Friday, 11th September 2020

Collect

God of the Church, your Son called us to be one in you: heal our divisions, restore our unity and empower us for the ministry of reconciliation; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever,  Amen.

Eucharist Readings:

1 Corinthians 9:16-27       Psalm 84        Luke 6:39-42

Jesus now turns to the responsibility that rests on disciples to make more disciples. He uses a series of metaphors to bring out the importance of living on the highest level as they do this. First, He speaks of a blind man trying to lead another. As the leader can see no more than the led, the only future for both is disaster. This spells trouble for those who put their trust in such people as the Pharisees. It is a warning to be careful whom we follow, but there is also a warning about the leadership Jesus’ followers will exercise. The Christian cannot hope to act as guide to others unless they themselves sees clearly where they are going. Lacking love, they do not. If a person does not know the way of salvation themselves, they can lead others only to disaster.

The second illustration reminds the little group of their status as disciples. Clearly it is a thought that Jesus expressed more than once and in different ways. The student’s progress is limited by the teaching he/she get, and they cannot know more than their teacher. We must not understand this in terms of our own situation, where libraries, resources and other facilities, put endless opportunities before the student. Jesus is speaking of a time when the disciple had only his rabbi as his source of information. To claim that he was above his teacher was the height of presumption. The disciple’s one aim was to be like his teacher, and he attained this only when fully taught. The follower of Jesus must make it their aim to be like Him. Since it is unreasonable to expect a disciple to know more than his teacher, it is important that the teacher be well advanced themselves in the Christian way.

Jesus rebukes hypocrisy with the illustration of the speck and the log. We are so often impressed with the solemnity of the issues involved in much of His teaching that we forget that Jesus had a sense of humor. Here he chooses to use the method of cabaret. He pictures the hypocrite with a great log sticking out of his eye while he kindly tries to remove a speck from his brother’s eye. The humorous illustration should not blind us to the seriousness of the lesson it teaches. The slight imperfection in other people is often more apparent to us than the large one in ourselves. Jesus is exhorting to rigid self-examination before we engage in judgment. It is important to take the log out of our own eye. This also reminds me of the story of a woman who was busy washing her dishes, and while doing that she was looking through her window, she looked at her neighbors washing and saw that it was dirty, and obviously criticizing the dirty clothes until she realized that the window she is looking through is dirty.

We as followers of Jesus need to aim to be like Him, to love and not to judge, to look at people with love and not criticism, to first do a self-introspection and find our shortcomings before we see the speck in our brother/sister eyes. It is impossible for us to put our fellow Christian’s right before we have dealt with our own shortcomings because we will not be able to see clearly enough for the job.