Sunday 15-09-19 Ascend part 18 Measuring the Plank
**comment and correction on last week. Last week, I finished with the statement: “You can measure how much the Kingdom has become a reality in your life, but the level of anxiety regarding tomorrow.” I’d like to apologise and alter that if I may. I’d like to swap out the word ‘anxiety’ with ‘worry’. This is because it is dangerous to name a mental health condition that may have much more to do with physicality than spirituality as a simple lack of faith problem. Jesus doesn’t as he is talking specifically about the obsession with certain physical things, NOT a diagnosed mental health condition. It’s really important that we as a church don’t fall into that horrid ‘if you just pray more it’ll all be fine’ kind of mentality so I wanted to just offer that apology and correction.
Matt 7:1-6 “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. 3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. 6 “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.
Matt 7:1-6 Msg 1-5 “Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults— unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It’s easy to see a smudge on your neighbor’s face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, ‘Let me wash your face for you,’ when your own face is distorted by contempt? It’s this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor. 6 “Don’t be flip with the sacred. Banter and silliness give no honor to God. Don’t reduce holy mysteries to slogans. In trying to be relevant, you’re only being cute and inviting sacrilege.
This morning we enter the final chapter of Jesus’ discourse where he revisits and builds on themes from the previous two chapters. Interestingly he begins with his basic training on conflict. Why do we ignore this stuff? Apart from Ken Sande’s ‘The Peacemaker’ (I think there may still be some pamphlets at the back) training, I can’t think of any other course that specifically disciples people around how to and how not to confront or rebuke. Seriously, we make a big deal our of pre-marital counselling and rightly so, but in my experience, conversations on conflict rarely happen outside of seminary classrooms with those who are completing ministry or leadership training. Is because it’s all too hard? Do we think that conflict res training is instantly downloaded onto the disc drive of your brain the moment you become a Christian? When conflict does happen, why is the main goal to shut it down as soon as possible? Why do we so rarely, honestly debrief?
Christian conflict done well, should spell the end of condemnation.
- The end of interpersonal condemnation.
“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. 3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?
In past sessions, we have talked about anger and contempt and their dangers. Assuming we’ve heard and internalised that, Jesus now moves on to the subject of condemnation. By the way, Condemnation (if you’re looking for a definition) is to make a person feel like a failure simply for being the person that they are.[1]
We must be beware of believing that it is ok for us to condemn as long as we are condemning the right things.[2] Such an attitude leads us down a dark road which is why yet again, Jesus asks an inconvenient question in verse 3 of ‘Why do you ignore the plank in your own eye’?
Here’s the answer: we do this because we don’t really trust the judgement of Jesus and his timing more than our own. We would rather ‘chase the moneychangers out of the temple’ with in our own time rather than wait for his timing. But here’s the deadly danger: It is precisely for that reason that we’ll we will never be able to help a single person until we give up condemnation, because it is condemnation that blinds us to the reality of the other person and the complexities of their situation. Full Stop.[3]
Condemnation is invariably reflexive. The moment we point something out in others, their attention is drawn immediately to our own consistency in that area, usually because they’re still working out if we’re worth listening to or not. Of course, as we all sinners we all display inconsistencies, which is why condemnation will always illicit a response of anger.
Condemnation IS the plank. That’s why we need to get it right within the community of faith because our praxis ‘in here’ will determine our praxis ‘out there’. You see, everyone has a plank. It can be cultural, generational, gender based, denominational, socio-economical, socio-political whatever, and, (as we talked about at the beginning of the series) it doesn’t matter which earthly kingdom and it’s values you’ve been converted out of, we’re talking about the kingdom of God which has a completely different set of values. One of my tasks, is to fight the Satanic strategy which is to push worldly kingdoms and systems into the church get God’s people to adopt them, then baptise them in spiritual language.
By now, some may be a bit nervous that we are talking about the abandonment of judgement altogether as the abandonment of discernment. But there is a difference between me judging, or discerning that my lawn has reached a point of growth that requires mowing and me condemning my lawn for growing and therefore taking up yet another of one of my Saturday mornings. The complexity happens however, when we bring the analogy back across to real human relationships which theses days exists more and more in an atmosphere of approval addiction. There’s even a double complexity when we are tempted to assume that people’s pushback to our comments must automatically arise out of their insecurity when in fact they may not be at all.
What all this means is that part of the Christian life is training ourselves in the sort of ‘agape’ love that Jesus talks about. The bad news is, this actually takes thought and effort to train ourselves in healthy conflict, peacemaking and the ability to disciple each other without attacking a person’s personhood. Here’s the great opportunity friends, if we get this right, just imagine the light that we can be. So, let’s get practical.
- But then how now do we correct?
You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
In his teaching, we notice that Jesus still includes the act of a speck indeed being removed from a bother’s eye. Thus, he is implying and expecting that within the Kingdom Community, mutual submission and discipleship actually happens.
