August 2004

Matthew 7:1-5

Last Monday morning as I was taking a taxi to church, I noticed the driver was listening to a sermon on the radio, so I asked him to turn it up. I heard a preacher passionately judging and condemning one major religion after another. After he'd finish off one religion, the driver would say, "Amen." The next one -- "Amen." The next one -- "Amen."

I wondered, "Should I get into this or should I not?" So I ventured, "Is there any place for any other religion?"

"No," he responded. "There is one Bible, there is one faith, there is one Lord, there is one church."

Then I heard the preacher say something about the sin of believing in reincarnation -- and I thought, "What have I got to lose?" So I asked, "Don't you ever wonder about reincarnation?"

"No!" he said. "It's a sin! The Bible, the word of God, is against it." Matter closed.

As we approached the church, I was afraid he was going to ask me if I was the preacher there. But he was too busy describing the eternal, roasting damnation in store for unrepentant sinners and non-Christians for the rest of eternity. In the eight minutes of that cab ride, the preacher and the driver effectively judged and condemned the majority of people in the world.

By the time the car stopped, judgment was steaming in the front seat and judgment was steaming in the back seat. I got out of the cab, looked up, and saw on the church bulletin board the title of this sermon, "Let Go of Judgment," and I was reminded again that God has a sense of humor.

Over the years there have been a number of Jesus' teachings that have become embossed on my consciousness, and from time to time, like a neon light, one of them will blink on and off--which really says to me, "Arthur, pay attention. Listen to My words. You've got some work to do." One of these confronting scriptures is taken from the Sermon on the Mount: "Judge not, that you may not be judged. For with the judgment that you make, you will be judged." And then Jesus adds: "The measure that you give will be the measure you receive."

Then Jesus gets very specific. "Why are you so concerned with the speck in your neighbor's eye, when in your own eye you have a log? First remove the log from your own eye, and then remove the speck from your neighbor's eye." I have discovered that whenever I realized I had a log in my own eye and finally took it out, I was no longer concerned about the speck in my neighbor's eye.

How can we learn to refrain from judging? I believe that first we must stay in touch with who we are -- the cards we were dealt. It happened that I was born in the United States of America. It happened that I was born to parents of Italian heritage. It happened that I was born a heterosexual male. It happened that I was born with certain physical characteristics, for instance, I would have brown eyes and when I grew up I would be five foot eight inches tall. I was born with vulnerabilities to certain illnesses and a tendency to carry extra pounds around my belly if I'm not careful.

These are the givens for me. God gave me these things -- I had nothing to do with them. I didn't do anything wrong, I am guilty of none of it. And yet there are people who are prejudiced against me because I was born white, because I was born in the United States of America, because I was born of Italian heritage, because I was born a heterosexual male, because I have certain physical characteristics. It doesn't make sense! But there are people who are prejudiced against me for these very things.

There are givens for you as well. You were born with a certain skin color. You were born in a particular country. You were born of a particular ethnic background. You were born male or female, straight or gay. You were born with certain physical characteristics. These are God-given. You had nothing to do with them. And yet there are people who are prejudiced against you for every one of the things that I have mentioned. Is it fair? No. Does it make sense? No. This is the reality of our humanity.

I'm going to make a strong statement now -- that any time any one of us prejudges somebody because of the things that I have mentioned, they are reacting from a very small mind. They are doing something stupid. Every time I use the word stupid in a sermon there are always three or four people who complain, but I'm doing it for emphasis today, because there's stupidity in the way we behave towards each other! It doesn't make sense.

My standard-bearer is Jesus Christ. A number of years ago a man named Frank Crane said:

Jesus was the only teacher tall enough to see over the fences that divide the human race into compartments.

We take inspiration from the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his famous "I Have a Dream" speech (and I can hear the timbre of his voice in my mind as he speaks these words): "I have a dream my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

You might say, "Arthur, it's not that easy. Ever since I was a child, I've had certain prejudices just impressed on me. I can't get rid of them." Or you might say, "I don't want to be prejudiced, but some prejudices have come into my consciousness and they're bothering me."

I know exactly what you're talking about. About twenty-five years ago, I had just finished a funeral at the church I had formerly served in Brooklyn. It was a very warm June day. I had my robe over my arm and my prayer book in the other hand, and I was walking toward my car when three boys about fourteen years old stopped me. One of them put a knife up against my stomach. "Give me your money, give me your ring, give me anything valuable you have." I was smart enough to do as he asked because he could have easily have stuck that knife into me.

