"Here Come The Judge"

It's easy to judge other people by the way they talk, by the color of their skin, by their political views, even by the way they dress. But we would NEVER discriminate against anyone on the basis of appearance, would we? If at about five minutes into our service this morning, a gentleman strolled in the door with the face of Robert Redford, the clothes of a model from Gentleman's Quarterly, a Rolex on his wrist and a ring on his finger with a stone the size of Mt. Everest, we would NEVER smile and ogle and ask him to sit in the best seat in the house, would we?

And, if at 10:55 a biker would walk through that door with hair down to his posterior, tattoos all over his arms, and a body that smelled like the Detroit Lions locker room at halftime, we would NEVER look the other way and avoid the guy like he had the bubonic plague, would we? After all, it's obvious to anyone that the man in the good clothes was a good Christian man, and the biker was nothing but a bum who wanted to bum gas money so he could get to Duluth.

How many of you are afraid of flying? Gladys hated to fly. Her stomach would knot up, her hands would shake and her body would be drenched in sweat. Her entire life seemed to pass by her. And that was from just standing in line to buy her ticket. It was even worse once the plane got off the runway and into the air.

Gladys was so nervous about flying that she sought help from a psychiatrist. After six months of therapy, Gladys and her headshrinker find a way to get her through it. On her next flight, Gladys would take two items from her childhood along that were very near and dear to her, comfort items that were failsafe methods of getting her through the ordeal.

As Gladys was growing up, her favorite thing in the whole world was an old, tattered copy of "Little Women." Gladys had read that book so many times that she could recite the book verbatim.

She would also take along was an entire package of Oreo cookies. No matter how bad life could be, Gladys remembered Oreos as the ultimate comfort food.

So on the day of her flight, Gladys puts "Little Women" and her package of Oreos in a big handbag, takes her seat, buckles in, and awaits the plane's departure. Immediately, she pulls out Little Women and her terror is assuaged.

Gladys is so engrossed in the book that she is jolted into reality when, halfway through the flight, the plane runs into turbulence. The plane is bumping, going sideways, and half the passengers are screaming. She's about to reach into her bag for the Oreos when she realizes that the man sitting in the seat next to her is opening the cookies. She thinks to herself, "He's got a lot of gall to take somebody's cookies without asking." Then her imagination goes wild "He's a bigger fraidy cat than I ever thought of being. And look at the way he dresses: he makes bargain basement look like Saks Fifth Avenue. And look at that grin. He's trying to cover up something. I bet he's running away from his wife and kids. Yeah, he looks like he embezzled money from the bank. And I bet anybody who would steal cookies has to be a creep."

As time passes, the flight grows bumpier. Gladys's terror level has just about reached its zenith when she reaches over, throws her hand into the package, and grabs a couple of Oreos. The man looks stunned, and gives her an odd stare. He shrugs his shoulders and holds out the bag to share for the rest of the flight.

The plane comes to a stop, the passengers undo their seat belts, and Gladys puts her copy of Little Women back into her handbag. And as she slides the book into the bag, Gladys feels something plastic, something with rows of round objects wrapped in cellophane. And it's then that Gladys realizes that the guy in the seat next to her had his OWN bag of Oreos.

In a way that's what Jesus is saying in today's passage: everybody's got their fears; everybody's got their own issues; everybody's got their own Oreos, but we prefer to latch onto other people's Oreos. It's a lot easier to judge other people than to judge ourselves. By the way, iit is natural to have opinions. Some people think this morning's text, "Judge not," is a mandate against opinions. It is one thing to speculate: it is an entirely different matter to judge.

The Greek word used here is the verb krino. This wonderful word gives us the English words crisis and critic.

What do you think of when you hear the word critic? It probably conjures up images of antagonism. When we ask Penelope Pewsitter not to be critical of the Chair of the Women's Fellowship, we are asking her not to be so negative and nitpicky.

But a critic is not always someone who is perpetually negative. Take, for example, a movie critic. This poor soul watches four to five movies a week, reviews them and assesses whether or not this drivel is worth six bucks of your hard-earned cash and two hours of your precious time.

