Choose Life Over Judgement, a sermon based on Matthew 7: 1-5, preached on June 2, 2024

The week before last I was grateful for the opportunity to go with Sam Collier to a Braves game. I love watching the Braves. They lost, but that hardly took away from it. The weather was perfect. Our seats were great. At the concession stand, they offer a hotdog with bacon jam, so the food we ate was outstanding as well. It was a great day. I love watching the Braves, and there’s only one thing that gets on my nerves while watching a game in Truist Park. I can’t stand how washed-up old baseball players like me will be sitting there, drinking a souvenir size coke and eating a hotdog with bacon jam, while critiquing the players on the field. I heard this man, who got winded walking to his seat, yell: “You should have caught that!” to a player who dove for a line drive. That’s the part that drives me crazy. We’re all sitting there in the stands, some of us would have trouble touching our toes, yet we’ll criticize the athletes who miss a ground ball. Even with a head start, most of us can’t outrun the Freeze, and yet we judge the players who get called out stealing a base. Those of us in the stands, we’re no physical specimens, so how can we criticize those able-bodied athletes? We compare their batting averages, but to see some truly concerning numbers, we should look at our own cholesterol. We compare one pitcher’s ERA to another’s, but what about our blood pressure? Before we go pointing out the spec in the athlete’s eye, let us deal with the log in our own. Today, we begin another summer sermon series. For the last few summers, the Rev. Cassie Waits and I have preached a summer sermon series. We preached on the “I AM” sayings of Jesus a couple years ago. That summer, we preached on all the statements Jesus used to describe Himself, and we asked you to write on ribbons. Do you remember that? Last summer, we preached on spiritual gifts, and we asked you to write on little cards, giving thanks to God for those who had been given the gifts of generosity, artistic expression, and faithfulness. This summer, we’re focused on parables. When Jesus spoke, He often used parables or metaphors. Recognizing that telling someone, “You’re being an awful hypocrite” is likely to make them defensive, Jesus told stories and used images to help people see the truth of their condition. Each Sunday this summer, one of us will try to help you understand a different parable of Jesus, which requires us to try to wrap our heads around the parable for ourselves. This morning, it’s the parable of the speck and the log. To get started on this sermon, I googled, “What’s the meaning of the parable of the speck and the log?” The meaning, according to many websites, was relatively simple: that in this parable, Jesus is trying to tell us that we tend to see the faults of others without recognizing that we are guilty of much greater faults. We focus on the speck in our neighbor’s eye while ignoring the log in our own. That’s true, and what’s more, doing so doesn’t get us anywhere. In the Gospel of Luke, two went up to the temple to pray. One was a priest. The other was a tax collector. The priest, standing by himself, was praying like this: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector I walked up here with. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” That’s an interesting prayer to pray, right? But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and saying, “God have mercy on me, a sinner.” Then Jesus said, “It was the tax collector who went away justified.” Why? In the eyes of Jesus, we’re all sinners in need of forgiveness; It matters not the magnitude nor the flavor of our sin, yet we can be like priests who say, “I must be doing OK because I’m not like this tax collector.” Or we can be like two sisters who snuck ice cream from the freezer while their mother was out. One was eating with a tablespoon and the other with a teaspoon. When their mother walked in to catch them both with the ice cream on their faces and their spoons in their hands, she didn’t care who had the bigger spoon. When two boys fight in class, the teacher doesn’t care who started it. When Jesus comes offering us forgiveness, He’s not impressed that some think they need less forgiveness than others. So long as not a one of us is perfect, we need to be asking Him for help, not standing up in the temple in self-righteousness or pointing out the speck in our neighbor’s eye. Even if our neighbor is guilty, pointing it out won’t make us innocent any more than judging the athletes will make us athletic. Coming out of the 8:30 service, Ken Farrar told me that a football coach was being interviewed about his team’s performance after a loss. The coach said, “Sometimes this happens. Players make mistakes. And while we keep looking for the player who never misses a tackle or drops a pass, he hasn’t tried out yet, but maybe we should start looking for him in the stands because apparently everyone up there can do this better than we can.” Don’t judge your neighbor. Instead, deal with your own issues. In courage and humility, call on Him for help. Remember the tax collector. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, “God have mercy on me, a sinner.” And God did have mercy. He went home justified, but the priest went home with a log still in his eye. Jesus could see it and so could a lot of other people, which is the point of the parable: Those who spend time judging others are blowing their cover. Those high school bullies are hoping that if they spend all their time making fun of other people, no one will notice the secrets that they’re trying to hide. Those churchgoing Christians who use the Bible to condemn their neighbors have a brokenness within them that they’re afraid to face. The more guilt we carry, the more judgmental we become, yet Jesus knows. Jesus knows that attached to the finger pointed in judgement is a sinner in need of redeeming. That’s why He says, “Come unto me all ye who are weary and carrying a heavy burden and I will give you rest.” “If we say that we have no sin we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. Yet if we confess our sins, he who is faithful and righteous will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” In this church, we confess before God and one another that there is a log in our eyes. Yet we live in a world where it seems at times as though our national pastime isn’t baseball anymore, but casting judgement. It’s like we’re all looking for a reason to feel superior. We live in this divided political climate, and I can see it in your eyes how much you worry about it. I worry about it, too, but here’s what I know: If we could just break the habit of making ourselves feel better by looking down on each other, we will live. One of Abraham Lincoln’s earliest published speeches was one he gave at 28 years of age in Springfield, Illinois. Weeks before, a mob had burned St. Louis. Lincoln took the incident seriously, as a sign of growing division in the United States, which at the time was hardly 50 years old. To our young, fledging republic, full of people who wondered if our country would last the test of time, this is what he said: At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? And by what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step over the ocean, and to crush us with a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth in their military chest; and with a Napoleon Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up among us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free people, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. My friends, I feel our nation pull against the seams that have knit us together. When we split into parties and call one side the enemy, we threaten our very existence. Yet when we kneel before the Cross, together confessing our sins and calling on Jesus for mercy, we will live. Amen.