I’ve got some work to do on myself, still have work to do.  Life has worked me over, and still does.  God is reworking me, praise be to His name!

Our church is governed, guided, encouraged by elders.  In older societies, elders are esteemed and honored.  I’m not sure that elders have the respect in our society they may once have had.  It’s the kids who have to help the older folks with their phones!  In the church, we’ve kept this term elders, for one thing, because it’s biblical; for another, we’ve kept the term because of the principle involved: those who have lived this life longer have had more time and opportunity to develop greater wisdom, to know the right way by experience—and the wrong!—to know God’s Word by persistence, and also to know what darkness and blindness are, and what these do to people, to congregations, and societies.

Before we make a career, a habit, of instructing others, let us have the humility and wisdom to consider the work God would yet have us do on ourselves.  Jesus tells his listeners, “A person who is blind cannot guide another who is blind, can he?  Will they not both fall into a pit?” (6:39).  A blind guide: is that like an oxymoron?  We can visualize the two of them, the humor, the terror—Look out!  How did they not see it?  How could they, being both blind?  But when one thinks he or she sees or puts himself forward as one who sees . . . “Trust me!  I know how.  I do this all the time.”  Do we take people at their word when they seem to know all about something?  You’re doing it all wrong.  Here, let me!  Maybe the prudent course, to use the words of a former president, will be to trust, but verify.

Someone is always more than happy to tell us how to live our lives, and not just pastors from the pulpit.  I not here as anybody’s boss; I’m not barking orders up here, even if I do get a bit energetic from time to time.  I’m making an offer.  I’m here offering a way of life that is the way to life.  I have no power to make anyone take it.  Neither do I ask anyone to follow my example: what am I, who am I, that anyone should emulate me?  Good Lord, no!  My role, my place is to ask, plead, that we all—including me!—listen to what God is saying, reflect upon it, pray about it, and let ourselves be guided by God’s faithful Word.  At all times, we continually rely upon the grace provided us through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Let the teacher teach; permit yourself to be taught by the Teacher.  A skillful teacher knows that different students have different ways of learning.  We all can learn; learning won’t happen the same way for me as for you, or for you as for me.  But let us learn.  “A student is not above the teacher; but everyone, when he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher” (6:40).  “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be.  We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is” (1 Jn 3:2).  We get glimpses of him even here, though, as we see his conduct in others, who are also being educated by the Spirit for kingdom life.  Each of us is being educated and trained towards fullness, the fullness of Christ.

Paul also uses metaphors for the labor involved in this training: the soldier, the athlete, or the farmer (2 Tim 2:3-6), the runner, the boxer (1 Corinthains 9:24-27).  Another word for this training is discipleship.  It takes time, requires a lot of patience, a good measure of endurance, a load of humor, and everywhere always, humility.  Always, we ought to be ready to notice when we have made a misstep.  We ought always to be desiring the Lord’s correction, which is His love for us.  We’ve all got some work yet to do on ourselves.  Let’s not hastily jump into working on someone else, let alone offer to work them over by way of neglecting to do the necessary work on ourselves.  Oh, I’ll get around to me after I’ve finished up with you!  Right.

We know, we can see, that others need help, too.  Trust that God is at work, still.  Pray, much, for humility, discernment, wisdom, and the mercy of God.  Let’s not run before we know how to walk, before we’ve put in the practice time and built the confidence needed to walk well.  Let’s do learn how to walk, together.  And let’s walk.

What is Jesus getting at?  Blindness.  We’ve all done some self-reflection and arrived at some self-knowledge.  Lord knows that comes costly enough!  I think we’d also be willing to acknowledge there’s more we need to learn about ourselves, certainly about others.  I also want to put it to you that there remain some stubborn, intractable matters in each of us, to which we most often mostly permit ourselves to remain blind.  Who can say “I see clearly” when we won’t even look at ourselves clearly: look, that is, through the glasses Jesus gives us?

Before we get all eager to rework others—our latest project!  Yeah, it’s a gift—beg God, often, to rework you.  Beg God to cause you to be a willing, active, committed participant in that work.  The work of being reworked by God—this is our training, our training for kingdom life and our walk with Jesus.  If we must point to ourselves, God help us, let it always be negative—the way not to walk.  If we must point, let us point to Christ, God’s Word, in a spirit of compassion and restoration, never angry condemnation or superior holiness.  Forgive, bless, walk, invite others to walk with you.  Humility, wisdom—we talk about these.

“How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye?” (6:42).  You go in for an appointment with an eye surgeon.  You know you’ll need surgery; you’ve been referred.  You’re in that awful little neutral-colored examination room, a little too cold and bare—kind of like being on the operating table already—there’s a knock at the door: oh thank God, he’s finally here!  And in walks a man with pop-bottle glasses, like Burgess Meredith in that episode of The Twilight Zone.  Confidence builder?  “Ah, but at least he can see clearly!”  Oh?

