God, bless us with the willingness to hear and the courage to do. Amen
As I did my usual preparation for the sermon this week, I could not find a single example of anyone approaching these scriptures from a positive perspective. Commentators seemed to relish the idea that Jesus was being critical, even sarcastic, in his teaching in this passage made of three different, yet absolutely connected thoughts. Seeing the challenge this presented to me, I prayerfully conversed with the passage most of the week along completely different lines and, quite frankly, decided to set aside all that I thought I knew about this passage and so today I believe that these passages do not necessarily depict Jesus giving us the scathing condemnation many commentators see. I believe that Jesus is calling us, as Jesus is ALWAYS calling us to discover and be all that God created us to be—complete in God’s spirit following the example of Jesus Himself.
Jesus calls us to live our lives openly, seeing fully, all the potential for lives lived in the gracious reign of God’s justice and love here on this earth. Is it not possible that the blindness that Jesus speaks of is our failure to know that we are to live as He lived and, more importantly, love as He loved? If we are the students and he is the teacher, when we are “fully trained” we will be like Him. We will know that we are children of God. We will trust that God’s purpose is being played out in our lives just as He trusted. Instead, we often see ourselves as less than, not as good as, unable to fulfill our calling in God.
There is an old fable from India that illustrates my point. There was once a water carrier who lived quite a distance from the spring which supplied water to the town. He used two large pots suspended on a pole across his neck to carry the water. One of the pots had a crack in it, while the other pot was perfect. Every day this man would walk from the spring to the house of the man for whom he worked and every day the perfect pot would be perfectly full when the man reached the house and the pot with the crack—well, it usually only held half the amount of water. The cracked pot was ashamed of its imperfection and so one day, the pot spoke to the water carrier about how badly he felt about being cracked and broken. The pot said, “I’m sorry that the crack in my side makes me unable to do all that you need me to do. I can only carry half the water that the perfect pot carries.” Then the water carrier said to the pot, “Today when we walk back to town I want you to open your eyes and look around.” And so the pot did. When their task was completed, the water carrier asked the pot, “Did you notice that there are flowers only on one side of the road? That’s because I planted seeds on that side and every day you watered those flowers as we made our trek. Now, for two years I have been able to pick beautiful flowers and give them to many people. If you were not exactly who you are I would not have the beauty of the flowers to grace the homes of so many.”
Isn’t this just the way we are, we focus on our shortcomings, our fears, our imperfections and fail to see what God is doing with and through us. We do not see the influence we have on our world or on each other. This leads us to our second brief passage—the really famous one about acknowledging the plank in your eye before you go with gusto after the speck in your neighbor’s eye. Instead of thinking about this passage from a judgmental, critical point of view, what if we see that God might be calling us, just as in the first passage, to remove the huge plank of self-doubt and our dissatisfaction with what we believe to be our imperfections before we try to lead others into right relationship with God. Many of us are champions in the field of putting ourselves down and these “put-downs” which we heap on ourselves keep us from being all that God calls us to be in the work of God’s reign on earth. For if the Gospel calls us to take the good news of God’s acceptance and love to all, do we not first have to experience it for ourselves? To let it in and see with new eyes what God wants us to be. And where do we do this? We do it in our relationships. Our relationships with others, with God’s creation and with each other, reveal, when we see them with new eyes, who we really are inside and out. By examining our relationship with others (and, indeed, this passage is about right relationship) we see places in our hearts that we would not see otherwise. Inviting ourselves to look closely at who we are with other people opens us up for change within ourselves. Ask yourselves this: are not my relationships—with both their possibility for joy and hurt, the places where I find out who I really am? Our relationships give us insight into who we really are—people who are both vulnerable and strong, needy and influential. So perhaps, just perhaps, the plank that Jesus is calling us to remove is this doubting, negative plank...This plank that tells you that you can’t make new friends, or succeed in golf, or sing in the choir…this plank that tells you that you can’t take up a new sport, or learn to paint, or get your body in shape—once and for all…this plank that tells you that you are not good enough or strong enough or wise enough to allow God to work a miracle in your life.
We live in a society that tells us we are not ok, and we believe it—even those of us who have “worked through” who we are—most of us—deep down, still have doubts—Jesus says, “get the plank out of your own eye” and then get on with helping others see who they really are through their relationships with you. Good relationships are based on seeing ourselves clearly for who we are and who we are capable of becoming and THEN helping others do the same.
And so finally, we come to our final section of this passage—the one about our relationship with God—the foundation on which we base everything else—we all know the difference between a good foundation and a poor one. And it’s Florida, so we all know about sand. Kind of reminds me of a time when I took my dog, Jonathan, to the beach. I had him tied securely to my waist and I was sitting in my folding chair peacefully reading my book or, perhaps, dozing in the sun. I thought he was sleeping beside me. All of a sudden, my chair toppled sideways and I found myself in a heap with Jonathan who had been steadily digging a now very deep hole under the left front leg of my chair—of course, I fell over, book flying, chair going out from under me—altogether not a pretty sight. Had we been sitting on concrete—different picture all together—never underestimate what a dog can do when you think he is sleeping…
And so, Jesus calls us to hear His words AND practice them—is this not indeed what the first two sections of this passage are about? And by so doing we dig our foundation deep into the earth and place our foundation on Christ, our solid rock. To practice the teachings of Jesus, is to live in right relationship with ourselves, our neighbors and God. To practice the teachings of Jesus will set us in the place where the storms of life—our life personal and our life communal will not tumble us down. To practice the teachings of Jesus is to be in the presence of God.
God uses all of you to speak special words to me. An example happened yesterday. I opened my email and there was an email from Linda, one of the members of our new choir. It is so perfect that I added it to this sermon. Thank you, Linda. Here is the quote—it’s from Guillaume Apollinaire, a very early 20th Century poet: “Come to the edge....we can't, we are afraid....come to the edge....we can't, we will fall ....and they came to the edge....and he pushed them....and they flew...” God, give us the grace and courage to come to the edge and when You push, may we fly high on the very wings you have blessed us with…as high as You would have us fly. Amen and amen.
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