Navigating a Minefield - audio
Today’s passage springs out of what Howard brought to us last week. Do you remember his three points: Forgiveness, Love and Generosity; foundational characteristics of Jesus’ Disciples. And one of the things we see at the end of that passage leading into today’s is the reciprocity of God’s grace spelt out first in his injunction to refrain from judging lest you in turn be judged and then in his assurance that if you forgive others, forgiveness will be yours. And that leads on to the two parables that we’re looking at today.
Generosity
But first I thought it would be worth thinking some more about what Howard said last week about Generosity. Generosity is something that used to be a valued characteristic of Australian society, didn’t it? People would go out of their way to help others. And that generosity wasn’t just financial, it was a generosity of spirit; a willingness to accept people for who they were despite any differences in our backgrounds; a willingness to suspend judgement until we knew them better. But we seem to have lost something of that over the past 20 or 30 years. Just think about our treatment of refugees. Do you remember the way we welcomed Vietnamese refugees 50 years ago. Compare that to the way we treat refugees from the Middle East today. The same applies to our treatment of the poorest sections of our population. What are we doing about providing housing for those thousands that can’t afford to rent a house, let alone buy one? Remember when every state had a housing commission responsible for building and managing accommodation for those who couldn’t afford the rental market? What was the response when Bill Shorten tried to change the negative gearing concessions a couple of elections ago to make housing more affordable? It went down like a lead balloon didn’t it? So much of our political life now is based on self-centredness rather than generosity. Perhaps there’s a correlation there with the secularisation of Australia; of our Christian values no longer being basic to wider community values.
But here’s something totally countercultural. God calls us to be generous towards others the same way he’s generous towards us. Remember he’s not talking about money necessarily, though that may come into it. But rather he’s talking about a generosity of spirit; giving others what we receive from God. As I said, there’s a reciprocity to God’s grace.
One of my favourite verses is Eph 3:20 “Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, 21to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen” Did you get that? God’s generosity is such that we just can’t imagine the magnitude of it. In the verse before today’s passage he says “38give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.” (Beatles fans may be reminded of Paul McCartney’s paraphrasing of that: “The love you take is equal to the love you make.” Mind you I’m not sure he realised he was paraphrasing Jesus when he wrote that.)
But the thing here is that when God gives us his blessings they’re pressed down, shaken together, running over. There’s an abundance of generosity that goes beyond simple reward and that’s because his blessings come from his grace not our deserving.
Clear judgement
But then Jesus goes on to dig deeper into the issue of reciprocity when it comes to judging others. He asks “Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit?” I wonder if you’ve ever found yourself in the embarrassing situation of having roundly criticised someone for doing something and then discovering either that they hadn’t done it at all or that the reason they’d done it was quite a good one. And suddenly it’s you who has to apologise for your too quick judgment. Jesus’ parable here is a reminder that the main reason we shouldn’t judge another person is that we don’t have enough information. Unlike God we’re not omniscient. We don’t know what was in the person’s mind when they committed whatever offence we’re worried about. We don’t know what alternatives there were. Equally important, we don’t know what will come from our interference. We may be very good at imagining what might happen, of looking ahead to all the dreadful possibilities but in reality our imagination is likely to be shortsighted.
>Have you notice our newspapers are full of dire predictions of the future right now. Panic merchants are all around us. What are the Chinese planning; what will Trump do to the world economy, will the hard right affect the newly elected government in Germany; what will happen to Ukraine? And every day we read another article giving us another opinion about our likely future. But the reality is, only God knows what will happen next, what will come of those decisions and situations we’re so worried about.
>So don’t presume to judge another person unless you’re sure you have all the facts.
>But there’s more to it than that. Jesus asks another question. He says: “Why do you see the speck in your neighbour's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? 42> Or how can you say to your neighbour, 'Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye,' when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye?” Sometimes we’re not just blind to what’s going on with the other person; we’re also blind to our own failings. We’re often not even aware of the way we affect others. How often are you surprised when someone gets offended by something you’ve said or done? And how often are we critical of someone else but then when we think about it, or someone points it out to us, we realise the thing they’re doing is something that we’re guilty of ourselves. In fact isn’t it the case that it’s often the things we’re guilty of that makes us aware of the faults in the other person.