“You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye” (6:42).  Let’s make that investment of time and effort in learning how to hike with our own pack, and actually hiking with it.  Jesus will teach us, all of us.  But, are we never, then, to share a concern with anyone about what we seem to be seeing in his or her behavior and choices, hearing in his or her language?  When we feel a cause for concern, should we instead just keep our mouths shut?  Is that love?  I love you, so dash off the way into the nettles and briars, and God bless.

What is Jesus getting at here?  We understand about practicing humility.  Let us practice humility.  We understand about our own, ongoing need for the ministry of the Spirit.  Pray for your own sanctification, even as you pray for that of others.  What is Jesus getting at, here?  Catholics may be closer to understanding than we Presbyterians.  Catholics are expected to go to confession.  You go into the confessional, “Bless me Father, for I have sinned.”  Well, that’s no small thing to say.  Most people never can seem quite to get themselves to that point, and they certainly don’t want our help to get there!  The priest, you know, has the authority to forgive, and forgiveness . . . well, to have it, the one making a good confession, a full confession, will have to do some things.  Maybe it’ll be a prayer to be repeated several times a day for several days.  Maybe it’ll involve a journey to a particularly holy place, or to a particularly holy person—there being places and people to the Catholic way of thinking that are just a bit holier than the rest.  Do these things, and you can have assurance that you truly are forgiven.  Do these things, and you can have assurance that you truly are walking in the light of the truth.  Do these things, and you can have assurance that God loves you and is favorable to you.  Do these things.  Jews understand, too.  Righteousness is a matter of our actions, our will, our choice.  The determining factor in our righteousness is us.  By our will at work in our choices leading to our actions, we demonstrate our righteousness, and God just loves that.  But the will, beloved . . . there, precisely, is the problem.

We see the speck of unrighteousness quickly enough.  Let us also become better aware of the log of righteousness: that impediment will always cause us to stumble, until we begin to see it.  Now, please understand what I am saying.  Righteousness is good: let us seek true righteousness.  We do not have it, cannot labor for it or earn it.  From this side of the veil, true righteousness is not available to anyone.  True righteousness must come to us, and he does.  And his own did not receive him.  “Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God” (Jn 1:12-13).  To those who believed: “Abram believed the Lord, and He credited it to [Abram] as righteousness” (Gen 15:6).

Righteousness, without which we cannot be in the presence of God—righteousness, which is the knowledge of God’s character and which is to walk with God: this is the gift of God, the gift for those who believe.  Not my will applying itself but God’s will being applied by grace through faith.  Faith, as James reminds us, gives life to any and all good work.  Faith precedes the work, causes the work, and makes the work good.  Faith is not first of all us working for God; faith is, first of all, God at work in us.  Any and all “good” works done from anything other than faith are and must be dead works.  It was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, pastor, theologian, and victim of the Nazis, who suggested that it may even be the case that performance can lead to faith.  I hope that may be so.  In my experience, it is faith that prompts performance.  If we had faith as small as a mustard seed—even a little faith can do much.

“For there is no good tree that bears bad fruit, nor, on the other hand, a bad tree that bears good fruit” (6:43).  What fruit does the tree have?  A cultivated, fertilized, tended tree will have good fruit.  A neglected tree, not so much.  My mother-in-law has an apple tree in her backyard, a really old, big apple tree.  It wasn’t so productive when she bought the house.  She asked someone who knew about apple trees what was needed.  He asked her to trust him and then cut the tree back by about half.  It didn’t look so good, for a while.  Then, it began to put out new growth.  The new growth put out its flowers, and the apples followed: many, good apples.  Sometimes, a tree will require major pruning.  Whom shall we trust, for that work?  Well, I have a chainsaw.

Jesus directs us to what these several sayings are getting at when he speaks to us of what fills the heart (6:45).  A blind guide cannot offer real, helpful guidance.  One who is still a student ought not to presume to put herself on a par with the Teacher.  One who is more eager to work on and correct others than to work on and correct him or herself has not yet fully learned the full scope of his or her blindness.  The one quick to focus on the small faults of others but slow to recognize, confess, and work on his or her own glaring flaws . . . still has work to do.  Who can teach, then?  Who can help, then?  Who can correct, then?  We know the answer, but only because we know Jesus.  What Jesus seems to be saying is that who or what fills the heart is what will be teaching you.

Beloved, what we learn, as we learn from the Spirit, is that there are many things in our heart.  If we would bring forth what is good, let us fill ourselves with what is good.  God gives His Word to fill us, His Spirit, His love, His grace.  Filled as we find ourselves with the words, ways, and wisdoms of the world, how we still and always need what God freely, lovingly offers!