You Are Doing the Very Same Things Romans 2:1 First Sunday after Pentecost May 31, 2015

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1 You Are Doing the Very Same Things Romans 2:1 First Sunday after Pentecost May 31, 2015 Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make will you be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Matthew 7:1-3 One of the most overlooked passages in the Bible is found in the very 1 st verse of the 2 nd chapter of Paul s Letter to the Romans. It s an important passage, especially in light of the many things that have recently been occurring throughout our community and around our world. I thought today it would do us all well to reflect on that very neglected passage as it has much to teach us. But before we are able to do so, we need a little background. So listen up especially our Confirmation Boy! Paul s letter to the church in Rome is unique. In all of his other letters, Paul knew those to whom he was writing. He already had an established relationship, for example, with the congregations in Philippi, Corinth, Galatia, Thessalonica, and Colossae. The church at Rome, however, was different. Paul had never been to Rome. He had never met the people to which he was writing. He had plans to visit them soon, to get to know them, and to hopefully take up a collection that would fund a planned mission trip to Spain. Yet again, it s important to remember that he had not yet met the Roman Christians and did not have the same kind of relationship with them as he had with the others. Now Paul was fairly well-known by this time. Next to Peter he was the most famous of all the apostles. That did not sit well with some. So it seems that those who were jealous of his popularity and influence started spreading false rumors about him and his faith. Since those rumors were starting to have their intended effect, Paul s letter was not only an introduction of himself to the Roman Christians, but also a short summary of what he really believed; of his understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And it didn t take him long to get to the heart of the matter. After the obligatory greetings found in any letter, he dug right in. In only the 16 th verse of the 1 st chapter, he directly confronted his critics and summed up his entire theology by writing: 1

2 For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written: The one who is righteous will live by faith. As Martin Luther would discover and preach some 15 centuries later, the entire gospel can be summed up in those two short verses. Paul wanted everyone to know that the one and only way that humanity comes into a right relationship with God is through the grace of Jesus Christ. Period. That s it! But being the preacher that he was, he wasn t content to leave wellenough alone. So he spent the next several chapters sorting all of that out. And he began by writing about how humanity had decided to follow their own path instead of the path that God set out for them. He made the point that everyone has chosen to go down their own road and how doing so has led everyone further and further away from God. Unfortunately, reading those words nearly 2,000 years later, there have been many that have chosen to focus on only a couple of minor verses in that first chapter; those handful of sentences that refer to what is known today is homosexuality. (Don t worry. Take a deep breath. That s not the focus of my sermon for today.) Paul s point was not to condemn a certain behavior of some people, but to remind the Romans that all people have chosen to follow their own path; to go their own way, which has led to their becoming in his words futile in their thinking. Yet as you know, there are many in our own time that have conveniently chosen to ignore the major point of Paul s letter and focus on these one or two minor verses. Then they stop. They read no further. That s unfortunate. For if they would read past the 32 nd verse of that 1 st chapter they would find these words in the 1 st verse of the 2 nd chapter: Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things. The translation known as The Voice puts it those same verses like this: So as you can see there are no excuses for any of us. If your eyes shift their focus from yourself to others to judge how they are doing you have already condemned 2

3 yourself! You don t realize that you are pointing your fingers at others for the exact things you do as well. Finally, in his translation known as The Message, Eugene Peterson puts Romans 2:1 in even simpler terms: Every time you criticize someone, you condemn yourself. It takes one to know one. Judgmental criticism of others is a well-known way of escaping detection of your own crimes and misdemeanors. Listen again very closely when I say that Paul s intention with these few verses of the 1 st chapter of the 2 nd chapter was not to offer a definitive and final ruling on the nature of homosexuality. That was never his purpose. His main intent was to demonstrate that all people fall short of the high mark that God has set. And whether they fall short of the mark by an inch or a mile, they still fall short. All of us find ourselves in the very same boat. Pointing fingers at others for their perceived sins is nothing more than the proverbial pot calling the kettle black. It s the same point that Jesus tried to make in that very familiar story found in the 8 th chapter of John s gospel. Remember it? Jesus was sitting in the temple one day and teaching a large group of people. As he was doing so a group of Pharisees walked up to him dragging a woman wrapped only in a bedsheet. They threw her at his feet and said, Teacher, this woman has been caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now the law Moses commanded us to stone such a woman. What do you say? Even though this story is far from over, it appears to me that several red flags that have already been raised. First and maybe most important is how was it that these Pharisees just so happened to come upon someone caught in flagrante delicto? How did they know what she was doing and just when to bust into the room to catch her? But that s not all. Where was her partner? Last time I looked one cannot commit adultery alone. The law the Pharisees so eagerly quoted says that it was just not the woman that should be stoned. Both guilty parties were to be subjected to the same penalty the adulteress and the adulterer. I don t know about you but the whole thing smells of a setup, especially when you consider that John says in verse 6, they said this to test him. So what happened? Well, as you know, Jesus did not immediately 3

