Sawdust

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 01/29/2012

[conversation with mortgage broker…]

By way of preview, before we finish today, we will look at 4 questions we can ask ourselves before trying to help someone “improve” themselves.

1. Do I love this person?

2. Am I in a posture of service?

3. Am I free from anxiety about their response to God or to the help I give?

4. Am I willing to suffer pain to help them see God more clearly and follow him more freely?

If the answer is yes to all 4, and you think Jesus is leading you to help, then dive right in. If not, wait.

But more on that later.

7 “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. ²For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

³“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in someone else’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? ⁴How can you say, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? ⁵You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from the other person’s eye.

Matthew 7:1-5

[recap of first week, first things first, responsible for self, responsible to others / downside of over-responsibility (being responsible for others instead of for self) creates destructive stress, a violation of God-given self, makes us fail our true responsibilities / how this is central to faithfully pursuing our mission…1) Follow 2) Create Breathing Room….Last week we talked about resisting the strong forces that lead us to ignore our own planks and focus on the sawdust in others’ eyes, our instinct for triangulation in our relationship with God, because it is always easier to focus on someone else and avoid the uncomfortable or painful things between us and God ]

We closed last week by saying that Jesus is teaching us that if we want be his disciples, if we want to follow in his footsteps, then with respect to our relationships with him, we must let go of the supports and relief valves that focusing on others sometimes provide us, and in faith, deal with him face to face. And then we will be properly positioned to take the posture of a servant and not a judge towards every other image-bearer, and be a true help to one another in our discipleship with him.

How do you know when and how to help others in their relationship with God? How do you know when you are supposed to help someone get a speck of sawdust out of their eye?

Let’s be clear before we go any further what we are not talking about.

We are not talking about when someone has done some unforebearable wrong against you that creates the need for reconciliation. [examples…] When a wrong is done against you that requires the work of reconciliation to set right, Matthew 18 points the way forward (Go, speak to your brother or sister in private, etc…), not Matthew 7.

We are also not talking about the kinds of correction we have to bring for the sake of peaceful, well-ordered community. Where some member of the community is acting in some way that disrupts the community or brings harm to others. [kids teasing Elle…] We see Jesus firmly correcting his disciples all the time when they get out of line with his purposes.

The truth is, of course, we will handle both of those kinds of situations better without judgment and without planks, and from a posture of love and service, [examples…] but those aren’t the kinds of situations Jesus is addressing in Matthew 7.

Matthew 7 is about the experience of living in community with others and the endless opportunities that provides us to focus on either the specks of sawdust in the eyes of others, or the planks in our eyes. Matthew 7 is about following the way of Jesus together, in a way that allows us to create breathing room for God to do what God does best as we fulfill our responsibilities for ourselves and towards others.

Jesus, as we’ve talked about, says first things first. Deal with our own planks. Be responsible first and foremost for ourselves. But he also implies that there are times in which one of the ways we fulfill our responsibilities towards one another is by helping each other with the sawdust floating around in our eyes.

In other words, one of the ways we love and serve each other as brothers and sisters in a community of faith is by helping each other gracefully get rid of the obstacles that we have to clear sight and forward movement in discipleship with Jesus. [examples…]

So how do we know when the time is right for us to help, and when the time is wrong? And how do we know how to do it, once we know the time is right?

The truest answer is both the simplest and probably the least satisfying. When God, through his Holy Spirit, tells you to. And as to the how, we do it gracefully. No ifs, ands, or buts.

For followers of Jesus, this is the ultimate answer to every question about when to do anything. Jesus himself said, I only do what I see the Father doing. This is what life in the Spirit looks like. It’s what inside-out living looks like. It is the kingdom of God within us expressing itself outward through our words and actions.

If our actions are a response to the leading of Jesus’ Spirit, and nothing else, then we will always be acting in love, and if we are operating from well-formed character, we will act gracefully in the posture of servant, like Christ himself. We can’t lose.

Each of us is well aware, however, that discerning the voice of God’s spirit in our lives is a lifelong exercise, and character takes time. Both are gifts that need development over time. And in the meantime, we might need some guidelines, some nudging in the right direction. When we have the inclination to go help someone with what looks like a speck of sawdust to us, how do we know if it’s God’s spirit showing it to us? How can we be sure our own planks aren’t distorting our vision? How do we know if it’s God’s Spirit telling us to go offer help? How can we be sure it’s not just our instinct for triangulation kicking in?

We can learn a lot from seeing how Jesus attends to the sawdust he encounters.

Consider the woman caught in adultery…

At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger.

When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

“No one, sir,” she said.

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

John 8

The Pharisee’s eyes are full of sawdust. Jealousy of Jesus’ influence on the crowds, a willingness to use this woman to entrap him, anger, you name it - triangulation of the first order. Their sawdust has made them blind to themselves and to their responsibilities to others. So he gently turns their attention to their own planks. “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” That’s enough. He doesn’t go one by one correcting each of them. He just directs them to their planks in order to protect this woman from their judgment and lets them take it from there.

This woman has some sawdust. But it seems that the first sawdust Jesus deals with is the sawdust flung into her eyes by the crowd. Because that is the sawdust that has the capacity to blind her to God. “Has no one condemned you…? Then neither do I.”

The most significant obstacle to clear vision and forward movement for this woman apparently was the picture of God she had because of the inappropriate judgment of those in power around her. Jesus attends to this first. You think you stand condemned before an angry God? No, you stand under the grace of one who loves you.

