"Judge Not" / Rev. Dr. Richard Coble / 9.6.26

We are continuing on again today with the Sermon on the Mount.

We pick up now in chapter seven.

Hear the word of God.

Jesus said, Do not judge, so that you may not be judged, for the judgment you give will be the judgment you get, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.

Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but you do not notice the log in your own eye?

Or how can you say to your neighbor, let me take the speck out of your eye while the log is in your eye?

You hypocrite.

First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of the neighbors.

I don't know about this one either, Jesus.

Here's my thing about judging others.

I'm really good at it.

I do it literally all the time.

How about you?

Jesus goes even farther, though.

He says in a parable, why do you take the speck out of your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?

First off, let's appreciate Jesus is telling a joke.

It's pretty funny when you think about it.

Speck in your neighbor's eye, log in your own.

It's a pretty good insight into human nature.

Oftentimes, when you make a judgment, you're saying more about yourself than you realize.

I'll give an example.

I was twenty-four years old.

I was studying at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey.

I was reading theology.

I thought I was pretty hot stuff.

I had come from North Carolina, and some of you all know when I was raised in North Carolina, never really felt like I fit in.

So I was trying to find myself.

And then one day, um, while I was a student at Princeton, I visited my in-laws in Greenville, North Carolina.

And smartphones were new at the time.

I took a picture of this big old pickup truck that I had seen on the street in Greenville, North Carolina, and I posted it on Facebook with the caption, God, I hate the South.

With apologies to everyone who drove a truck here this morning.

It was not my most generous or original thought.

And my mother called me on it because even your mother can write comments under your posts on Facebook.

She wrote, boy, it's never good when you're 24 years old, and your mother starts out a sentence with boy.

She wrote, boy, you are from the South.

Here's what Jesus knew about judgments.

Sometimes when we judge others, we do it because we're not super comfortable with who we are.

Are you comfortable with who you are?

Log in your own eye, speck in your neighbor's eye.

Jesus next uses one of his favorite words.

He says, You hypocrite.

That's a word that gets thrown around a lot these days, right?

People talking about churches, hypocrites.

Why don't you go to church?

Well, it's full of a bunch of hypocrites.

Judge me.

They don't judge themselves.

Jesus would agree with that sentiment.

He's pretty generous when it comes to folks like nailing them to the cross.

Remember, he says, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Not so much when it comes to religious folks.

A couple verses later, he says, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites.

You think Jesus was trying to tell us something about how to be the people of God?

We all make judgments.

I was in a Sunday school class just 30 minutes ago or so.

We all talked about how, like, we all make judgments.

You gotta, you gotta make judgments.

Notice Jesus doesn't say, do not judge.

Actually, he does say that.

But he contradicts himself just a few verses after that, when he says, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye.

In other words, sometimes you gotta make judgments.

Just start with yourself first.

Don't be a hypocrite.

Be generous when you're giving out your judgments.

You don't know what other people are going through.

The judgment you give will be the judgment you get.

He could have just as well have said, treat people with some grace.

We don't know what folks are going through.

You don't know how much the person you're judging just needs to hear something like, you know, you're loved.

You belong in the kingdom of God.

Judge not.

It's hard to do that, right?

The morning I wrote the sermon, Friday morning.

Um I went back and forth to the news because you know, I do that from time to time.

Uh, the morning I wrote the sermon, a jury was deliberating sometime someone's fate.

Because sometimes you gotta make a judgment.

The morning I wrote this sermon, our vice president said the war in Iran is not a war.

Not a war.

Sometimes you gotta make judgments.

The morning I wrote this sermon, the band, the pride of the Southland, was rehearsing their tribute to Dolly Parton.

Dolly Parton.

You know, if there was ever a Christian who embodied, do not judge, if there was ever a Christian who was comfortable with who she was, Dolly Parton once said, I'm not offended by dumb blonde jokes, because I know I'm not dumb, and I also know I'm not blonde.

Dolly Parton once said, People ask me how I look so happy.

I say that's the Botox.

Dolly Parton once said, I think everyone should be allowed to be who they are and to love who they love.

Looked up a little bit about Dolly Parton this week.

She grew up in a one-room cabin, not too far from here, of course.

She was the fourth of twelve children.

She was the granddaughter of a Pentecostal preacher and the daughter of a man who never learned how to read.

She says she found God as a teenager playing an old piano in an old abandoned chapel.

Um, that chapel had stuff written all over the walls.

It had beer bottles all over the floor, it had other stuff I'm not gonna mention all over the floor.

You know what I'm talking about.

Um she said that while she was there playing that old abandoned piano, she said she heard the voice of God saying, You are my child.

So go.

Don't stop until I tell you.

And she never stopped.

Uh the New York Times, call a New York Times columnist wrote this last week.

