Lent Day 4--February 25, 2012

Lenten Reflection for Day 4

Date: February 25, 2012

Author: Mike Michaels

Bible Passage: Matthew 7:1–3 (NRSV)

¹ “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. ² For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. ³ Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?

Reflection:

Reading these words of our Lord, in several different versions of translation of the Greek Scriptures, reminds me of several of Jesus’ other teachings. Among my favorites is the line from the Prayer that he taught us to Pray to His Father, “Forgive us our Sins, AS we forgive those who sin against us…”

It seems that Jesus was always teaching us, his followers, to “Treat others the way we would want to be treated,” and not as was taught in the Hebrew Scriptures, revenge, as in “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.

In setting up the standards for his followers, He wanted us to always be mindful of our loving behaviors in relationships with our fellow believers, as well as with our enemies (Matt. 5:44) because, as he says, and I paraphrase, “We will be judged (by the Father) as we judge others, and we will be forgiven (by the father) as we forgive others.”

In what looks to me like a 180 degree turn from the “Old Testament” that The Father had with The Jews through Moses, Jesus was telling us that in his “New Testament” Jesus’ sacrifice for us would now lift the eternal death penalty (brought down upon us by Adam and Eve) from us, and that we would have to learn a whole new way of thinking, reasoning, believing, and behaving…to be in line with this new contract.

We still pray to The Father, but as Jesus pointed out, from that point onward we prayed “In Jesus’ Name,” or through The Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus had already given us His new teachings on True Happiness, on Anger, on Adultery and Divorce, and Vows, when he began to teach us the new rules regarding “Revenge, Love for Our Enemies, The Lord’s Prayer (in which He tells us to ask Forgiveness as we forgive others) and Not Judging Others, so as not to be judged.

The Sermon on the Mount is one of my personal touchstones in the Bible; it covers just about all I need to know when things get rough, or even when things are going well! I have to strongly recommend reading it in its entirety, not once, but until it is committed to memory, for its miraculous problem-solving properties, but this is only my opinion.

In terms of today’s scripture, Matthew 7:1-3, you can only look to the daily news to see what happens when people all over the world choose to NOT follow Jesus’ admonition to “Not Judge, but to Forgive as we would like to be forgiven.” Just think how joyful the family of humankind will be when we all are living by Jesus’ perfect standards, at last, in paradise.

Prayer:

Dear Heavenly Father, please help us to be non-judgmental, so that day by day we might become closer to the people you want us to be. Please help us to forgive our neighbors and family members, as well as our enemies, as if we remembered that your forgiveness of our sins were dependent upon our forgiveness of them. We know that you alone are the Judge of everything including the Good and the Bad. Please help us to live and behave as though we remembered this and always held it with us as one of your prime directives for us. We thank you for our ability to reason and learn these things. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.