Sermon Luke 6: 36 Judge Not

Have you ever felt judged?   That is really a silly question because we all seem to be judged throughout our lives.  We are judged by our parents when we are growing up – and often even when we become full blown adults with grown children of our own.  Isn’t it amazing how we can become like little children when we are with our parents – and not in the good way that Jesus was commanding us  - unless you become as little children you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

We are judged in school by our teachers and when we write exams.  We are judged in our work.  I worked in a setting before I was ordained that had annual performance appraisals.  Your manager would check off the boxes and give you ratings in different area – unsatisfactory, satisfactory, good or excellent.  The joke was that you needed to walk on water to get an excellent rating.   We are judged by our spouses – do you remember the first time you dated the person who you later married – or your first date with anyone for that matter?  You wanted to make a good impression so you went out of your way to make sure you looked you best and were on your best behavior – that’s because you knew the other person was going to judge you.  It’s interesting but not surprising that after  you get to know someone what you don’t make as much of an effort. 

That’s probably a good thing overall because you are letting the other person know more about who you really are – not everything but more.  It is too bad however, if you  give up completely in making an effort to show the other person that you care about what they think about you.

I imagine that many – if not all of you are judging me this morning.  How is this new priest going to do?  What will his sermon be like?  Possibly Father Peter and Father Ralph were judging me when they met me to see if it was safe to let me lose on their unsuspecting flock.  Of course having roast preacher over Sunday dinner is a long standing tradition – it comes with the territory.

So judging and being judge certainly seems to be what we do naturally.  Here we have Jesus telling us in no uncertain terms that we should not do that, “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged”.   What Jesus is calling us to do and be then is something radical in human relations.  Jesus lays out what he expects of his disciples – and of course us.  Judge not and ye shall not be judged; condemn not and ye shall not be condemned; forgive and ye shall be forgiven; give and it shall be given unto you.  As Father Peter mentioned last week the Gospel reading for the season of Trinity focus on Jesus’s parables.  Today’s Gospel is no exception.  Jesus follows up his lesson by giving his disciples a parable to illustrate the point.  Jesus knew that this was the best way to get his point across. 

To paraphrase, he tells them why do you worry about the speck in your neighbor’s eye when there is a beam in yours?  Now a speck is very small and a beam is very big.  Jesus doesn’t mince words.  Stop criticizing others and look to yourself.  Have you ever noticed that some people will annoy you at first sight?  Sometimes you take an instant dislike to people – first impressions and all that.  You may not even know why – or perhaps you will have a good idea.  In any case you are judging them instantaneously.  A similar process happens when someone does that make you react completely out of proportion to the facts.  You will explode in anger or other emotions in a way that seems to be almost unrelated to the circumstances.  This happens when we things in others that we do not want to see in ourselves.  We are seeing a speck of something in the other person that is the beam – the big things we don’t want to see in ourselves.

This is not to say that judgment per se is wrong.  We admire people that show good judgment in their lives.  However, that is people who do not make a habit of judging others – usually negatively.  It is people who make good decisions about what to do in their lives.  They judge what is right for them – they judge what they should do to live a good life – for Christians this means following the example that Jesus give for us. – living the life that God intends for us.  That is good judgment. 

Bad judgment is judging others harshly when we should be judging ourselves to determine if we are living the life we should. 

Watch out for those beams in our eyes.  They may be preventing us from seeing ourselves and the world as God sees us.  Amen

Reading the Bible 22 Gen 31: 1-21 God Made Me Do It

I always find it impressive – not admirable but impressive – how people are able to justify their actions and put dubious behaviour in a positive light.  Politicians are master of this of course – we need to give people the information about what basically bad people our opponents are.  We are only trying to inform the public after all and information is good (unless it does not support our policies).  This art of self-justification has been practiced from time immemorial as demonstrated in the bible. 

Today we have the further adventures of the trickster Jacob.  He a just tricked his father-in-law Laban into a large portion of Laban’s wealth.  He does this by the use of sympathetic magic.  Now of course Laban is not pleased by this and we are told that Laban’s sons are demanding that their father reclaim what is rightfully theirs.  Jacob announces to Rachael and Leah, “I see that your father does not regard me as favourably as he did before” – big surprise.  Of course we are not surprized by this but Jacob sounds almost aggrieved that Laban should react this way.  Jacob begins what can be described as a litany of self-justification:  your father cheated me many times; God is on my side; God is responsible for the results – it’s not my doing; God told me to do what I did in a dream; God did it so all the property God took belongs to us. 

One of the interesting things is that none of this was revealed before the event so it is doubtful but we don’t really know if God did send Jacob these dreams and instructions.  However, if is always easier to see God’s will after the fact and to read God’s will into events – especially if they suit our view of the world and our place in it.  AIDS is God’s punishment on sinful people; the earthquake and floods and hurricanes and tornados are evidence of God’s wrath.  Of course it is easier to see God’s hand in bad things happening to people we don’t like.  However, to take another lesson from the Bible the Israelites had to their credit no problem in seeing their misfortunes as God’s punishment – over and over again.  I think the lesson here is to take another lesson from the bible, Matt 7: 1 “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.²For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.³Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?”