In Greek, the word krisis means to separate, to select, to choose in order that one might determine something. That's why being a court judge is about the most horrendous thing one could ever be. Who would have wanted to be a Supreme Court Justice in the Roe verses Wade trial that legalized abortion? Who would want to be a judge that has the final appeal of whether a man on death row is executed? I'm glad I'm a Pastor and not a judge. And I'm glad I'm not a jury.

Why is it a lousy idea to be judge and jury? Here are Duane's Top Five Reasons.

No. 5 - Appearances can be misleading.

A beautiful Gothic cathedral in Cologne, Germany houses one of the finest pipe organs ever built. The organ has over 5,000 pipes and occupies an entire wall of the cathedral. One day the janitor was cleaning when a young man, dressed like a bum and looking tired and haggard, appeared around the organ. The janitor yelled, "Don't touch that organ, you vagrant." The young man took off his hat and politely asked if he might play just one number. He assured the janitor that he knew what he was doing. As a matter of fact, he had traveled all the way from Berlin just to see and perhaps play this beautiful instrument. The janitor thought to himself, "How could a bum play any musical instrument, much less such a beautiful organ such as this?" Nevertheless, he nodded an implicit approval for the young bum to play.

The young man sat, pulled out a few stops, and began laying a piece of music that filled the cathedral. It was so beautiful and touching that the janitor set on the pew and wept. When the young man finished playing, he got off the bench, thanked the janitor and began walking out. The janitor yelled out after him, "I have never heard Mendelssohn played so beautifully. Pray tell: what is your name?" The young man smiled and put his hat back on. "My name, kind sir, is Felix Mendelssohn."

No. 4 - We don't know what it is to be in the other person's shoes

An old Indian proverb states, "Never criticize others until you've walked a mile in their moccasins." In every life, things happen of which no one knows, save the one undergoing them.

I used to be a pew sitter like all of you. I was active in my church as a layman. We had a very godly, wonderful pastor, Dr. Jack Dabney, the man who is my pastoral mentor. Jack could not preach without my thinking, "Jack, why didn't you say this? Why didn't you allude to the 45th chapter of Isaiah?" He could not make pastoral decisions without my thinking, "Why did he decide to do that? Doesn't he know that it would be better to do this?" And then people would say, "Ah, that Jack Dabney, he didn't visit my aunt Corrine."

I never understood Jack's words or actions until I became a pastor myself. Then, for the first time, I realized why. There are dozens of "us" and only one of "him." It when I finally donned the Geneva Gown of the Presbyterian Minister that I realized all the many people, places and situations vying for a pastor's attention. The shoe fits every situation. You don't know what it's like until you've been there yourself.

No. 3 - We never have all the facts

We can never form a totally informed decision about ANY person or situation because our humanity is fraught with a built-in defect. The Greek word used in this morning's passage from James is diakrinomai, which means to make a judgment based on faulty reasoning, or to form a final opinion without having all the facts straight.

A few years ago, a heard of a man who, while working on his doctorate at Columbia University, came upon a brilliant idea. Derived from an obscure mathematical calculation, the student postulated that he could unlock the mysteries of the universe. He dropped out of school to devote all his energies to this calculation. His friends at Columbia tried talking sense to him, but he would not listen. He lost weight, rummaging through dumpsters by day in order to eat, and working on his calculations by night. Thirty -two years this genius in the making lived like a bum and poured his whole life into this project. Finally, he finished. He took his thesis, which was over 1,000 pages long, to the head of the Physics Department at Columbia. And what did he say? The Department Head regrettably informed the poor guy that a critical mistake early in the calculation, using a false set of criteria, made the entire document and thesis a false one.

No. 2- By nature, we are all hypocrites

In Matthew's account of this verse, it's the first and only time Jesus calls His disciples hypocrites. Hypocrites, we usually think to ourselves, are always those "other" people: those who beat their wives on Saturday, then teach Sunday School on the Sabbath. Those who say "amen"

Big hypocrites are usually easy to spot, but Jesus says that we all are hypocrites. In Greek, the word hypocrite means one who supposes oneself to be above judgment. Hypo means beyond or above; crit means being judged. For all its present sense of villainy, a hypocrite originally was simply a stage actor, one who wore a mask that betrayed his own identity.

