Sermon 8/18/31
Matthew 7:1-5
Sermon on the Mount: Eye Test
Last week, as some of you know, I went with a group of
folks down to Owego to help repair a home that was flooded in 2011 with
Hurricane Irene floodwaters. Before we got to Owego, the site coordinator asked
me to send him some information about what kind of skills the folks I was
bringing down had. Would we be bringing a plumber? An electrician? Our team was
eager, willing to work and help and learn. But for the most part, I had to tell
the supervisor that our skills were: none. We weren’t really skilled labor. Cheap labor, yes. But
skilled – maybe not. Somehow, our lack of skills resulted in us being assigned
the task of hanging sheetrock. The house we worked on was very old, and there
weren’t many right angles or level places in the house, and it made it even
harder to do a job we hadn’t even ever done in ideal circumstances. Because the
studs behind the sheetrock weren’t evenly spaced, or necessarily straight and
square, we had to draw arrows on the floor and ceiling and make notes and
measurements to remind ourselves where we could place screws when we were
attaching the sheetrock. So with my arrows in place I would try to screw a line
of screws in the sheetrock from top to bottom of the piece. But somehow,
towards the bottom, I would always start missing the stud altogether, drilling
the sheetrock into nothing, making
holes that would have to be covered up with extra spackle. I would swear that I
was drilling in a straight line up and down. But if I backed up a few paces, or
asked someone standing farther back from the wall to help me, I realized that I
was not drilling in a straight line at all. Not even close. My screws would
veer off, inch by inch, into a crooked, curving line. My perspective, too
close, looking down, at a wrong angle, made it so what I thought I was seeing
wasn’t accurate at all.
We’re
continuing to work through the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ long section of
teaching in the gospel of Matthew, and today, Jesus wants us to be aware of our
human frailty of screwed perspectives. Do not judge, he says, for with the judgment
you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you
get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log
in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, “Let me take the speck
out of your eye”, while the log is 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.
I’ve
shared with you before a rule of thumb for reading scriptures, as has Pastor
Aaron: If you find yourself reading a passage and thinking about the people other than yourself who “really should
read this passage,” you’re headed down the wrong path. When Jesus is talking,
he is talking to you. To me. To us. The person he’s talking to here is the
person who is hearing his words. That person you know who is so judgmental who
really oughta think about this passage? Yeah, that’s you. That’s me. Now that
we’ve cleared that up…
Have you ever been in a situation where you didn’t really
know how to do something well, while you’re in a group of people? And you find
yourself trying to watch out of the corner of your eye to see how the other
person is doing something? I find myself doing that at the gym when I want to
use a piece of equipment I’ve never used before. I’ll never just ask an
employee to help me use the equipment. I’ll wait and watch until someone else
uses it, and then try to copy what they did. Everyone compares things. It is how we assess the world around us, figure
out our place, what to do, how to group things in our mind, how to notice
differences and similarities and be able to process the overwhelming amount of
information we take in every day. We are taught, in fact, to compare things. It
is part of how we learn. How many times in school did you have to write an
essay where the instructions were: Compare and contrast this thing with that
thing. How are apples and oranges alike, and how are they different? Compare
and contrast doesn’t necessarily ask you to rank
things, determine which is better than the other, but it does teach us that
we can better describe things when we talk about how they are alike and
different.
We get into trouble when we start adding value to the
similarities and differences we see. Something is good because it is like me. Something is bad because it is
different than me. One thing is
faster and one thing is slower and faster
is better. One person looks like this and one looks like that and looking a
certain way is better. All the people
who look like this are good, and everyone who looks like that is bad. Suddenly
compare and contrast becomes compare and judge.
Throughout the sermon on the mount Jesus repeatedly says
things like “Do this in secret, so that God, who sees you, will reward you,
rather than doing this in a public, showy way, so that you get the rewards of
being lauded by your peers. Jesus doesn’t tell us to do this because we’re
actually supposed to hide the fact
that we talk to God like something we’re ashamed of doing – it isn’t a secret
to be kept in that sense. Rather, I think Jesus emphasizes this over and over
because Jesus knows about our human propensity to be unable to do anything,
even talk to God, without looking to our right and our left to see what others are
doing.
The apostle Paul tried to teach some early
Christians – and us – about the ridiculous behavior of judging others in his
first letter to the Corinthians. Remember when he talks about how we’re members
of the body of Christ – one body of Christ, made up of many parts. It doesn’t
even make sense, Paul argued, for one
part of the body to feel better than, more useful or important than other parts
of the body. All the parts work together, all the parts are needed, and none of
the parts can do the job of the other. The eye can have 20/20 vision, but it
will still never be able to smell, no matter what a bad job the nose is doing. Paul
tries to help us with our perspective, helps us see each other more clearly.
