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Judge Not

This morning’s Gospel reading is a tough one. At least for me.

“Stop judging and you will not be judged.
Stop condemning and you will not be condemned.
Forgive and you will be forgiven.
Give and gifts will be given to you;
a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing,
will be poured into your lap.
For the measure with which you measure
will in return be measured out to you.”

Essentially, it’s a Gospel warning that what goes around comes around and we would be well advised to follow the writer’s advice.

But judging others is easy. It’s fun to deflect the attention from ourselves and our own inadequacies and point out the foibles of others. It’s nice to get people to focus on the looks, sounds, and smells around us, so no one notices the rot coming from within. Most of us, including me, would rather people not notice how far behind I am, how spiritually starved I am, how disconnected I sometimes feel – and instead point out the ills around us, the dumb things other people say, the inarticulate nature of those we do not agree with, and the crazy things that people who do not agree with us proclaim.

Stop judging.

God give us the strength to try.

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Lessons From Saints

This week, we celebrate two great saints: St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More.

John Fisher was a bishop who refused to recognize the king of England, Henry VIII, as the supreme head of the church in England. He was executed on orders of the king, who could not stand being embarrassed by those whose reputations as a theologian and scholar were greater than his own reputation as ruler.

We celebrate Bishop Fisher that same day we celebrate my favorite saint, Thomas More. Also executed for his refusal to recognize the king over the pope as head of the church, More was the Lord Chancellor of England, whose final days are recounted in Robert Bolt’s play, A Man For All Seasons. I read that play every summer and taught it when I was a junior high teacher and, again, more recently, in a class I taught at a local university. At the end of the play, More stands on the dais, about the lose his head for following his conscience and says, (at least in the play), “I have been commanded by the king to be brief, so brief I will be. I die here the king’s good servant, but God’s first.”

More and Fisher served the king well. When the king didn’t get what he wanted, he changes the rules. People still do that, don’t they?

The world doesn’t have enough people willing to be “God’s first” – not Republicans first, not Democrats first, not liberals or conservatives, or ultra-anything, not watchers of news from one side or the other, but true, honest to goodness folks, willing to stand up and be “God’s first.”

Because if we are judged on how we treat the one another, some of us might be in real trouble. Yes, me included.

This week, let us work hard to be “God’s first.”

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Judge Not

This morning’s Gospel reading is a tough one.

“Stop judging and you will not be judged.”

Ouch.

But it gets worse.

“For as you judge, so will you be judged…”

Double ouch.

The Gospel writer goes on to quote Jesus about boards and splinters and eyes and beams. We’ve heard it before.

These days it is hard to not to judge. The media seems to encourage it. Politicians welcome it. Families suffer from it. Relationship are destroyed by it.

Judge not… what a concept.

It is appropriate, then, that today we also celebrate two great saints: St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More.

John Fisher was a bishop who refused to recognize the king of England, Henry VIII, as the supreme head of the church in England. He was executed on orders of the king, who could not stand being embarrassed by those whose reputations as a theologian and scholar were greater than his own reputation as ruler.

The other guy we commemorate is my favorite (beside Patrick, of course). Thomas More was also executed for his refusal to recognize the king over the pope as head of the church, More was the Lord Chancellor of England, whose final days are recounted in Robert Bolt’s play, A Man For All Seasons. I read that play every summer and taught it when I was a junior high teacher and, again, more recently, in a class I taught at a local university. At the end of the play, More stands on the dais, about to lose his head for following his conscience and says, (at least in the play), “I have been commanded by the king to be brief, so brief I will be. I die here the king’s good servant, but God’s first.”

More and Fisher served the king well. When the king didn’t get what he wanted, he simply made himself the head of the church, granted himself the divorce, and thus was free to marry the woman who would become one of many in a succession of wives. It was a declaration (think: executive order) that he wrote with his advisors that made him able to do these things and it turns out it was a declaration that went against his own coronation oath.

When I was teaching junior high, I gave a review that was more than thirty pages long. Students could use books, parents, other teachers, even each other to find the correct answers. After all, it was only a review, not the final exam.

The final exam, it turns out, was only one question. After all their study of the “facts of the faith,” their final to get out of middle school religion was simple:

“How are you God’s first?”

Perhaps if all of us – including me – asked that question more often, there would be a lot less judging going on.

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A Good Measure

In this morning’s Gospel reading, our instructions are pretty clear.

“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

But what is mercy? Patience? Kindness? Forgiveness? Compassion? Can I be full of mercy and not really like somebody? Can I have patience, but not with everyone? About this kindness thing, just how kind are we talking?

“Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned.”

Okay, this is getting trickier. I am going to need to think more about this. I am an expert judge when it comes to other people. 

“Forgive and you will be forgiven.”

Not a problem. My wife is always saying that she is impressed with my capacity to forgive. I do not do a great job of forgetting, however, so I could work on that. A friend told me recently that real forgiveness is choosing to love. It is remembering that the reason you first loved someone is greater than your righteous anger.

“Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap.”

This is good news. I like when the Gospels talk about gifts. I like getting gifts. I like giving gifts. I think I am a pretty generous person. It’s nice to know that some of that generosity might be coming back my way…though I guess that is not really the point, is it?

“For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”

If this means, “what goes around comes around,” I might be in serious trouble.

Perhaps this week I will try very hard not to judge, to stop condemning (even people who might deserve it….there I go again) and to give more generously, forgive more easily, and come to understand more completely what it means to be merciful.

(sigh)

Lent is hard.

~pjd