After that, any time I saw three African-American boys that were dressed like those kids, they were my enemy. I had to keep saying to myself, "Arthur, they are not your enemy. They aren't the ones who did it to you. You have to get rid of this prejudice."

And the answer I got to that was, "Pray for those kids, pray for those boys." And I prayed and I prayed and I prayed--six or eight months later the prejudice left me.

Three or four years ago I realized I had developed a prejudice against another ethnic group. Where did it come from? It bothered me. Then I remembered when somebody from that particular nationality had done something very hurtful to me. Again I had to pray and pray and pray for the person who had hurt me until, in a few months' time, the ill feeling against that person's people left me.

It's not easy, but when we know we have a prejudice we can decide not to act on it. We can remind ourselves, "I'm on a spiritual journey. I'm trying to grow in grace and grow in love." Let God help you remove the prejudice. As Martin Luther King said, try to judge people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, or any other inborn characteristic.

It also helps to stay in touch with your own vulnerability. Those of us present today may have many things in common, but I know for sure there is one thing we all have in common--each one of us is broken. We are broken by the circumstances of life, broken by the hurts, the disappointments, the losses, broken by injuries that have happened to us. So everybody, everybody--nobody is exempt--every one of us is broken. I need to keep understanding that the person I might not like is a vulnerable, broken soul just like me.

You know, we're very quick to want to change other people. Yet, as you're in touch with your own vulnerability, think - how easy is it for you to change yourself?

I remember as a freshman in college seeing a plaque on the wall of one of my teachers with an American Indian saying: "Before I judge a man, I will walk twelve moons in his shoes." That's profound -- that before you can judge anybody, you get inside that person.

Recently at an event here in New York I saw an African-American woman I haven't seen in maybe thirty years. She was a member of that same church in Brooklyn. Her name is Sylvia Matthews. When I saw her I had some flashbacks of the ways she had helped me. She was a leader in the church, and from time to time she'd pull me aside and she'd give me bits of advice. She was a very astute observer.

I was in my twenties then, and eager to be the best possible
minister. "I've been watching you," she told me. "I'm going to
tell you something. I was born black. You were born white. You will never really know what it's been like for me to grow up as a black person. I will never know what it has been like for you to grow up white. But you need to know there are some major, major differences."

It was very helpful to me. Soon after that I bought a little book called "Black Like Me", by John Howard Griffin, a Southern white man who, in 1959, had the pigment of his skin darkened and traveled through the deep South. He told the story of what it was like to be a black man in our society. It was an awesome story. It helped me to understand certain things that otherwise I could never have understood.

I have said Jesus was the standard in my life, and I go to the Scriptures to see what He said about judgment and prejudice. Near the end of His life, knowing He would die soon, He told His disciples, "I want you to love one another as I have loved you." He did not say, "I want you to judge one another as I am judging you." Nor did He say, "I want you to condemn one another as I am condemning you."

As we leave church today, we're going to see some broken people, broken in many different ways. When somebody has really lost it and is on the far fringes of the human experience, we can say with humility, "There but for the grace of God go I," and we can have mercy and pity and compassion.

It's easy to criticize. We like to criticize, and we think people need to know what's wrong with them. Somebody's got to do it, so we might as well. I don't want you to give another thought to that. Telling people what's wrong with them may not be the best thing, because we all need to be embraced, encouraged and affirmed.

Arthur Gordon, who was Norman Vincent Peale's biographer and the editor of Guideposts magazine for many years, once told me a story about a group of writers he had known. One group was all men, and the other all women. Once a week each group would get together and share their writings. At the outset, the men's group decided they were going to be brutally honest with each other, figuring that if they couldn't take criticism they wouldn't be good writers.

The women, on the other hand, took a different tack. They decided they would affirm whatever in each other's writing was good. Arthur told me that as the years passed not one of the men became a writer, yet every one of the women continued to write."

I want you to love one another," said Jesus, "as I have loved you."

Perhaps it is all is summed up best in a poem by the American writer Edwin Markam, called Outwitted:

He drew a circle that shut me out--
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win.
We drew a circle and took him in!

Stay in touch with the reality of your humanity, stay in touch with your brokenness and your vulnerability, as you seek to heal and bless the world. Let us pray:

For the leadership of our Lord Jesus Christ, we give You thanks. For the spiritual journeys that we're on, which take us to higher and higher places, Lord, give us Your light, give us Your peace, give us Your love, that we might be agents of peace and love to others. AMEN