9/10/23 Sermon

This morning I want to read you this text from a different version called “The Message” by Eugene Peterson who happens to be a good Presbyterian. It’s more of an interpretation of the text. But it’s compelling enough and I want you to consider it.

So, here it is, 1 Corinthians Chapter 4:1-5 from the Message:

Don't imagine us leaders to be something we aren't. We are servants of Christ, not his masters. We are guides into God's most sublime secrets, not security guards posted to protect them. The requirements for a good guide are reliability and accurate knowledge. It matters very little to me what you think of me, even less where I rank in popular opinion. I don't even rank myself. Comparisons in these matters are pointless. I'm not aware of anything that would disqualify me from being a good guide for you, but that doesn't mean much. The Master makes that judgment.

So don't get ahead of the Master and jump to conclusions with your judgments before all the evidence is in. When he comes, he will bring out in the open and place in evidence all kinds of things we never even dreamed of—inner motives and purposes and prayers. Only then will any one of us get to hear the "Well done!" of God.

Do you ever stop to think about how many judgments we make a day? Every decision we make from the beginning to the end of our day is a judgment of some sort. Even the decision to get out of bed is a judgment. We’ve decided one time is better than another to get out of bed. We judge which food we prefer over another for breakfast. I mean the list goes on. The judgements and decisions and conclusions that a human brain makes through the day is staggering. And what’s interesting, is that neuroscientists have found that these all base down to preference and what we decide on finally is based more on preference and emotion than it actually is on reason and ration.

Neuroscientists and the people who study this sort of stuff, have found that a human brain that would function on pure logic, one that would operate on ration and reason would actually not be able to make any conclusive judgment on its own. So, Spock would be one of the most indecisive people in the world in all actuality if I’m allowed a Star Trek reference here.

I’m reminded of this fact every time my wife tells me to go to the grocery store to pick up more toothpaste. It can take me an hour. Who needs all those different brands of toothpaste? What makes one better than the other? I compare price and then size. And then price to size. Whitening verses Tartar control. Crest verse Colgate. Does Baking Powder make a difference? Do I want gel or regular paste? Will my wife think less of me if SpongeBob is all over the tube? And after I stand there for eternity, I get the same kind I always do because I like it and it seems to work. I have a preference. I make a judgement based on that preference. Don’t get me started about what happens when she tells me to go get ONE box of cereal.

Our brains go through the day making snap judgments based on previous experience, likeness to a known quantity, and appeal to emotion faster than we even know it sometimes. You ever think about that? About how many judgments we make during a day and what we’re basing those judgments on?

Think about how we judge other people. Most of the time, when we really stop and think about it, it hardly seems fair does it? I mean we judge people by all sorts of irrational and completely unequal criteria. I’m not innocent in this. I don’t stand up here guilt free. I can remember one time I really liked this girl. So, I took her out to eat at a nice restaurant. She talked to me with her mouth full of salad. I never went out with her again. Lovely girl. I can’t take people talking with their mouth full. I told my brother-in-law this story. He now puts his hand over his mouth to talk to me when he has food in his mouth. As if that makes it any better.

That’s not even a very harsh example of it but think about it. Think about the snap judgments we make about people, and they make about us. We see someone dirty in beat up clothes buying beer at the store, and we make a judgment. They could have just finished working on their lawn. We see someone covered in tattoos and we don’t always think they may be a minister. We see some of people in line at a store and how rude some of them can be and we make judgments.

We make them because of prior experience or of what we’ve been told. We make them because of what we’ve been taught or conditioned to believe about people whether by our parents or our culture or our TVs. We see them but we aren’t really looking at them. And we miss something vital. We miss what’s really there.

You ever wonder what makes people the way they are? Some people are the way they are because they’ve survived Hell on earth. Some people are the way they are because it’s the only way they can keep surviving. When we see a girl that’s dressed like or actually is a prostitute, what do we think? Do we ever stop to ask why? Do we wonder what examples of “Love” she’s been shown... if any? Do we ever wonder what happiness is in her life... if any? Do we wonder what her dreams were of as a little girl and if they’re still in there somewhere? Do we think that in some cases maybe there are broken hearted parents somewhere that lost their daughter to a terrible addiction, and it seems there isn’t a hope in the world for her? I don’t know. It seems so easy to come to these snap decisions and so much harder to ask ourselves why they’re that way.

