The Rev. Dayle Casey
The Chapel of Our Saviour
Colorado Springs, Colorado
May 10, 2009
5 Easter – B
Acts 8:26-40
1 John 3:14-24
John 14:15-21
Jesus can be so frustrating at times, people sometimes tell me, because he doesn’t tell us exactly what to do in every situation in life. He is good at giving us general principles and at summing everything all up. When the expert in the law asks what he must do to inherit eternal life, Jesus says, “Love God with all your heart and soul and strength and mind; and love your neighbor as yourself. Everything in the Law and the prophets hangs on these two commandments.” But it would have been a lot more helpful to the expert in the law, some say, if, instead of telling a story, Jesus had been more specific about how the lawyer should apply that principle to the man left half dead by the side of the road. And it would be more helpful to us, they say, if he had been more specific about how we are to apply it on the streets of Colorado Springs.
Much of the Bible, of course, the Torah in particular, does give us a lot of specific rules. Six hundred thirteen of them, to be specific – all the laws about what to do and what not to do, most of which we Christians simply ignore. And then there is the host of more particular laws added by the rabbis, both before and after Jesus.
But Jesus said what he said and did what he did, and he didn’t say what he didn’t say. Jesus is who he is. For us New Testament types who believe Jesus himself fulfilled and summed up all the law and the prophets on the Cross, Jesus is who we’ve got to work with, and he seems to have been content to leave us a lot of latitude to decide for ourselves the particulars of what is essential and what is nonessential to our spiritual life and health.
One searches the words of Jesus in vain for any reference at all to many things we invest a lot of time and energy in. Specifically, I search the words of Jesus and find no reference whatever to a lot of what we do in church. Jesus says nothing at all about what music we should sing, nothing about youth ministry or parish budgets or Sunday School curricula or altar guilds or ECWs. He says little even about how we are to worship God, beyond telling us that those who worship God sincerely do so in spirit and in truth.
But Jesus does have a lot to say about some other things. He has a great deal to say about how we get along with each other, and about how we treat each other and care for each other, about, in a nutshell, how we love each other. Or how we don’t.
Thinking about this over the years, I’ve come up with two specific suggestions, two rules of thumb suggested by the Bible itself, about how to apply the general principles the Bible and Jesus give us.
The first rule of thumb is this: Look very carefully at the world around you. Specifically, be sure to look at yourself, because in trying to apply Jesus’ general principles to your own life, you will find spiritual direction in what you see. As the younger son Paul says in A River Runs Through It, “All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren’t noticing which makes you see something that isn’t even visible.” And what you see will be determined by where and how you look, and by how perceptively you look. And the first rule of thumb for Jesus is to look first to yourself.
I get this rule from one of Jesus’ own commandments: “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. For with the measure you use will it be measured out to you.”
In fact, this is a place where Jesus gets very specific. “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? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? First, look to yourself. Take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. For how can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into the pit?” (Luke, chapter 6)
Why does Jesus give us this specific commandment? Perhaps it’s because our pre-judgments, our premature judgments – our prejudices – so often get in the way of our seeing what’s really there. Consider, for example, the redneck farm kid who wrote his first letter home from the Marines:
Dear Ma and Pa,
I am well. Hope you are, too. Tell Brother Walt and Brother Elmer that the Marine Corps beats working for old man Minch by a mile. Tell ‘em to join up quick before all of the places are filled.
I was restless at first because you get to stay in bed till nearly 6 a.m. But I am getting so I like to sleep late. Tell Walt and Elmer that all you have to do before breakfast is smooth your cot, and shine some things. No hogs to slop, no feed to pitch or mash to mix or wood to split. Practically nothing to do before you eat in the morning.
Men got to shave .but it’s not so bad; there’s warm water. Breakfast is strong on trimmings like fruit juice, cereal, eggs, bacon, etc., but kind of weak on chops, potatoes, ham, steak, pie and other regular food. But tell Walt and Elmer you can always sit by the two city boys that live on coffee. Their food, plus yours, holds you until noon when you get fed again. It’s no wonder these city boys can’t walk much.
We go on ‘route marches,’ which the sergeant says are long walks to harden us. If he thinks so, it’s not my place to tell him different. Shucks, a ‘route march’ is about as far as to our mailbox at home. Then the city guys get sore feet, and we all get to ride back in trucks.
The sergeant is like a school teacher. He nags a lot. The captain is like the school board. Majors and colonels just ride around and frown. They don’t bother you none.
This next will kill Walt and Elmer with laughing. I keep getting medals for shootin’. I don’t know why, because the bulls-eye is near as big as a chipmunk head, and it don’t move. And it ain’t shootin’ at you like the Higgett boys at home. All you got to do is lie there all comfortable and hit it. You don’t even load your own cartridges. They come in boxes.
Then we have what they call hand-to-hand combat training. You get to wrassle with them city boys. I have to be real careful though, ’cause they break real easy. It ain’t like fighting with that ole bull at home. I’m about the best they got in this, except for that Tug Jordan from over in Silver Lake. I only beat him once. He joined up the same time as me, but I’m only 5 foot 6” and 130 pounds, and he’s 6’ foot 4” and near 250 pounds dry.
Be sure to tell Walt and Elmer to hurry and join before other fellers get onto this setup and come stampedin’ in.
Your loving daughter, Alice
We are commanded not to judge others for the same reason you just laughed. Seeing others as they really are, and not as we imagine them to be through our preconceptions, can produce some surprises! The only one who can give an adequate and accurate assessment of someone else is one who sees the whole person, and the whole situation. Judging another person by focusing on the speck in someone else’s eye, when our own vision is clouded by the plank in our own eye, is drawing a conclusion before your know the whole story.
