Jesus Schooling the It Boys

Matthew 23.4-10:  They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.  They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long.  They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues,  and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi.  But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven.  Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. [NRSV]

“Instead of giving you God’s Law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads, and wouldn’t think of lifting a finger to help. Their lives are perpetual fashion shows, embroidered prayer shawls one day and flowery prayers the next. They love to sit at the head table at church dinners, basking in the most prominent positions, preening in the radiance of public flattery, receiving honorary degrees, and getting called ‘Doctor’ and ‘Reverend.’  “Don’t let people do that to you, put you on a pedestal like that. You all have a single Teacher, and you are all classmates. Don’t set people up as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God; let him tell you what to do. No one else should carry the title of ‘Father’; you have only one Father, and he’s in heaven. And don’t let people maneuver you into taking charge of them. There is only one Life-Leader for you and them—Christ. [The Message]


Religion cannot be about showing off, or it isnt’ religion at all.

Showing off shifts our faith away from the worship of God (its very purpose) to the worship of ourselves.

The most insidious, the sneakiest way we have of doing this fools (even) ourselves.

The sneaky voice of the pretender is the voice of condemnation: look how bad he is! . . . I cannot believe she goes to church and acts like that! . . . And she calls herself a Christian! 

Here’s the thing: whenever I recognize myself in your sin, I am much quicker to lean toward mercy, forgiveness, compassion, love, understanding, forebearance, grace.

It is only when I do not see myself in you that I feel so free to condemn and judge.

In this way might we understand that our condemnation of others is just a slick way of pointing out how wonderful we are, for surely in our condemnation of others is at least implied a celebration of how very lucky we are not to be (like) them.

Remember how much Jesus liked that?  Not so much.

Why should it matter so to God?  After all, aren’t we better than some folk?  Aren’t there people just begging for a little healthy criticism?

Perhaps.  But by whom?  Is not God the judge?  And if God is THE judge, then who are we pretending to be when we get all judging?

Exactly.

Because once again, we are making ourselves the focus (spiritual narcissism), making of ourselves gods (or at the least, demi-gods), to be admired (which is perilously close to being worshiped) for our wondrous selves, if for no other reason that at least we’re not that guy.

But we are not the judge.

If it’s a legal model we so desire, what we, all of us, are, are co-defendants.  But the metaphor will only take us so far.  Life is not a courtroom.  And we do not get off more lightly for our wrongs by rolling over on the other guy.  It doesn’t work that way.

Condemnation of others is the adult version of tattling – we’re the kid and God’s the Dad.  And he doesn’t want to hear it.  The only person’s inventory we are responsible for is our own.  And God isn’t just Dad.  God is The Dad.  And he already knows.

Ultimately, condemnation of others is evidence of the absence of love in our hearts for another.  And we are commanded to love others, just like we love us.  To condemn another is to find them wanting in the courtroom of our own minds and appoint ourselves the judge.

And there we are, slipping into the judge’s chair again, forgetting that our job, our only job, when it comes to other people, is simply, merely, only, to love.

Anything else just isn’t our business.

I Judge: #1 in My Ongoing List of Things that Irk, Annoy and Irritate (in case you didn’t get the point with the first verb)

This is probably more a pet peeve list, but I’m thinking about the assumptions I make, which do, in fact, constitute judgments – speculative – but judgments nonetheless, so here is my first installment in “I Judge”:

1. Parking sideways – a corollary to but even worse infringer than the double-space parker: on observation (at least where I live), cars don’t do this, even vans generally don’t:  it’s the SUV-Jeep-Suburban drivers among us who park sideways, taking up three spaces or more, as if parking in these United States were not considered a cooperative endeavor (it is); as if there were no cultural norms about such things (there are); as if to convey cool (it isn’t).  I behold and judge: front-end in parking is the easiest of all, so what’s your problem?  Can you simply not be bothered?  Or did you never learn how to navigate that boat-mobile in reverse?  Are you phobic about going backward?  Are you a member of Starsky & Hutch and just didn’t have time to park, simply abandoning your vehicle wherever it stopped in your hurry to save us from the world?  