And Lord knows it isn’t just other people we do it to. We do it to ourselves too. I’ve seen some people who can be so hard on themselves. Who can’t let go of the past. Who can’t forget who they once were or what they did in the past. And they let it totally dictate and ruin their present or any possibility of a happy and successful future. There are those of us who have such a hard go at being loved sometimes that we allow our hearts to get so hard and not allow or accept anyone’s love toward us. We make judgments on ourselves about what we deserve and don’t deserve.

We let people treat us like garbage sometimes because we think that’s what we deserve. We over-inflate our own importance over another person because we think we deserve it. What’s really sick is when we do both. We tell ourselves how worthless we are and how important we are at the same time. And what’s sad, what’s actually pretty heartbreaking is because we’re so busy judging other people and judging ourselves we miss out on what is absolutely vital. And that’s who we really are and what we’re really here to do. I’m going to take out the first sentence here because we’re all leaders here. So, it applies to all of us, and I’m going to read Eugene Peterson’s interpretation of Corinthians again. Listen to this:

We are servants of Christ, not his masters. We are guides into God's most sublime secrets, not security guards posted to protect them. The requirements for a good guide are reliability and accurate knowledge. It matters very little to me what you think of me, even less where I rank in popular opinion. I don't even rank myself. Comparisons in these matters are pointless. I'm not aware of anything that would disqualify me from being a good guide for you, but that doesn't mean much. The Master makes that judgment.

So don't get ahead of the Master and jump to conclusions with your judgments before all the evidence is in. When he comes, he will bring out in the open and place in evidence all kinds of things we never even dreamed of—inner motives and purposes and prayers. Only then will any one of us get to hear the "Well done!" of God.

Paul is brilliant and this is one of the times it really shows. He says I don’t care what you think of me, and I don’t care what I think of myself. The only person who can tell me what I am and what my worth is, is God. I love how Peterson says it, “Comparisons in these matters are pointless.” Who cares? When Christ comes, when we see God, that’s when we’ll finally know. And maybe we won’t know where we stand or where we rank, but we’ll know the answer to the why questions. The What happened questions. Why anyone is the way they are and do what they do. The inner-motives and purposes and prayers.

And it’s when we seek to look deeper into people to find out these reasons so much actually happens. We see them for what they are. They’re people too. And we see them for who they are. Broken just like us. Instead of writing off the guy asking for change at the grocery store, talk to him. Instead of judging the jerk in line, consider why they’re that way. Ask why? What happened? What must their life be like? Hold back the urge to make snap judgments on people who rub us the wrong way and ask what’s going on in their life and in our life to make them seem that way to us.

And it’s when we do that when we seek to really enter into relationships with people. When we encounter a person as a person and not a snap judgment that we get the “Well done” of God. And you know what that well done is? It’s love.

Love: it will not betray you, Dismay or enslave you, it will set you free, to be more like the person you were made to be. Because it isn’t about who you were or who you are now or who you think you might be. And it isn’t about who they were or are or who you may think anyone else is either. What is asked of us as Christians, what is asked of us as servants of Christ and guides into the inner most secrets of God is that we lead people in love, that we help set them free through love. That we show them that the secret, the inner most secret to knowing God and being in relationship with God is love. We are here to love people and not to judge them. And you know what? That includes loving ourselves and putting judgments down about who we are too.

We’re enslaved by our judgments of ourselves, and others and we’re set free when we reach out in love. Because love, real love, true love heals wounds, finds what is lost, bursts light into the darkness, brings what was dead back to life, and reconciles what is broken. Love saves us. And often times love saves us from ourselves. Love does that.

We are an Easter people living in a good Friday world. A world that judges and condemns and it’s usually the innocent that pays the price. But friends, we aren’t a good Friday people, we’re an easter people. Because Love beats judgment and easter is the triumph of true love, of God’s love over the judgments of humanity. And we aren’t asked to be perfect in our love, but only willing, willing to grow in love of God and in love of other people. Love sets us free, and judgment leaves us in bondage. Judgment keeps us in Good Friday and Love brings us to Easter.

So may you love. May you love carelessly and wastefully. May you give out love as easily as others will make judgments about you. May you love knowing that your love is God’s love to this world. May you love knowing that God loves you. May you love knowing that when you do, you come even closer to the person you were meant to be.