Hilton Head Island, SC – September 3, 2017
The Chapel Without Walls
Matthew 7:1-5; Luke 7:36-50
A Sermon by John M. Miller
We are constantly judging people. We do it out of necessity. When a stranger tells us something, we intuitively judge whether what he says is correct or not. When we go to buy a used car, and the salesman tells us the price of a 2012 Toyota Corolla with 16,000 miles is $6,200, and that it’s a steal. Thus we wonder whether it was stolen, if it is a steal, and if it really has only 16,000 miles on it. When our best friend says, “Trust me; I won’t lead you astray,” we have to judge whether what she or he says is really valid, even if that person is our best friend.
However, none of those are examples of the kind of judgment Jesus was talking about when he said, “Judge not, that you be not judged.” Jesus was talking about moral and ethical judgment of people --- not of their behavior, but of them as individuals. Jesus wasn’t talking about judging what people say or do; he was talking about judging who people are. And clearly Jesus was implying that we should not judge the moral character of anyone, because we are incapable of truly knowing their genuine inner character.
We need to think about the context in which Jesus gave this short summary of the subject of judging others. He was speaking to Jews. Jews were very much interested in how the Bible told them to live well and productively with one another. For example, the rabbis taught this: “Those who judge their neighbors favorably will be judged favorably by God.” Don’t be harsh in your assessment of people. Give them a break. Give them the benefit of the doubt.
A while back I was sent copies of various letters which children had been asked to send to God in their own handwriting. For example, Nan wrote this, verbatim: “Dear God, I bet it is very hard. for you to love all of everybody in the whole world There are only 4 people in our family and I can never do it.” Obviously I don’t know for sure, but I would guess Nan has either an older sister or a younger brother who is the bane of her existence. On the basis of her youthful experience she judges that sibling to be the worst person in the entire world.
According to William Barclay, Jews believed there were six great works which brought people credit in the world, and blessings in the world to come --- study of the Bible, visiting the sick, hospitality, devotion in prayer, the education of children in God’s laws, and thinking the best of other people.
In light of the first five, that sixth one is surprising. The other actions seem so much more biblical or spiritual, but “thinking the best of other people?” It’s important, but is it that important? Does it make that big a difference that it should be included in the list of Really Big Things to Do?
Yes, it does. From their earliest childhood, some people are doomed to failure because they are judged from the beginning to be failures. If people had judged the abilities of Albert Einstein on the basis of his first few years, they would have thought him to be of very low potential and intelligence. He didn’t speak until he was three or four, he was slow in school for his first several years, and his personality was insensitive and intemperate, as we saw on the television series Genius when it was shown a few months back. As a man, Einstein’s relationships with women were neither laudable nor defensible. The series made no attempt to explain why Einstein behaved the way he did with women; it just depicted it.
One of Robert Burns’ poems is called Address to the Unco Guid. The last two words from “Broad Scots” mean, in plain English, “the rigidly righteous.” So the poem is The Speech to the Rigidly Righteous. In the seventh of eight stanzas, the Bard of Scotland wrote, “Then gently scan your brother man,/ Still gentler sister woman;/ Tho’ they may gang a kennin wrang (though they may act, knowing that it is wrong)/ To step aside is human: One point must still be greatly dark,/ The moving why they do it;/ And just how lamely can ye mark/ How far perhaps they rue it.”
Hillel was a famous rabbi who lived a generation before the time of Jesus. Hillel led a group of rabbis who were liberal in their thinking, whereas Shammai, his contemporary and rival, led a very conservative group of moralistic rabbis. Hillel said, “Do not judge a man until you have come into his circumstances or situation.” American Indians had a saying: “Don’t judge a man until you have walked a mile in his moccasins.” We need to think about why anybody does anything before we judge whether or not it was the right thing to do. And if we don’t know why they did it, we should not think ill of them, even if what they did was wrong. Furthermore, rarely do we really know why anybody does anything, so we ought not to judge them for doing it. Nonetheless, we may be required to judge what they do to be wrong, both for their own good and for the good of everyone around them.
We avoid people who constantly mistreat us. That is understandable, acceptable, and probably wise. But we should not judge them to be bad people. Their behavior may be bad, but it is not up to us to judge them to be bad. Only God can do that, because only God knows what is in anyone’s heart and mind.
This is what Jesus was talking about in his statement regarding judging others. “Why do you see the speck that in your brother’s eye, but you do not see the log that is in your own eye?” Obviously he was not talking about specks or logs. He was referring to how we judge others for little sins, peccadilloes, and we fail to judge ourselves for major sins. Don’t judge anybody for anything, Jesus tells us. Make assessments, of course, but do not pass moral judgment. We are in no position to judge anyone. Only God can do that.
The same holds true for politicians. We may think some politicians’ statements or actions or votes are atrocious, but we ought never to judge the individuals to be atrocious. That may be very difficult, but if we are to follow the commands of Jesus, it is necessary.
If Jesus very early in his public ministry voiced this important statement about judging, as Matthew implies he did, it may be because Jesus himself had already been harshly judged as being morally scandalous. It is easy to understand how that might have occurred.
In all four of the Gospels, it is reported that Jesus did not avoid contact with dubious characters. There was a reason for that, and it will be explained in next week’s World-Changing Sayings of Jesus. But for this week, I want us to look at one of the best-known instances where Jesus was in the presence of a woman known by everyone as a notorious prostitute. He neither tried to shoo her away nor did he express any disapproval of her strange behavior. This incident, incidentally, is found only in the seventh chapter of Luke (vs. 36-50).
