Community Church Sermons

The Eighth Sunday After Epiphany, Year C - February 25, 2001

"As The Acorn Falls"

Luke 6:37-45

My good friend and clergy colleague Len Silvester went out to a local airport one day to inquire about taking flying lessons. As I recall the story, Len didn't get a lesson that day, but he did end up buying an airplane! Go figure. Guess you might say Len is a bit impulsive.

When we first met, Len had that brand-new spiffy white and red Cessna 152, but no pilot's license. I - on the other hand - had a pilot's license, but no airplane. We immediately saw the possibilities! And so Len and I flew around the countryside in his little two-seat airplane, and I built up my hours while he was able to log some of the time toward his license because a kind and generous flight instructor let him do it. And we had great fun.

On one occasion, Len and I signed up to attend a workshop in Hartford, Connecticut where Robert Schuller was going to speak. We had decided to fly over there, but that very week, I managed to wrench my back out of kilter, and Len tore some ankle ligaments playing Walleyball. We thought about canceling the trip because I was very limited in the use of my upper body which precluded me from steering the thing and scanning the whole horizon. At the same time, Len's bum ankle - which was in a brace - made it so that he couldn't work the rudder pedals. But just as we were about to decide against going, divine inspiration came to us. I couldn't use my upper body, but Len could use his! Len couldn't use his legs, but I could use mine! So…if Len did all the steering, and I did all the rudder work…!

And an idea was born! So we flew over to Hartford that day, Len on half the controls, me on the other half. It wasn't pretty, and the landing was downright ugly, but we managed to get there in one piece. I remember parking the airplane over in a section of the airport where a number of people were gathered. They were all laughing - probably about the quality of our landing. And they laughed even more when they saw us get out of the airplane. It took us each about twenty minutes to maneuver sprained legs and strained backs to the point of being able to exit that contraption. And they laughed harder yet when they saw us walking - or rather, limping - toward our waiting taxi - one guy who could barely walk, held up by another guy bent over like Quasimodo. We were quite a funny sight!!!

Now this is precisely the kind of humorous image Jesus is trying to get us to imagine in today's Scripture lesson. He doesn't use two chiropractic patients like Len and me leaning upon each other, but rather two blind men leading each other down the road. Can you picture it? And the final frame of the verbal cartoon Jesus is drawing has these two men stumbling off the road, and falling into a pit. It's a Laurel and Hardy skit. An Abbott and Costello routine. It is the theatre of the absurd. And Jesus uses this comedic absurdity of one blind person leading another to first get us to chuckle, and second, to get us to see that he is talking about us!

Luke is giving us samples of Jesus' main body of teaching. We refer to it as the Sermon on the Mount. If you and I - and the whole world - were ever able to actually live by the principles taught in this sermon, planet Earth would be transformed into goodness and righteousness. It would become a world of joy, and of peace, and of healing in which evil could not stand to live.

And this sermon represents the life to which you and I are summoned to live both as individual Christians, and as the church together. We are to be the living role-models of this new life! We are to be like a preview of coming attractions to the rest of the world as God works behind the scenes to finally manifest the Kingdom of God.

But you know by now that these teachings of Jesus are hard teachings to follow. In fact, they are almost diametrically opposed to how we're living right now.

Jesus begins with beatitudes that turn the table on us. The poor, the hungry, the sad, and the rejected are lifted up by God. And the rich, the satisfied, the happy, and the accepted are lowered. Why, that's the exact opposite of the way it happens in the world, isn't it?

Then, Jesus calls us to love our enemies, and do good to those who hates us, and to bless those who curse us, and to pray for those who mistreat us. I'm not sure about you, but that's not how I live most of the time. These are all the opposite of how things are done in our world.

And then Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, and to lend to others expecting nothing in return, and to not judge, and to not condemn, and to forgive. Once again, I find myself lacking. How about you? These are all opposite ways of living when held up against how we normally conduct ourselves in the world.

And now, Jesus is about to tell us why we live this way - in radical opposition to the ways of God. Why do we bless the rich and despise the poor? Why do we love our friends, and hate our enemies? Why do we strike back when we are struck? Why do we lend, expecting repayment? Why do we judge and condemn? Why do we find it so difficult to forgive?

Well, this little absurd cartoon provides the answer. Two blind men leading each other down the street, stumbling over curbs, bumping into people, weaving out into traffic, and finally falling into a cesspool. And one of them is us! And with that image in mind, this is what Jesus says:

"A disciple is not above his teacher. Everyone, when he is fully taught, will be just LIKE his teacher."

In other words, we bless the rich and despise the poor, we love our friends and hate our enemies, we strike back when we are struck, we lend looking for repayment with interest, we judge and condemn and withhold forgiveness for one dangerous reason:

We are disciples of a BLIND teacher. And we have become just LIKE him!

Psychologists tells us that children who experience abuse in their early years, often become abusers themselves as adults. Sociology shows us that kids who grow up in homes where racial intolerance is taught and practiced become racially intolerant themselves. In my own family - when we look at the remarkable similarities between members of the various generations - when we look at my grandfather, and then at my father, and then at me, and then at my son - we can't help but say, "You know, the old acorn doesn't fall far from the tree!"