It was an early sign of Dolly's pursuit of God amongst the grime.

I thought that was beautiful.

Though I'm not quite sure grime is the right word there.

Um, it's more Dolly could just see God everywhere.

Like she talked to God like God was standing right beside her everywhere.

She could uh see the people of God just everywhere.

Judge not, Jesus would say.

Uh maybe it's because she knew what it was like to be judged.

Um, in 1978, Barbara Walters interviewed Dolly Parton.

And Barbara Walters just said kind of like the weirdest thing.

She said to Dolly Parton, she said, Dolly, where I come from, I would have called you a hillbilly.

To which Dolly responded, Well, it's a good thing you didn't say that, or else I'd have to kick you in the shins.

Turns out that meant a lot to folks who grew up around here.

You know there's folks who judge people who grew up around here.

Um last week I was out of town.

I was at a preaching retreat in um in the mountains of North Carolina.

And while I was there, I met a preacher named Dan.

And the reason I started talking to Dan was because my family, we had just been to Dollywood for the first time.

Loved it.

Would recommend it if you haven't been there.

Uh but Dan, when I first met him, he's not from around here, he's from California, but he was wearing this like this brilliant pink Dollywood shirt, which is this like this huge picture of it's not of Dolly, but of like Dolly's hair, just right in the middle.

So we struck up a conversation.

Uh it turned out um Dan is gay.

Um I know, not because of that conversation, but during the conference, he made this joke.

He probably had to be there to, anyways, um he made this joke.

It was a preaching conference.

The presenter was talking about the the speed at which preachers talk and was was saying, you know, sometimes preachers need to talk more slowly.

And Dan in the audience, um, he said, well, gay preachers get to talk faster.

I thought that was funny.

Guess he had to be there.

Anyways, um, I got my first hint about how much Dolly Parton meant to Christians like Dan, um, because I was in the room with Dan when we all heard the news about her death.

And everybody, like everybody was sad.

Dan was the only one who cried.

From producing a documentary on the AIDS quilt in 1989, 1989, to speaking out against bathroom bills targeting trans folks.

Dolly Parton was unapologetic in her support of LGBT folk.

And that was something, especially 30 years ago.

And frankly, if we're being honest, it was something 30 years ago from somebody from here from this part of Tennessee.

I've got transgender people, I've got gays, I've got lesbians all in my family.

I know them and I love them all, and I do not judge, Dolly said.

Um Jesus said, in the kingdom of God, one day in the kingdom of God, people are gonna come from all over.

They're gonna come from the north and the south and the east and the west, and they're gonna they're gonna sit down at table together, and they're gonna see each other for who they really are.

They're not gonna judge each other.

They're not gonna sit around that table and ask, like, where did you come from, or what church did you go to, or who'd you vote for?

They won't judge in the kingdom of heaven, Jesus said.

They'll look across from the table and see each other as children of God.

Uh, there was one more story I read in um in the New York Times this week.

Um, there's a woman named Kelly who's a bartender at Core, C-O-R-E.

And Core, apparently, is the only gay bar in Knoxville that's still open.

And um it's like it's one of the few places where you can still catch a drag show in like in like the whole state still.

So Kelly, she's a bartender at Core.

She uh she had a grandfather who she described as old-fashioned.

And to her, old-fashioned is code for he didn't like the fact that Kelly loved another woman.

But one thing her grandfather did like was Dolly Parton.

Maybe she didn't say this, but maybe I just get the feeling.

Grandfather, old-fashioned, raised an appalachia.

Maybe it's because Dolly was just so unapologetic about who she was and where she came from.

So love for Dolly Parton was something that grandfather and Kelly had in common.

Uh, Kelly also, she's a big Dolly Parton fan, got a um Dolly tattoo right on her thigh.

Uh Dolly Parton as a as a saint with a with a halo over her head.

It's funny how long it takes some folks to come around.

It's funny how we sometimes communicate when we've come around.

So the grandfather died, and he left all his Dolly Parton records to Kelly.

And um, and Kelly was looking through the records, and she found this note from from beyond, I guess, from her grandfather, and it said, I don't care who you love, as long as they love you too.

So, like I said, we're all gonna come to the table in just a few minutes.

We're all gonna share communion in just a few minutes.

Um, you know, in in Matthew, when Jesus talks about the kingdom of God, he uses the future tense.

He says, People will come.

But sometimes, I don't know if you've experienced this, but I think I have.

Sometimes when you stand across the table from another person, you see them.

I mean, sure, you see people young and old, believing and doubting, inspired, bored, disciples and Pharisees and tax collectors.

But sometimes when you're across the table, you see them for who they really are.

You see a child of God.

You see somebody who's more than your judgments.

And when you do that, the kingdom comes.

The kingdom comes not in the future, right here.

Right now.