Good morning, Friends! I hope you’re all doing well this week.
I think people really enjoyed last week’s message, where Jesus told us not to be so anxious all the time. “Don’t worry about what you’re going to eat and drink, or how you look, or what you’re going to wear,” Jesus said.
We talked a lot about simple things we all can do to let go of anxiety. Slow down, and take some deep breaths. It’s amazing what getting some fresh oxygen will do!
It’s OK to get some help. You wouldn’t feel ashamed to go to a doctor for a broken leg. Don’t be ashamed to ask someone – a doctor or a counselor – for help. Don’t try and treat it yourself, with alcohol or drugs. That doesn’t work very well, and it leads to addiction.
Get away from noise and anxiety. Turn off your TV for a while. Don’t read bad news all day, and especially don’t read bad news right before bedtime.
Last week Jesus asked, “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” Worry and anxiety make our lives shorter, not longer. Slow down, step back, take some deep breaths, go to the beach. We talked about all that last week. Anxiety is the disease of our times.
This morning, I want us to talk about something else which is pretty basic. We’ve been reading from the Sermon on the Mount, and today’s reading comes right after the Beatitudes, and the Lord’s Prayer. It comes right after where Jesus says to love your enemies and always tell the truth and go the extra mile and turn the other cheek.
All those passages are beautiful. And they’re important. But I think something major would be missing, if Jesus hadn’t said what he says to us in this morning’s reading.
Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to another person, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?
You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from another person’s eye.”
Matthew 7:1-5
When I came here, 11 years ago this month, one of the things the search committee told me was, “We don’t want to judge other people.”
Being non-judgmental sounds so nice, doesn’t it? It’s like saying, “We’re all nice people here. It’s OK that we agree to disagree. Most of these things don’t really matter, do they?”
I don’t think being nice is quite what Jesus is talking about. And I don’t think that being blind is what he means, either.
Have you ever noticed that dogs don’t care what color you are, or whether you’re tall or short? A dog is your best friend, and a dog doesn’t care if you’re popular person, or not.
Little kids can be that way, too, until someone teaches them different. Little kids can be surprisingly color blind. Until they learn better, little kids will talk to anyone. I just love it when a little kid riding in a buggy at the supermarket will smile at me, and wave. I’m sorry when they get shy and hide their face from a stranger.
But not judging is more than acting like a dog or a one year old. It’s actually a pretty grown-up thing. It’s a decision, not to let yourself be swayed or shut off from another person. It’s a habit, a daily choice and a lifelong choice, not to judge another human being, but to try to look at them the same way that Jesus does.
This is not a very mysterious idea here, although sometimes it’s really difficult. There are plenty of professions where not judging other people is just part of the job.
Doctors and nurses have to be that way all the time. When I was an EMT on the ambulance, I couldn’t tell myself that this person or that person wasn’t worthy to get medical care. I picked up ordinary, decent people. And I picked up alcoholics who had fallen asleep in snow banks. I picked up people who had gunshot wounds and knife wounds from gang fights.
It’s not that their situations didn’t matter. But it wasn’t my job to judge. My job was to use the best of my training to help them, and get them safely to the emergency room, where other trained people would do their best to help as well.
Do you see what I’m saying? For a medical professional, being judgmental isn’t their job.
The same thing is true of teachers. Some kids are fun to teach. Some kids act up all the time. But teachers still have to do their best. They don’t throw kids out of class because they’re a different color, or because they come from a different country. That’s not their job. Actually, it shouldn’t be anyone’s job.
And the same thing is true of Christians. Judging other people simply isn’t our job. Jesus said so.
I wish that all the people who insist on taking the Bible literally, would take this saying of Jesus as seriously as they take some other passages of Scripture. Because “Do not judge” is a saying which I take with the utmost seriousness myself. If we took this morning’s reading literally, as a commandment that’s true and universal and binding upon all Christians, the church would be a very different place. The world would be a very different place.
Because being non-judgmental isn’t just something that’s socially polite. It’s a commandment from Jesus Christ, our Lord — the one in whose name we pray, told us, “Do not judge. . .”
But it’s so hard to give it up. Because judging other people is one of the most delicious pleasures we have.
It makes us feel superior to other people. It justifies our being angry with them, and not forgiving them. Why should I forgive somebody, when I have tried them in the court of my own opinion and found them guilty?
Judging other people makes us feel righteous — even though we know that self-righteousness is spiritual poison. And, of course, we despise self-righteousness in others. But judging makes us feel so good. And we do it all the time.
We judge other people by the way they speak and by the clothes they wear, even though the Bible specifically tells us not to do that. We judge people every day by the color of their skin or by the country they came from, even though there’s not a person on earth who can help those things.
We judge people by their wealth or poverty. We judge people by their political opinions and their education, even though Jesus himself ignored all these things.