Jesus is always doing this for what he describes as the lost sheep of Israel, harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. The sinners and tax collectors, the poor and the hurting. The first thing he addresses for them is the false picture of God they have because of the inappropriate judgment of those in power around them. Blessed are those who... Blessed are the… and on and on. Cleaning out sawdust. Helping people see clearly so they can take steps of faith towards God.

And then, after that, he helps her with the next speck of sawdust. Go now, and leave your life of sin. So simple, calm. Jesus isn’t anxious about her at all. Repentance is almost a foregone conclusion, isn’t it? Now that you see God clearly, and yourself clearly, those other specks of sawdust are going to wash right out, aren’t they? See that they do.

It’s essentially the same pattern with the Samaritan woman at the well, isn’t it? Jesus reshapes her picture of God by the way he relates to her and what he says to her, and then gently addresses the other sawdust, the stuff that the tears welling up in her eyes are just about to wash out anyway.

Or what about Zacchaeus?

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. ²A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. ³He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. ⁴So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.

⁵When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” ⁶So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

⁷All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

⁸But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

⁹Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. ¹⁰For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”

Luke 19

Are we noticing a pattern? Jesus – through his graceful actions – deals with the sawdust that keeps Zacchaeus from seeing who God is, and the other sawdust doesn’t stand a chance.

In this case, the other people are muttering (sawdust alert!), but Jesus leaves it alone for some reason. Presumably because that sawdust doesn’t require any further attention from him in that moment. And he doesn’t seem anxious about it at all.

How about one more?

³⁶When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. ³⁷A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. ³⁸As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.

³⁹When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”

⁴⁰Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”

“Tell me, teacher,” he said.

⁴¹“Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. ⁴²Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”

⁴³Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.”

“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.

⁴⁴Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. ⁴⁵You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. ⁴⁶You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. ⁴⁷Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”

⁴⁸Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”

⁴⁹The other guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?”

⁵⁰Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Luke 7

He sees her sawdust, and simply forgives it. It’s not keeping her from him at all, is it? Forgiveness is the only attention it needs.

Simon and the Pharisees on the other hand are blinded by their sawdust to themselves and to their responsibilities to others. So Jesus attends to what is lodged in their eyes by drawing their attention to their planks. “You gave me no… You gave me no… You did not…”

Before we try to apply all this to our own situations, I want to draw something else to our attention about the way Jesus related to his disciples in the midst of some of their most obvious sin.

Think about Peter and Judas at the last supper. Jesus knows both of them are about to screw up big time. Judas is going to betray him (John 13:21-30), and Peter is going to deny him 3 times (John 13:38). But Jesus doesn’t do anything to stop it. And he doesn’t seem anxious about it at all. Judas’ sawdust is completely Judas’ responsibility at this point, and Jesus’ fulfills his responsibility towards him by simply letting him know he sees it and giving him permission to do what he has determined to do. And Jesus allows Peter’s sawdust to remain unattended, because it seems that the time for him to help Peter with it is not now. It will be later, as we talked about last week, but it is not now.

In light of Jesus’ approach, let’s return to those 4 guideline questions we mentioned earlier. If we think the Holy Spirit might be leading us to help someone with a speck of sawdust I’ve noticed, or that they’ve asked us for help with, we should ask the following 4 questions:

1. Do I love this person?

2. Am I in a posture of service?

3. Am I free from anxiety about their response to God or to the help I give?

4. Am I willing to suffer pain to help them see God more clearly and follow him more freely?

Do I love this person?

If you want God’s best blessings for them, for them to have life, and have it to the full; if you see them as a beloved image-bearer of God, then that is a sign you are seeing clearly enough to help.

Love is our guide and our aim. Do unto others as you would have done unto you.

Am I in a posture of service?

If you can see that the most important relationship in that person’s life is their holy relationship with God – them to God, and God to them, with them responsible for themselves, and God responsible for leading the discipleship process in cooperation with their surrender – then you can see yourself as one who comes as a servant to them in their responsibilities for themselves, and as one who comes as a servant to God in being an agent of his grace to one of his kids.

Am I free from anxiety about their response to God or to the help I give?

If you feel like your well-being is tied up in their response to God (or to your help!), it will be easy to move from servant to judge. This may be a sign you are acting out of a misplaced “responsibility for” instead of a graceful “responsible to.”

Remember, stress is a function of over-responsibility for the relationship of two others. And we don’t function very gracefully when we are stressed. We have a harder time hearing the voice of the Spirit leading us. So we need to give space for our input or advice or suggestions to be rejected, or poorly implemented, without getting frustrated or letting go of our humility.

Am I willing to suffer pain to help them see God more clearly and follow more freely?

If you can see how their sawdust is keeping them from seeing God clearly or having confidence to take a step of faith towards God, and you would be willing to suffer pain to show them God more clearly, then you might be seeing clearly enough, and be properly positioned, to help.

Because this work of sawdust removal rarely happens in a hit and run fashion. It almost always happens in the context of loving relationship. And loving relationship almost always involves pain.

Next week, what to do with the pressured urgency of eternal destiny? What if that speck of sawdust is what stands between them and heaven?

Practical Tips:

1. Practice Practically. Help somebody with a practical project – painting a room, fixing something, cooking with them, etc. – and notice how you relate to them as you do it. Ask God to teach you through the experience.

2. Ask God for a No-Brainer. Ask God to prompt someone to ask you for your help with some part of their discipleship journey. If that area of their life comes up in conversation as a point of pain for the person, ask them if they would be willing to let you help them. The very fact that they are open and vulnerable with you about that part of their life is often a sign that they experience you as someone who loves them, who is not in a posture of judgment towards them, and who is not overly invested in the outcome.