So be careful about judging others. Be careful about gossiping about others, which often comes down to the same thing.
Discernment
But having said that, he goes on to say that not judging doesn’t mean we can be undiscerning. There is a right form of judgement, or at least discernment. There are some things that show their quality by what they produce. So a good tree bears good fruit. If you want to pick figs you don’t go to a thorn bush. You don’t try to get grapes from a bramble bush. And people, he says, are similar. “45The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.”
What’s in the heart affects what comes out of the mouth. So there are times when it’s appropriate to take note of what someone says or does, that is, to look at the fruit of their lives, to determine whether they’re a godly person or not. In John 3 Jesus says that he hasn’t come into the world to condemn the world, but then he goes on to say that those who do not believe are condemned already, and this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, but people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. Sometimes a person’s actions or deeds condemn them long before we need to make a judgement of any sort. Their failure to do what God wants them to, stands out for anyone to see. And the reason they do the wrong thing is probably because their heart isn’t right with God.
Good Foundations
But then he goes on to point out the danger of that very thing happening to his followers. He warns them not to be people who listen to him but then ignore what he tells them. He tells them one of his more very memorable parables. Chris Ward will be singing the chorus in a moment as the rains come down and the floods come up.
He says “47I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, hears my words, and acts on them. 48That one is like someone building a house, who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock; when a flood arose, the river burst against that house but could not shake it, because it had been well built. 49>But the one who hears and does not act is like someone who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the river burst against it, immediately it fell, and great was the ruin of that house.”
In Matthew’s account the two people are classed as wise and foolish, but here they’re simply one who hears and acts and one who hears and ignores what he’s heard.
The story is a familiar one isn’t it? In one case the builder has spent the extra money digging good foundations and the extra cost has been worth every cent when the flood comes. In the other case the builders thought they could save a lot of money and effort by simply building from the ground up, only to regret it when the floods came later. We see that sort of thing on the news from time to time, don’t we? Some poor village in the third world where an unscrupulous builder or landlord has failed to dig foundations, or used less concrete than was needed and when a flood or a cyclone hits the buildings come down and people die.
But this parable isn’t about people dying in the third world. It’s about producing good works out of the treasure of the heart. So, how do you do that? What can you do to ensure that your life produces good fruit?
Well, it’s not that hard really, is it? In fact Jesus says it’s simple. Listen to Jesus’ words and act on them. Read what God tells us in his word and do it. Here’s what God tells us in 1 Tim 4: “Train yourself in godliness, 8for, while physical training is of some value, godliness is valuable in every way, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.” How do you train yourself in godliness? Well, by listening to what God tells you and doing it, over and over and over again.
The last couple of weeks I’ve been learning those new songs that Ros has asked us to sing at her commissioning. So what have I done. I’ve listened to them and I’ve played them over and over again until I’m relatively confident I can lead the congregation in singing them. That’s how training works isn’t it? It happens through repetition. Practice makes perfect. So how can I train myself in godliness? By reading his word and applying it to my day-to-day interactions with others; by doing all I can to fix my blind spots, by making sure my mind is focussed on the things of God not the selfish desires of the world; by stopping before I judge someone else and asking whether I know enough to set myself up as a judge.
The danger with listening to sermons week after week is we’ve heard it all before. There’s nothing new under the sun. So it’s easy to just sit here on a Sunday taking it all in and then forget it the moment we walk out the door. But God has given us words of eternal life. To ignore them would be like the second builder, to foolishly go through life thinking it won’t matter, it’ll never happen to me. That’ll be fine until the last day when we’re called to account for the decisions we’ve made, the things we’ve said and done, the things we’ve achieved in our life or failed to do.
So before you judge others, first judge yourself. Take out of your eye the log that’s stopping you from seeing clearly, and make sure that you’re training yourself in godliness; building up that good treasure in your heart; building your life on a firm foundation, a foundation based only on the word of God.