Along the same lines, one of my favorite verses in the
Bible comes from 1 Samuel, when God calls on the prophet Samuel to anoint a new
King, after King Saul stops following God. Samuel goes to the house of Jesse
and looks over all his sons in turn, finally choosing David, the youngest, who
Jesse initially didn’t even bother bringing out as a choice, so sure was he
that David would not be picked. God had told Samuel: “Do not look on his
appearance or on the height of his stature . . . for the Lord does not see as
mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the
heart.” Jesus is trying to get us to see like God sees, to look at each other’s
hearts. To do that, we’ve got to get a new perspective. We start by looking in
the mirror, and clearing out all those obstructions that often we’ve put there
ourselves that keep us from seeing God, ourselves, and each other, clearly.
Some of you have already received and some of you will be
receiving phone calls from members of our Lay Leadership Committee in the next
couple of months. It’s that time of year, when we work to people our teams and
task forces and councils with people in our congregation who have gifts of
leadership or skills in particular areas. Please, still answer your phone even
though I’ve warned you in advance! Well, it isn’t just that time of year for
Liverpool First – my mom’s church is in the midst of the same process, and she
recently receive a call asking her to serve as a member of the Session, the
Presbyterian version of our Administrative Council. When she was telling me
about this, she kept saying, “They must not know me very well, or they wouldn’t
ask me to be on Session. I wouldn’t be very good at that.” I tried to explain
to her that she was wrong – in fact, it is my mother who doesn’t know herself well, who doesn’t see herself
clearly enough to know what an asset she’d be to the church’s leadership team.
Sometimes we don’t see ourselves very well, do we? We don’t see ourselves well,
and with our own skewed pictures of ourselves, we have a harder time seeing
each other clearly, looking into each other’s eyes, seeing each other face to
face, because our vision is already distorted. We’re not seeing what God sees.
We joke in our family about the rose-colored glasses my
mom uses when looking at her grandson, my nephew, Sam. We all adore Sam, of
course. But when Sam was getting in a little bit of trouble at school, his
parents were concerned and talked to Sam about behaving better, about being
respectful, about listening to adults. My mom, however, said something like:
Well, no wonder he was feeling a little cranky at school. He was awfully tired,
he had such a busy weekend. He wasn’t feeling like himself. And he’s so smart,
sometimes it is just hard for him when he gets bored at school. Somewhere in my
Mom’s head, she knows that Sam can misbehave, and she wants him to be a good
boy. But her love for him, her complete adoration of him is so overwhelming and
unconditional – she looks at him and sees everything wonderful there is about
him. It’s not that she’s seeing things that don’t exist – he is wonderful! But she thinks he’s so
wonderful, she loves him so completely, there’s nothing he could ever do that
could make her believe he’s anything less than a precious gift in her life.
Don’t you know, don’t you know that that is how God sees
us? You and me and that person who drives you crazy and that person you envy and that
you might even call an enemy that Pastor Aaron challenged you to pray for – God
adores us beyond reason. There’s just
no reason to compare yourself to others, to measure yourself against them, to
find them wanting, to find yourself insufficient. To try to rank yourself and
make sure you’re coming in first or at least not coming in last. God adores you. And there’s nothing that
pleases God more than when we adore what God adores – each other. Isn’t that
one of the things you love – when one person you love comes to know and love
another person you love? When your parents love your best friend? When your
children love each other? When you introduce two of your good friends to each
other and they become friends too? When
your spouse adores your side of the family like you do? God loves for us to love each other. For us
to see ourselves and each other in the way that God sees us – that’s what God
wants. Because if we saw each other as God sees us, how could we hurt each
other? Judge each other? Neglect each other? If we saw ourselves as God saw us, why would we need to make sure we’re
measuring up? Why would we feel so insecure that we proved ourselves by pushing
others down?
Do not
judge. Don’t you realize how blurred your vision has become? It’s time for an
eye test, time to clear away the obstructions, time to really see. See ourselves. See one another.
Look with God’s eyes, look through God’s rose-colored glasses, glasses that see
the best potential in us, offer unlimited second chances and unwavering
support. Take a few steps back and make sure you’re seeing clearly. And then
you can help others do the same. When you do that, God is pretty sure you’ll
like what you see. Amen.
Comments