As a teenager, I thought my father was the most uncool person who ever lived, and I vowed to never be like him. And yet, the older I get, I am overwhelmed with the realization that not only am I becoming more and more LIKE my father, but, in some ways, I have actually BECOME my father! Do you know what I'm saying? And the only consolation I have in this is the knowledge that, although my son currently thinks I am the most uncool person in the world, one day HE will awaken to the fact that he has become ME! What a laugh that will be!

Acorns don't fall far from the tree. Disciples become like their masters. Students become like their teachers.

Now, I want you to understand that Jesus is not so much talking about our family connections here, but about our very religious foundations. From the time we were babies, we became disciples of a way of believing and living. We have been students of a religion that has been our teacher. And Jesus is about to tell us how blind this teacher has been, and how we have become blinded as a result. Now, if you are like me, this may be difficult to listen to because all my life I've cherished my religious background, and thought my church experience has been a real positive force in my life. Like many of you, I can joyfully sing that wonderful comic hymn that's sung to the tune of "I Want A Girl Just Like The Girl Who Married Dear Old Dad". Do you know it? It goes like this :

"I want a church just like the church that I was brought up in!

Oh, I loved it so, good old status-quo, where changing-things was a sin!

A good old fashioned church with fellowship, the Easter crowds we had would make you sick!

Oh, I want a church just like the church that I was brought up in!"

There are many dear things about our religious upbringing. But Jesus wants us to understand that there are many dangerous and destructive things, too. So he continues in the sermon on the mount to identify and isolate the hidden evil that has blinded us to the point that we so often live in direct opposition to God's will.

Jesus put it this way: Many of us have been steeped in a religion that has taught us to specialize in seeing the speck in our brother's eye without ever even noticing the oak tree in our own eye. And having been taught this evil behavior, this blind and destructive way of living, you and I have spent our lives inflicting it on others - our children, our spouses, our neighbors, our waiters, our gas station attendants, our employees, our employers, poor people, single mothers, people who hurt us, needy people, old people, young people, people who are different, and everybody else who comes along.

This look-for-the-speck-in-your-brother's-eye lifestyle is even true with how we look on other Christians. How vividly I remember as a boy getting together with the kids in our neighborhood to go play basketball at the gym in our church. Everybody went - except for the Catholic kids. They were sure they'd get struck by lightning if they went through the doors of a Protestant church. Why? Because their church taught them that. Protestants were heretics, according to the Church. And how vividly I remember meeting Frank and Mary, a young couple who didn't go to church anymore. A week or so before their wedding, a group of deacons from the old First Congregational Church showed up at Mary's house to try to convince her to not marry Frank. He was, after all, Catholic. "Mary," they intoned, "why don't you marry one of your own kind?" What did they mean by that? Catholics were a different species than Protestants? And this speck-finding had an amazing effect on Frank and Mary. They became speck-finders themselves. The reason they no longer went to church, they said, was because the church was full of hypocrites.

Fred Craddock well-describes the problem, "If one learns from blind, hypocritical, and judgmental teachers, then one becomes such a person (themself)."

Let me ask you this morning, "What do YOU see when you look at other people?"

Now Jesus is not going to leave us hanging here. He knows full-well that you and I have been taught by blind guides - able to see the speck in others' eyes, but not the log in their own - and that we have become blind ourselves in the process. He knows how skilled most of us are at picking up specks in others. So how can we begin to be healed of this blindness?

Well, Jesus offers us two important goals. Here's the first: take up a daily discipline of replacing your speck-searching with regular personal soul-searching and self-examination. One of the reasons I believe recovering alcoholics are some of the great heroes in life is because the fourth of the 12-steps is to begin a life-long process of making a searching and fearless moral inventory of themselves. I believe this is one of the reasons recovering alcoholics can help other alcoholics into recovery. They have no basis for judging anyone else, and so can offer understanding. As many people in recovery say, "There, but for the grace of God, go I."

Do you really know yourself as God sees you? Do you understand your incredible capacity for doing good, as well as your capacity for doing terrible evil? Do you recognize where sin is at work in your life, and how destructive it is to what God is trying to do in the world? Why, just that careless word you spoke to your neighbor may have interrupted a lifetime of God's effort to breathe just a smidgeon of self-esteem into that person's life! Who have you hurt this week? Who have you let down? Where were you irresponsible? What opportunities for doing good did you miss? What mistakes did you make? How could you have done better?

You see, when you get all caught up in seeing the speck in others' eyes, it becomes terribly destructive to God's plan for that person, and for the world. But when you turn speck-seeking in on yourself, it can become a tool for growth and transformation into the character of Christ.

So goal number one for this week is to restrain yourself from speck-seeking, and to take up a new discipline of soul-searching.

And the second goal is to make a choice: who will you take as your teacher? The old time, speck-seeking religion? Or Jesus, the greatest Healer and Lover who ever lived?

Jesus says the choice of teachers produces results sort of like what happens in nature: bad teachers, like bad trees, put out bad acorns; good teachers, like good trees, put out good acorns.

I personally believe that one of the great truths in all of life is that the old acorn doesn't fall far from the tree.

So the question for us today is really quite simple: what will you do with your speck-seeking nature? And who will you choose to follow?