We are told that a Pharisee named Simon had invited Jesus to come to his home for dinner. This may sound surprising to us, because on numerous occasions Jesus speaks ill of the Pharisees’ thinking. However, a few scholars suggest that Jesus may have been a Pharisee himself. If he disapproved of their teachings, it wasn’t because they went too far, but because he thought they didn’t go far enough. And the reverse was also true.
Anyway, the narrative says, in one long action-packed sentence, “And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that Jesus was sitting at table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment” (Luke 7:37-38). Further we are told that the Pharisee was disgusted with this scene, because he thought Jesus should instantly have recognized what kind of woman this was by the way she was a dressed, “for,” the Pharisee huffed to himself, “she is a sinner!” Jesus did know she was a prostitute, presumably because of how she was dressed. Jesus also knew why Simon thought she was a sinner.
We now need a very swift summary of social customs in first-century Judea. Families ate their meals in the open courtyard of their simple homes. They would lie down around a small round table with very short legs. Maybe it was like a lazy Susan, to use our terminology. The table itself was like the axle of a wagon wheel, and the people lying on their left side were like the spokes of the axle. They lay on their left side because most of them, like most of us, were right handed. However, if there were guests of a rabbi, it would likely be only men at the table, because rabbis did not associate in public with women. Even though this was Simon’s home, it was the courtyard of his home, and it was considered a public space.
So here is the scene. Simon and Jesus and maybe some of the disciples and other men are lying on their left side, eating shish kebab, bagels, and blintzes, or something similar, with their right hands. And in comes this widely-recognized prostitute, weeping. She is allowed into the courtyard because this is a public space. Not even prostitutes were forbidden to enter public spaces. The woman stops behind Jesus, at his feet. She has heard that Jesus is kind to sinners. Everybody thinks of her as a sinner, and not only a sinner, but a prostitute. In those days, prostitution was considered one of the most serious of sins, as it still is by some people today.
Before going on with the story, let us ask a simple question. Why would any woman ever become a prostitute? Have you ever thought about that? The oldest profession in the world is the oldest for a reason! It’s a job a woman would accept only when she thought there was absolutely no other choice for her! Prostitution of one’s body is the most desperate of all the methods for anyone ever to try to make a living. What a life! The men who use prostitutes are as loathsome as the women are supposedly loathsome who have no other means of supporting themselves. Butterfield 8 or Irma la Douce are interesting, even romantic, movies, but most prostitutes are not probably not like Elizabeth Taylor or Shirley MacLaine. Instead almost certainly they are poor, struggling women who either clean themselves up or are cleaned up by men, and then sold on the open market for whatever they can produce. Nobody would ever carefully choose to be a prostitute. Prostitution itself chooses its practitioners, because most of them have no other choice.
Nevertheless, prostitutes are always judged harshly. The woman at Jesus’ feet was no different. And what she did in this episode was so bizarre, so culturally unseemly, that it made the skin of every man there crawl, except for Jesus of Nazareth. He calmly watched her as she cried multitudes of tears over his feet because of her supposed sins. She wiped the tears from Jesus’ feet with her hair. That was a terrible cultural faux pas; Jewish women always kept their hair covered in public, lest it cause sexual arousal in men. This is why very conservative Muslim women today in very conservative Muslim cultures are also required to keep their hair covered. But this woman in Simon’s house poured ointment on Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. Astonishingly, Jesus said not a single word in reproach.
Every man watching this spectacle (and who could possibly have kept himself from watching it!) was thoroughly scandalized by what was happening. I suspect even Jesus’ disciples, if any of them was there, also were shocked. It was a sinful display by a widely-recognized sinner before a man who, by then, was judged to be a sinful man himself. After all, he hung out with sinful people, didn’t he! That was true; he did.
We don’t need to go into the rest of the story, about the parable, or about Jesus’ explanation of the parable, or about Jesus’ rebuke of Simon. We need only to hear again the gracious, kind, loving words that Jesus spoke to the woman at the end of the story, “Your sins are forgiven, and your faith has saved you; go in peace.” Shalom Aleichem, daughter of God.
Jesus never once spoke a word of judgment against this woman, or against her dramatic plea for forgiveness. Prostitutes do sin, but not because of their prostitution per se. They eke out their meager living by their prostitution, and men take advantage of both their poverty and their bodies.
Why do these women do it? They do it because there is nothing else they believe they are capable of doing. Nothing? Nothing at all? They don’t think so, or else they wouldn’t do it.
Jesus did not utter a single word of judgment against this wretched lady. He spoke fiercely about the bad actions and faulty ideas of many people, but he judged no one. That he left to God. Only God can judge any of us, because only God knows all the circumstances by which any of us can be judged.
People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Sinners should never judge other sinners for their sins. Judges must judge lawbreakers for their crimes, but they judge them for their crimes, even if they say at the end of the trial, “You have been found guilty by a jury of your peers.” But criminal or civil law is not about sins; it is about crimes and misdemeanors.
James Truslow Adams declared, There’s so much bad in the best of us/ And so much good in the worst of us/ That it ill behooves any of us/ To find fault with the rest of us.”
Would it really change the world if everyone followed Jesus’ commandment that we should never judge anyone? It would; it really would. For if we did not judge the person who does wrong, and only judged the bad behavior of the person, what a different world it would be. Nobody likes to be demeaned. We don’t mind what we do being demeaned, but we feel diminished and dehumanized when we are demeaned.
We commonly say, “Hate the sin, but love the sinner.” It probably is not even psychologically wise to hate the sin, because we might allow that hatred to transfer into loathing the sinner as well. We should never love sin, but we should try to understand why it occurs.
Jesus did that. Jesus always did that. And so should we.