But as I said at the beginning, this is about my judging, so some truth-telling of my own is in order, I suppose: where I most commonly view this phenomena (in fact where I am looking upon it right now) is from my office window upon the church parking lot during the week (which means it is usually empty, save the random non-parking parker such as today’s guest).  The funny part is that I would even notice or care.  The interesting observation part is that even with an empty parking lot, the cars almost always park as if they’re at Wal-Mart: they pull in front first.  And I suspect that the big-vehicle sideways folk do the same when they’re at Wal-Mart: take up three spaces by going it sideways.

But no one else is in the parking lot, so why should I care or even notice?  In my defense, if parked in the usual way, I scarce take notice of the vehicle as lots of folk commute together from the juncture of this church parking lot, which is a fine use of a largely empty space designed for the purpose (of vehicle leaving).  The sideways car, outside the norm, draws my attention, keeps me wondering and watching to make sure no one has need of the preacher (or more often, tour guide to our little country church with a bit of local history to claim).

And, I admit, the assumption of the other, a traveler I discern from the carry-all on top, that the space won’t be needed; that there won’t be a Monday gathering with a little old lady left to cross the road because two extra spaces were taken up by our unknown big-vehicle driver, galls me – it’s an accurate assumption, but it galls nevertheless.

When did I become such a law & order gal?  When did observation of cultural norms become such an obsession with me?  I don’t know.  All I know is that I’m trying to do a bit of work on a day off and that blasted SUV there at the edge of my peripheral vision drives me to distraction.

Silly me.  I wonder: what are you judging today?

Praying on the Impoverishment of My Generosity

Rereading me some liberation theology – condemned, as always, but this time, struggling not to be bogged down in guilt (that I am not poor, but wealthy, very wealthy, by the standards of the world) – I stand indicted by some of the first words of the original Introduction to Gustavo Gutierrez’s A Theology of Liberation: “My purpose is . . . to let ourselves be judged by the word of the Lord . . .”

Sigh.

And yet I recall to memory that to stand in judgment before my Lord is not to be bent down as a broken and caught-out criminal, but rather to stand in glory side-by-side with all, claimed, loved, redeemed, set and sent for purpose, fulfilled and unfulfilled, and that judgment this side of heaven is not my rod so much as my guide.

Yesterday we marked the anniversary of the declaration of war on poverty.  It sounds a bit ridiculous, all this war-declaring we seem to like to do.  But the impulse (I leave to others far brighter than I to judge sincerity of intentions at the time) to eradicate (at least some of) the problems associated with poverty – economic, educational, and health care lack – is a good one.

That the conditions of poverty are (often if not always) institutionally created, it also seems good to me that we endeavor to address them in institutional ways, ever mindful of my far more progressive friends’ mistrust of all things institutional.

But if dismantling is not to our liking, maybe what we need is more mantling – more cloaking, but with what?  Perhaps with righteousness – an unpopular word in my time and place.  But even more, perhaps, with love – the act of actual care, of walking alongside, of doing better at doing better.

This, then, in observing yet another anniversary of human (claimed) desire to eradicate the misery of poverty, oppression, injustice, is my prayer . . .

Lord, I hear You telling me that sitting at table together, being the guest rather than always the host, matters.  For the gifts I have received from those with so much less in a material way than I, I give you thanks.  For the lessons in humility, I give you thanks.  For Your ways not being our ways, my way, I give You thanks.  For Your not-always obvious or even apparent ways of blessing the poor, I give you thanks.  When I have trivialized Your beatitude bestowing upon them by trying to make it about something other than genuine material lack, I regret.  When I am impatient because the solutions are hard and often not obvious, I regret.  When I am tempted to judge the worthiness of another before I bestow Your graces shared with me upon them, I regret.  Help me to do better at doing better.  Amen.