Just before I list some practical steps, there is an enormous caveat that needs to be implemented before we move on to any practical or structural step. It can be best summed up by asking the question: Am I fit to correct or rebuke this person? Can we please memorise this question? To attempt to correct a person in an area where you are currently struggling with sin puts you at massive spiritual risk. To correct a person at all when you have not displayed a long-term faithfulness and ability to come under authority, puts you at massive spiritual risk. (Hence Paul’s advice that elders are not to be new believers in 1 Tim 2)
Before we are to see clearly enough to remove a spec from our brother or sister’s eye (this will always include suggesting the idea that they are not seeing things correctly) we must have discerned our own plank and through prayer and community, done the hard work of plank removal.
Some simple practical rules of thumb:
- Leave it at least 48 hrs. Planks don’t come out in 5 minutes, particularly when the flesh wants them to stay there so I have found that 48hrs is the minimum time to allow myself to talk to God about it. (assuming no one else is going to be damaged in the mean time.
- Don’t ever correct via email or text (even a letter) unless no other medium is available. Always rather face to face or phone call at worst. Conversations only happen in conversations, but we use the written word to decrees policies and laws. Ie: to shut down conversations. Yes I even include letters because although Paul addressed stuff in letters, you’re not stuck in a Roman prison 300 miles away.
- ‘Neutral territory’ as much as possible. Don’t just go for your home ground advantage, for me, I try to not have tough conversations with people in my office.
- Begin with encouragement that displays and your awareness of their heart motives. I am a fan of encapsulating a rebuke with positives either side, but I’m even more of a fan of that encouragement referencing something that they do which demonstrates that you see the good things they do, not just the one bad thing.
- Display an awareness of how you may have contributed to the conflict without supplying an accompanying excuse. If it is a situation that you could have handled better, admit it and resist like anything the urge to then say the word BUT. If our righteousness is truly found in Christ alone then we should never, ever feel the need to defend our own righteousness. If we gave up the word ‘BUT’ I believe 50% of all conflict would disappear tomorrow.
- Hold off on the solution.
Sometimes you get a word for word translation of a text that is so full of the street sayings of the day that a paraphrase ends up bringing it out a lot more clearly. Here’s verse 6 from the Message: “Don’t be flip with the sacred. Banter and silliness give no honor to God. Don’t reduce holy mysteries to slogans. In trying to be relevant, you’re only being cute and inviting sacrilege.
I return again to the words of Dallas Willard: ‘our practice of condemnation usually goes hand in hand with another device mistakenly used to micro-manage the lives of those we care about. This is the practice of pushing the things of God upon them whether they want or are ready for them or not.[4]
I have had to flat out repent of how I so often have used this verse. I got sucked into the popular interpretation of the idea of withholding sacred and wonderful treasures from people that I (here we go) judge to be unworthy of. But this could not be more in opposition with what Jesus is saying. How dare we make a judgement that one created in the image of God is not worthy to receive the blessing of God. That was precisely the attitude of the Pharisees and we call it wisdom? How dare we.
Praise the Lord that was not the attitude of Christ himself, none of us would be here if it were. It is not worthiness that is in question here but whether, what we specifically have to give in a certain moment will be helpful. Trying to package things in ‘helpful slogans’ is like asking a pig to digest a pearl or a dog to wear a crucifix. It will only serve to remind them that you are the one who is at lease edible, you may find yourself a victim of their most immediate need that you failed to notice.
After years of youth ministry I realised something: nothing is more dangerous to a person’s tender young faith than my so called ‘peals of wisdom’ offered with an air of superiority. One of the hardest things when you know the gospel is to realise that when you talk before you listen, you already have nothing to say.
- Conclusion and Communion.
Jesus approaches us this morning with a question: will you partake? So Much did God respect human individuality that he gives us the most sacred of sacraments through which we can respond to him.
He offers himself freely and without coercion that we may be able to offer ourselves in the same way and in the same light, back to him and then in service to each other. So we’re going to take communion now. And as the bread and glasses are passed out, think of what you physically must do in order to receive this sacrament. You have to unclench the fist and open the hand in order to receive the bread and the juice. Jesus opened his hand out so that a roman soldier could drive a nail through it into a piece of wood for my sake, your sake and even his sake.
This is what we celebrate this morning as Summarised by Paul: (Rom 8:1) there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. Friends: hallelujah! Perhaps you are dealing with condemnation by another person in your life right now, with the elements in your hand ask: Who is the one condemning me, when set beside the One whom now does not? Perhaps, you realise you are guilty of condemnation. In which ask yourself: is not my saviour’s justice enough for me?
Eat, drink. Remember him.
[1] Willard Dallas, The Divine Conspiracy (London: William Collins, 1998) p244
[2] Willard, The Divine Conspiracy (William Collins, 1998) p243
[3] Ibid p247
[4] Willard, The Divine Conspiracy (William Collins, 1998) p251