If, in my relationship with another person, I judge or condemn that person through spiritual blindness caused by the plank in my own eye, then I can expect that that is how I will be judged by others looking at me through similarly clouded vision. If I could see the whole person as God sees him, then I could judge. But God alone can judge or condemn, precisely because God alone sees the whole person and what it is that makes him, or her, as he, or she, is.
Therefore, Jesus says – and says very specifically – we are to forgive as we have been forgiven, by seeing what should be most obvious to us, by looking first at ourselves and our own need for God, for any other way is like a blind man leading a blind man, both of whom will fall into the pit. Or, to paraphrase Paul in A River Runs Through It, all there is to forgiveness is seeing something noticeable in others, which makes you see something noticeable in yourself, which you were not noticing, which helps you avoid a pit that isn’t even visible.
The second rule of thumb that helps us apply Jesus’ principles to our lives today is this: Apply the first rule very specifically.
Lorraine Hansberry, the author of the play Raisin in the Sun, once said, ”In order to create the universal, you must pay very great attention to the specific.” This applies to understanding the Bible as well. If we want to understand how a general rule for living applies to us, then it’s a matter of seeing something noticeable, which makes us see something we were not noticing about ourselves, which makes us see something that isn’t even visible.
In other words, if, like the expert in the law in Jesus’ story, we are to understand how we are to “love one another as Jesus has loved us” then we need to look for ways that we, specifically, might apply that principle to specific people in specific situations, and most specifically in the ones right in front of us in Colorado Springs. Failing that, ”to love one another as Jesus has loved us” is merely platitude.
We need to ask, “Just exactly what does Jesus’ commandment mean in my life, here at Our Saviour Parish, in the Year of Our Lord 2009?” Finding an answer is a matter of seeing, and of being very specific. We can love only what we can see. And in order to see, we have got to notice. And in order to notice, we’ve got to look. And in order to look, we’ve got to want to look, not only at our brother or sister in front of us, but also deep into ourselves.
“We love,” St. John says, ”because God first loved us.” How do we know this? We don’t know it because John says it. We know it by experiencing it. We know it by looking in the right place and by seeing something very specific. By seeing a person on a Cross, a person spilling his blood for the sake of the world, for you and me, by seeing a person investing his specific flesh and blood in love for our sake, so that we can see the truth about ourselves and the world, and the truth about God.
“Some might say, ’I love God, but I hate my brother.’ But that’s impossible,” says John. “The person who says that is lying. For how can someone love God whom he has not seen if he does not love his brother or sister who is right in front of him?”
In other words, no one has seen God directly, but we can see God through our brother or sister, whom we can see, and therefore we can love God only by loving our brother or sister. “Anyone who hates his brother,” John adds, ”anyone who is indifferent toward his brother’s well-being, might as well kill him. Such a person is a murderer in his heart. And we know that no murderer has eternal life in him. Dear children, let us love not with words or tongue, but with actions and in truth, for if anyone sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?”
So the question is: Do we see in our brother and sister someone in need of God’s love by means of us? Love begins in seeing, in seeing the brother or sister in need who we can see, if only we will look. And then love continues by our acting for the good of that brother or sister. This is how we love God whom we cannot see; we love God by loving the brother next to us whom we can see in the way that Jesus loved him. We love God by being very specific in our actions, Jesus says: “Do unto your brother what you would want your brother to do unto you.”
In order to apply this general principle, which is really a very specific commandment, in our own lives, we ourselves must pay very great attention to the specific. If we want to see God, we must see our brother and sister. That is, we must really see him, not just with our eyes, but with our hearts, the way God sees him.
First, look at Jesus on the Cross. Pay very great attention to the specific. Check out more than his 5-foot 6” frame and his fondness for wine and for sleeping in till almost 6:00a.m. Check out the whole person who was committed to loving God by loving us. This can be done by reading the Scriptures. Consider the man who reminds us that the laws and the customs were made for man, not man for the laws and customs. Study the man who, when push came to shove, willingly walked the road to Jerusalem and the path to Calvary for the sake of those he loved. Examine his agony in Gethsemane, and the pain caused by the thorns we crowned him with. Pay very great attention to the specific. Examine the nails, the blood, and the tears he shed.
Then look to yourself. Pay very close attention to the specific. Check for planks.
Then look again at Jesus on the Cross. Pay close attention to the specific. Check out the whole person who was committed to loving God by loving us. Consider the man who never turned away from his table anyone who was sincerely looking for God. Study the man who willingly walked the road to Jerusalem and the path to Calvary for your sake. Pay very great attention to the specific. Examine his agony in Gethsemane, the pain caused by the thorns. Examine the nails, the blood, and the tears he shed.
Then look at your brother and sister. And if, with the expert in the law, you want to know, “Well, Jesus, just who is my brother and sister?” look around you. Look at the person God has given you at the moment. Look at the person you meet on the sidewalk. Look at the person who lives next door, the one you don’t like very much. Look at the person sitting across the aisle or in the pew in front of you. Look at the man or woman God has given you to work with and to worship with. Look to those Jesus himself brings you. And remember that Jesus says, ”Love him. Love her. Love them in the same way I have loved you.” Pay very great attention to the specific. And be sure to look at the whole person.
Then do for your brother or sister – not for God, whom you cannot see, but for the person in front of you, whom you can see – what you would have him do for you. No commandment in the Bible is more specific than that!
In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.