We judge people because they have mental health problems or physical limitations. We judge people severely because of addictions which they would gladly be free of.
The list goes on and on. You can add to it, easily. Because judging is something we do all the time. We delight in it. It satisfies us and it confirms us in our prejudices.
You might have heard the old Native American proverb, “Don’t criticize anyone until you’ve walked a mile in their moccasins.” That’s good. And there’s a practical side to that proverb. If you walk a mile in their moccasins, and people get angry at you, then you’ll be a mile away, and you’ll have their shoes!
But seriously, there’s a lot of wisdom here for us. We don’t walk in other people’s shoes. We don’t know the journey they’ve been on. We don’t know what suffering other people have experienced. We don’t know what fears they have, or what rejection they’ve faced. We shouldn’t judge.
People are all very different. Being different doesn’t mean they’re bad. The Bible says we’re all sinners. That doesn’t necessarily mean we’re bad people. It means we all miss the mark. It means we’re hurt and broken and make mistakes. Being sinners means that we all need help, from God and from each other.
So, judging is not good, even though we all love to do it. But then Jesus really emphasizes his point. He says, “In the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and the measure you use, will be measured to you.”
That’s a sobering thought. The exact same yardstick which I use on someone else, will be applied directly to me. The same standards by which I judge others, are the standards I will be judged by.
If I call somebody else foolish, or prejudiced, or a liar, I’d better be careful. Because God is going to look at me with a critical eye. If I condemn somebody else for being arrogant, or unmerciful, or two-faced, God will judge me for those same exact things.
Jesus always liked to make people laugh a bit. So in today’s reading, Jesus used an exaggerated example.
Jesus said, “Why do you see the tiny speck of sawdust in your neighbor’s eye, and say to them, ‘Hey, let me help you with that! Give me the tweezers! Let me take that speck out of your eye! I can see it’s bothering you! I can see how it obstructs your vision! I’m sure you’d be a lot better off without that tiny speck of dust in your eye!’ Oh, what a handicap you must have!
“Oh, what’s that you say? You say I’ve got a whole tree trunk growing out of my own eye? Well, sure, I know. But I’m used to it. I’ve had it there my whole life. I don’t mind it. But let’s get back to you. Let’s get back to your problem. You’ve still got that speck there in your eye, that tiny little bark chip. Gosh, I just hate it when people don’t let somebody else really tell them what’s wrong with them!…”
See, that’s the thing about judging and prejudice. We’ve all got this huge blind spot, that says we’re better than other people. When really, we’re all much the same. My failings and shortcomings may very well be worse than anybody else’s.
Jesus was saying the same thing, when he told a story about two people who went to the Temple to pray. It says he told this story “against people who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else.”
The first person, Jesus said, was a holy person. He stood all by himself at the front where everybody could see him, and he said, “Look at me, Lord! I fast twice a week. I make a big show of giving to charity. I’m so glad, Lord, that I’m not a robber, a thief, or an adulterer. Thank you, Lord, that I’m just so much better than everyone else!”
Everybody who was listening to Jesus probably laughed, because they recognized that kind of person in the story.
But then, Jesus said, the second person prayed. The second person knew they weren’t so good. Instead of standing up front, the second person stayed in the back row, not even in a pew but way back in a corner. The second person didn’t even dare to look up to God, Jesus said, but beat their breast and said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”
“Which one of those two people,” Jesus asked, “do you think went home right with God? You tell me – which prayer do you think God listened to?” (Luke 18:9-14)
I’m not saying you do this, and I don’t. We all judge other people. It’s one of the hardest human habits to get rid of. But I want you all to think about what happens when we let go of judging each other.
I’ve discovered that the more I try to let go of judging other people, the more free I feel. It’s tremendously freeing to let go of all that self-righteousness and just be ourselves. It’s exciting for a community to learn to accept people without judging them or condemning them.
That doesn’t mean we have to like everything that other people do. That doesn’t mean we have to be stupid about their acts and intentions. Some people do mean us harm. Some people are difficult, or unpleasant, or manipulative.
But it’s really liberating to let go of some of our prejudices. And it really changes a church when we make it a point to welcome people just as they are.
If you ask people who aren’t Christians what offends them about Christianity, a lot of the time they say that it’s the self-righteousness and the judgmental attitude of church people that turns them off. People see us and hear us, and they don’t want anything to do with Jesus.
And that makes me sorry, because I don’t want anyone to be turned away from Christ.
We all fall short. We all miss the mark. None of us is perfect. We all have been forgiven, and none of us deserve it. We all are here because of God’s amazing grace.
That’s a lot to think about. But I think it could change us, if we listen to Jesus today. It would change us. It would change our church. It would change our culture, if we do what Jesus says, and not judge.