He also told them a parable:
“Can a blind person guide a blind person?
Will not both fall into a pit?
A disciple is not above the teacher,
but everyone who is fully qualified will be like the teacher.
Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye,
but do not notice the log in your own eye?
Or how can you say to your neighbor,
‘Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye,’
when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye?
You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye,
and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.
“No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit;
for each tree is known by its own fruit.
Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush.
The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil;
for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.
“Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell you?
I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, hears my words,
and acts on them.
That one is like a man building a house, who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock; when a flood arose, the river burst against that house but could not shake it,
because it had been well built.
But the one who hears and does not act is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation.
When the river burst against it, immediately it fell, and great was the ruin of that house.”
SERMON (PASTOR)
You cannot take a speck out of a friend’s eye without loving them, and if you love them, you love them speck and all, because that’s what love is, accepting people for who they are, and all and loving them, not just anyway, but because of it, because it too, whatever that thing is, that speck, is they are who they are, its what makes all of them.
I am headed to L.A. over Labor Day to see my closest friend Lisa, but it will be the first time I will have gone and not seen my former best friend Anne. We were best friends from eighteen to thirty-one, and had been though a lot, camp counselors together, college and grad school, the death of a parent, a wedding and a divorce, and a good handful of heartbreaks and more first dates than one could count. By twenty we had crossed over each US border together, and traveled to see one another in who knows many states. Today, we haven’t spoken for a year, and had unresolved falling out the year before.
I told Lisa, who knows us both, how there was a grieving in going to L.A. without seeing Anne too, another piece of saying goodbye to that friendship. Lisa said, “You guys will be friends again someday,” and I agreed that there space for that, but I said, “There would have to be some sort of apology and understanding before that happened. That I didn’t want to continue to be hurt by her choice of prioritizing places over people.” I didn’t like the way it sounded even when I said it. It was true, but it told more about my own hurt, moreover and perhaps because of that hurt, my comment somehow expected Anne to change in order for us to reconcile. It wasn’t me loving someone for who they are, speck and all.
Lisa said Anne has been in Europe all summer, but should be coming home around that weekend. That currently, Anne would be visiting Lisa’s mom and dying grandmother, and I instantly knew that as abrasive as Anne can be on all sorts of things, she is good with other people’s dying, both the sorrow and the medical complications that accompany failing health. I said to Lisa that Anne would be good being there for her mom in a way that most people wouldn’t. Saying it felt like trying backtrack from the earlier judgement and Lisa heard both, my leveling and the reassuring.
For the next few days, I wrestled with not wanting to be hurt again, but also knowing that Anne didn’t need to change for us to be friends. I would have to love her for who she is, all of her, speck and all, and what that might require is seeing my own log. A log that values relationships over all other things and a log that I know can be hyper-emotional If Anne is a friend, I have to love her speck and all, but maybe I also have to love myself log and all.
The scripture says, “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye,
and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.” Well, you can’t take a log out of your own eye its too big. And so maybe its learning to love the logs we have. I was once told that our strengths are our weaknesses, and our weaknesses are our strengths. So what if, a log isn’t a good or a bad thing. Its just the way we see the world, its our lens and our view. When I think of my own log, I know I couldn’t live this calling if I didn’t value relationships paramountly and if I wasn’t connected to my emotions. Funny thing is Anne has a Phd. in sociology, it is her job to look scientifically at people without emotion. She needs this lens to do what she is called to do. This view may be the log that keeps us from being friends again, maybe it's what's required to love myself, but it also may be the log we need to help us see ourselves rightly.
A log is made up of uncountable specs; our view is never the clearest, never the absolute truth. In fact, maybe we need other’s truths to see rightly. It takes friend, or at least a good close up mirror to help us even see a speck to remove, and we can’t see anyone else while we have speck in our own eye. But the speck is part of the log, and the log makes us who we are, and if we are friends, if we are Christians, we will love each other, and ourselves log and all.
