here and so he tells a parable about the blind leading the blind. Parables aren’t always stories like the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Sometimes they’re just sayings that make you think and, in Jesus’ case, help you to understand something he’s just been talking about or doing.

Jesus talks about blindness because being blind is also a metaphor for not understanding. Just like a blind person can’t lead a blind person, someone who doesn’t understand agriculture can’t teach someone else how to farm. Someone whose children are leading self-destructive lives can’t teach a parenting class. Someone who doesn’t know the healing love of Jesus Christ can’t guide others in their faith. If they do, then both will end up worse off.

What Jesus is really aiming at here is how we help one another out in our discipleship. Jesus asks, “Why do you see the speck in you neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye?” and our translation uses ‘neighbor’ and ‘friend’ where the original Greek uses the word ‘brother’. The translators want to assure us that Jesus is talking to both men and women here (which is a good thing), but it fails to recognize that ‘brother’ means ‘fellow disciple’.

Jesus is saying that we can’t help a fellow follower of Jesus Christ to grow in discipleship when our own discipleship is weak or off-track. But, of course, Jesus uses colorful, exaggerated language to get his point across. If you have a log in your own eye, you wouldn’t be able to see well enough to walk much less to take a speck out of someone else’s eye. The issue isn’t logs and specks, it’s the hurtful behaviors, inappropriate attitudes, and misguided conceptions that we all have that get in our way of helping others in our faith journeys.

There are times when we all need help in our walk, when we all have something that is obscuring our vision and we need a sister or brother to help “take the speck out of our eye”. That’s hard; it can feel humiliating, just like I felt after my surgery when I needed help with the simplest tasks. There are times when we all need help, but we need that help from someone who is in a position to help us. If Lee had had surgery the same week as I had, I wouldn’t have been asking her to help me.

Our journey of faith as disciples of Jesus Christ is not a solo journey. If I say that I love my sister or brother in Christ, I cannot just ignore their self-destructive behaviors. I cannot say that their drinking is OK. I cannot say that their cheating on their spouse is none of my business. I cannot say that their drifting away from the faith isn’t my problem. To do those things would be unloving. If we love one another, then we have to help each other out with the real things in life.

I cannot be any help if my own issues get in the way. Jesus said, “How can you say to your neighbor, ‘Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye?” but he didn’t say to just give up on helping your friend. No, he said “First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.”

First things first. We must not ignore the issues that our sisters and brothers deal with, but we need to address our own issues first. We need to get holy, not so that we can earn our way to heaven and not so that we can look down on others, but so that we can be there to truly love our brothers and sisters. We need to get serious about our own discipleship. We need to examine ourselves honestly to identify the logs that obscure our vision so that we can help others with theirs, not judgmentally, not condemningly, but with love and compassion.

Being there for each other means being involved in each other’s lives. That is why small groups are so important. That is why it is so important to call that person who you didn’t see in worship this morning. That is why being church has to be more than just Sunday morning.

We are called to live distinctive lives as members of the Kingdom and that means loving one another enough to confront our own behavior and attitudes and to confront those we love about their behavior and attitudes.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.