Year C / Ordinary Time / Week 7 / Sunday
Readings: Sirach 27:4-7 / Ps 92:2-3, 13-14, 15-16 (R/v cf 2a) / 1 Corinthians 15:54-58 / Luke 6:39-45
“Why do you observe the splinter in your brother’s eye and never notice the plank in your own?" (Luke 6.42)
Ouch. I can only imagine how Jesus’ disciples must have felt when they heard him say this. They knew he was driving home an important point about the human heart – that what is in our hearts shapes our words and actions. Maybe it pricked their conscience. Does it prick yours now? It does mine.
Jesus’s words are strong. They are not the kind of Good News we are accustomed to hear. We much prefer hearing about Jesus loving, forgiving and healing. His tough words are uncompromising; they demand we live our Christian lives better. They are in fact Good News if we but understand He teaches to save us for God.
Today Jesus reminds us how foolish we can be, too quick to judge, too quick to notice another's fault or failure, while totally oblivious to our foolishness and failings. He speaks about the ‘planks’ in our eyes when we relate with others. Maybe we must close our eyes for a while in order to see around these.
But you and I usually don’t. We prefer to look for our good points and present them to the world. We want others to judge us virtuous, value our good character, and praise us worthy. We shy away from seeing the many ‘planks’ in our eyes.
It’s not that we cannot see them. It’s that we consciously and carefully curate that image of the good child, the good adult, the good Christian we want others to admire and celebrate. We hide those ‘planks ‘in our lives. We don’t want others to see them.
Many associate Jesus’s teaching about the ‘planks’ in our eyes with hypocrisy. With how we judge others for their sins even though we have sinned.
Could Jesus also be challenging us to see others more clearly? To see their goodness just as we are intrinsically good even when we sin. To see this truth about God’s creation – "and He created them good" – in order to honestly appreciate the sum of all our parts whenever we judge another, and yes, even when we judge ourselves.
When we judge another bad because of a mistake, condemn some as immoral because they are different, and exclude others as unworthy because of background, it has something to do with us. We let our individual differences, particular contradictions, singular disappointments and personal hurts prejudice our judgment. Isn’t this why we have hatred, injustice and war in our midst?
Wouldn’t it be better to step back, stop projecting on others our own biases and small-mindedness, and clarify our own vision? This is what Jesus wants us to do. To see clearer and better. He knows what we often forget or ignore: that none of us has perfect vision.
This is how Jesus’s teaching today saves. It humbles us and makes us more generous to understand and more charitable to help. It does because it reminds us first to be less quick to judge. Here is Jesus’s tender and relentless love rescuing us from our foolish failures of too quickly judging others for their faults while being oblivious to our own. We should welcome Jesus with our need for Him.
When we do, we will understand Sirach’s astute observation in the first reading that “the fruit of a tree shows the care it has had.” Like this tree, Christian life flourishes when others care for us in Jesus’s ways. They are growing and pruning us. This is how Jesus helps us to “gradually learn not only what to say in all manner of situations, but importantly when and how to say what we believe needs to be said, for justice, for forgiveness, for reconciliation, for charity and for encouragement.”*
Hearing Jesus’s teaching, it would be wise for us say more honestly how each of us is a mix of good and bad, of words that can inspire another and ridicule others, of hearts that uplift each other and hands that can tear them down. This is the complexity of our human nature.
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus teaches us that God understands this complexity. In God’s eyes, this is part of the beauty each of us is. And God sees more. He recognises the promise in us to become better. This is how He always looks at us – lovingly with hope. In Jesus, this look forgives the adulterous woman. It includes Matthew the tax collector among his disciples. And in spite of Peter’s betrayal embraces him still as his own. We can only imagine the good Jesus will do as He looks at us – lovingly with hope
We begin Lent this week. We need to remember God’s look of love and hope as we enter Lent to appreciate its focus. It is not how unworthy we are because of sin. More correctly, it is God’s mercy that saves. Of God looking mercifully at the splinters and planks in us and removing them to save us. We need to cooperate with God for this to happen. So, let us close our eyes for a while and be guided by God’s look not just on us but, through us, on everyone – looking lovingly with hope to save.
Shall we?
*John Christman, SSS, A reflection for the eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
photo: Children's Hospital of Philadelphia website
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