4 answer their questions. Instead, he bent down and started writing with his finger in the dust. No one knows what he wrote. My best guess is that it was the address of a certain local establishment with which most of those Pharisees were very familiar. After Jesus underlined it several times, he got up, looked at the woman s accusers, and said, Let the one who has not sinned throw the first stone. As we all know, one by one to the sound of their rocks dropping on the pavement the Pharisees walked away. Remember Paul s words? Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on one another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things. That s such an important verse for us to remember. It s one of the keys of Paul s entire argument. But if I m honest with myself, then I have to say that I know why people stop their reading before they get to it. That verse sure has made my life difficult these past few days. You see, I had great plans for this morning s sermon. I was going to spend my time preaching on hypocrisy and use Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, bless their hearts, not to mention their 19 children and counting, as prime examples. Oh, how the mighty have so deliciously fallen! That story is a preacher s gift. It s a situation that just keeps on giving; a sermon that s just waiting to be preached! What a delightful, juicy, two-faced mess that family has become! But just as I was getting ready to point my righteous finger and write down my truly holier-than-thou thoughts, God cleared the divine throat, started flashing those Romans 2:1 lights right at me, and said, Hold on there, boy. Now I don t know about you, but I hate it when that happens. God can be a real wet blanket at times! Now please understand that my being reminded of this particular verse does not mean that I am giving those involved in this horrendous story a free pass. Applying Paul s words to what I wanted to preach this morning does not mean that what happened in what TLC promoted as a perfect family was and is not as detestable and despicable as we all now think. What their oldest son did to those young girls (at least two of whom were his own sisters) was not just a mistake, as his parents said, but a crime pure and simple. I was once the pastor of a church where one of its members did something very similar and was sentenced to 15 years in 4

5 prison because of it! Josh Duggar s actions were outrageous. And how his family dealt with those actions was nothing less than a cover-up. I am among those who believe that this family deserves so much more than simply a cancelled TV series. Please hear me when I say that invoking this verse from Romans and that story from John does not mean that you or I simply look the other way and let them go on with business as usual. And it certainly doesn t mean that we can t or shouldn t learn from this horrible tragedy. What it does mean, I believe, is that you, me, and everyone else had better tread softly when we lift up the sins of others because we are are in the exact same boat. We may not have the same skeletons in our closet as the Duggar family, but we all have skeletons. As Jesus reminded the Pharisees, none of us is without sin. Or to once again use Paul s imagery, it doesn t matter if we have fallen an inch or a mile short of the mark that God has set. In one way or another, we have all fallen short of God s glory. As the old saying goes, when you point one finger at your neighbor you have three more pointing back at you. One of the more famous lines from the Sermon on the Mount is found in the 7 th chapter of Matthew where Jesus talks about the dangers of judging others and says, Why do you see the speck in your neighbor s eye, but do not notice the log in your own? Now being the good teacher that he was, Jesus knew how to use an absurd image to make a very important and memorable point. Who is going to forget the absurdity of someone walking around with a 2 x 4 hanging out of his or her eye? But there is more to those words than just good humor. In the language of the New Testament, the words we translate as speck and plank share the same root. In other words, they come from the same substance; the same material. They re both wood! Translate Jesus words with that information in mind and you get something like, How can you lament over the sawdust in your neighbor s eye when you have a tree trunk in your eye? Extrapolate that idea out to its natural conclusion and Jesus was saying that people are so adept at finding fault in others because they are filled with fault themselves; that they can spot guilt in other people s life because they are guilty too. A commentator named Kent Hughes once said, We find it so easy to turn a microscope on another person s sin, but we look at ours through the wrong end of the telescope. We easily spot the phoniness in another, because we have a logjam of it in our own lives. 5

6 I could find great pleasure in piling on the Duggars, but how is that going to help the situation? Their actions speak for themselves. What they did needs no further comment from me. Besides, the boulder in my own eye gives me far more worry. Even though I am saved by God s grace, I m still concerned with how far I have fallen short of the mark. Could it be the same with you? It seems to me that Christians, especially those in America, love to point out the shortcomings of others. We love to pillory those who have spectacularly failed. An entire industry has been made of ridiculing those who have fallen prey to their own glaring double standards. And all that industry has done is further increase the polarization our nation. If we would only spend as much time correcting our own shortcomings as we do in making examples out of others, things just might be a whole lot better. Therefore you have not excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on one another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things. Paul was right. Judging others is nothing but a dead end. Pointing out the wrongs of others is merely a smokescreen for our own crimes and misdemeanors. Jesus had a much better idea. Love one another. Pray for those who persecute you. The world will be a much better place if you do. 6