Why do people wear masks? The first thing that comes to mind is a Halloween party or a costume ball. In other words, we all wear masks where we try to pawn ourselves off to others as something that we really aren't.

But there's another reason why people wear masks, and that is to cover up some kind of injury or hurt. We don't want others to know the extent of just how much we are injured or hurting. Is that a good thing? In some circumstances, it probably is, but in others, we only wear masks because we are by nature a proud people and we don't want other people to know just how frail and fallible and just how utterly human we are.

Who is a hypocrite? It's anyone who masks off an area of life so that others cannot see. It is anyone not totally committed to Jesus Christ. And that, I'm fairly certain, includes everyone; at least the people I know.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, the number one reason why being a judge and jury is a lousy idea:

We come upon every situation with a degree of prejudice

No matter how enlightened, educated, moral or ethical we may think ourselves, every individual is prejudiced. We tend to congregate around people of similar backgrounds, social status, interests, even geography. Think of how Minnesotans tend, in southern climes during the winter, to find their way into the same trailer parks and developments. In Mesa, Arizona, there are enough people from Longville to have a gold tournament called The Longville Open. And it's not just Gophers who do this: Canadians, Wisconsin folk, New Yorkers, and any winter climate where the thermometer plunges below 65 produces the same results.

This principle is not inactive in the church, either. Presbyterians tend to hang around one another, likewise high church Episcopalians, ditto tongue-speaking Pentecostals. Presbyterians are simply not comfortable in a tent revival with a southern preacher, sweat cascading from his face, entreating the unfaithful to come forward at the close of the service. And some of the plain Quaker folk I've known would not find a Roman Catholic mass for the dead quite their cup of tea either.

This fact was vividly illustrated to me once. Driving down the road, I was channel surfing the radio when a radio preacher caught my attention. I missed the program's opening, so I had no idea of the gentleman's identity or church affiliation. For 25 minutes he had my rapt attention. Then, at program's end I almost wrecked, so great was my shock. The preacher was a faculty member of Bob Jones University, a very fundamentalist southern college that generally considers us of a mainline ilk to be worldly heretics and the like. Had I known his identity at the beginning of the program, I would have surfed on by and been deprived of a blessing. That's because I'm prejudiced, and can't make decisions based on surface preconceptions.

Angus McDougan was a rich fellow from Glasgow who loved to fish for salmon in the Scottish highlands. Early one Sunday morning, Angus catches a barrel full of salmon, and then realizes that it's time for Sunday morning services in the little parish kirk. He hurries back into the village, but doesn't have time to clean up or change clothes. He walks into the little church not having shaved or bathed for a week. His clothes are filthy, his eyes are droopy from getting up too early, and his hands smell like a fish market. As soon as he walks into the church, Angus' presence is duly noted by about a hundred pair of glaring eyes, a hundred necks that quickly turn away, and a hundred noses that grimace in agony.

Promptly, the usher shows him the best seat in the back of the church, where Angus notices five rows between himself and the next person. With that, he gets up from his seat, walks out of the church, goes back to his luxurious hotel room, showers, shaves, puts on his fanciest clothes, then walks back to the church. His presence is quickly noted by about a hundred pair of eyes of welcoming eyes, a hundred necks the nodding in admiration, and a hundred noses reveling in the expensive cologne he has liberally splashed over his body.

At the service's conclusion, Angus is invited to stay afterward for Dinner Day and given the seat of honor. As soon as his food is brought to the table, Angus does something once again that catches the attention of a hundred pair of eyes. For instead of eating his food, he smears the salad all over his Harris Tweed coat. He takes mashed potatoes and smears them all over his 200 dollar white shirt. He then takes the lamb with mint sauce and smears it all over his trousers.

After he finishes, the head usher, who had shown him to his seat three times that day, says, "Sair, what do you think you're doin'?"

To which Angus replies, "It's plain to me that ye caire more for ma clothes than ya do fair ma soul. So I thought it best to feed ma clothes fairst."

© Rev. Duane Brown, 2004