Psalm 130:1-8

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications! If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered. I wait for the Lord; my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning. O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem. It is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.

Matthew 7:1-5

“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 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 own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye

La Dolcevita 

Every morning at our house, I wake up, go downstairs, and make the coffee. We drink Italian coffee, Lavazza Dolcevita Classico. On the container there’s a label with a description of the coffee. The label reads, “Lavazza’s artistry of coffee is inspired by the Italian way of life or la Dolcevita. Each coffee sip is a portal to la Dolcevita, a blend of joy, style and the simple pleasure of relishing moments. La Dolcevita means “the sweet life.” Yesterday while I was making the coffee and reading this label on the package, and it occurred to me that that’s what I’m trying to communicate in my sermons. La Dolcevita. The Sweet Life. How do we live the sweet life? How do we get to the sweet life? What is it? And how can we live it?

You know, this life is really hard. There are so many difficult things we go through, so many painful experiences. And many of them, we don’t deserve. Bad things happen, and we don’t deserve them. And with each bad thing that happens, we have to adjust. We adjust to the new situation, the new normal. This is an emotional process. After a crisis, a death, a major loss, a trauma, we have to go through an emotional process to get to the next part of our life. It’s a healing process. And it’s not easy. It’s very difficult. And sometimes, it takes years.

We’ve been studying the Sermon on the Mount to understand the Mind of Christ. The Sermon on the Mount gives us a picture of the Mind of Christ. We are looking for the Dolcevita, the sweet life, the beautiful life, and that is what I see in the Mind of Christ. It’s another way of talking about experiencing the beautiful life.

You know, in the middle of my third grade, my family moved to a different city and all of a sudden I found myself in a new school with a new teacher. We lived close enough to the school that my brother and I could walk to school. I didn’t know anyone and it was hard. That year, I played on a little league baseball team. The baseball field was behind the school.

One day after baseball practice was over, I was walking home across the field, when three big eighth grade boys jumped me for no reason. They threw me down on the ground and sat on my chest and pinned me to the ground. They hit me and made fun of me. They spit in my face.

It happened several more times. They lived across the street from our house. They would come over into our yard and throw me on the ground and sit on me. It was horrible. They were bullies. I used to have nightmares about the bullies.

You know, our reading today is on judging others. It’s a famous text. I’m sure you know it. And it’s in the sermon on the mount. This is the last week we will be looking at the sermon on the mount. Next week is Palm Sunday, and the beginning of Holy Week. So today we wind up our study of the Sermon on the Mount. You have been a very attentive audience, listening and commenting on this series of sermons, and so, I thank you. It has been enjoyable for me, too, to preach on these chapters in Matthew’s Gospel.

In this reading, Jesus says to his disciples, “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.” You know, this week, I’ve been thinking a lot about judging others. It’s a very difficult topic. Asking myself a lot of questions about this, you know: Why do we judge others? And I wondered if there might be some relationship between judging others and anxiety. Is judging others related to our anxiety? And, in my research on this question, I learned that, yes, there is a strong connection between judgment and anxiety.

This makes sense, too, in the context of the Sermon on the Mount. Recall that last week, the reading was on anxiety. Look at the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. Remember that one? And then, here, Jesus goes on to talk about judgement. I think he must have understood the connection between judgement and anxiety.

Sometimes judging others is a way that we can avoid looking at ourselves. By judging others, criticizing others, looking at other’s faults, we can avoid looking at our own faults. It happens because of insecurity. A person doesn’t like himself or herself. They are insecure. And to avoid this painful feeling of feeling insecure, they lash out at others, they judge others, criticize others, put down others. It’s a way of avoiding looking at oneself. It’s a defense mechanism.

Projecting our insecurities.

This is what Jesus is talking about in Matthew 7: “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye but do not notice the log in your own eye. First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.”

This is called projection. It’s easier to look for faults in others. And finding faults in other people creates a distraction so that we don’t actually have to look at ourselves. It’s a defense mechanism. It protects us from the pain of looking at ourselves and actually seeing our own faults. But what is so interesting about projection is that the very faults we see in others are actually the things that we don’t like about ourselves.

This is a way of not dealing with our own issues. Sometimes it’s called “bypassing.” You know, going around. Not wanting to look at my own issues, not wanting to look at all the ways I have messed up my own life, messed up my relationships, not wanting to look at the root cause of my problems. Because the truth can be very painful. If I really look at it, without bypassing, without getting distracted, without projecting, but if I really have the courage to look at what is not working in my life and accept that “It’s me. There is something that I am doing wrong. It all comes down to me.” If I really have the courage to do that, then I may experience a breakthrough. There can be a breakthrough moment. But this is very difficult work.

The strange thing is, when I have the courage to look at myself, to go through the pain of really looking in the mirror to take the log out of my own eye, that is when my life begins to get better. Relationships will change and improve. Communication will improve. Everything will get better when I stop blaming everyone else for my problems and take a hard look at myself and fix myself. Stop trying to fix everyone else, and fix myself.

You might wonder sometimes, what is the point of all this? Life is so hard, and then you die. What’s the point? It all seems useless. Just suffering and more suffering. It’s like the bullies. They just keep on throwing you onto the ground.

How do we get to the Dolcevita? How can we find the beautiful life? How can we get to the Mind of Christ? The strange thing is, it is through the suffering. It is the suffering itself that breaks us down. Suffering is the vehicle that leads us to the Mind of Christ, to the beautiful life.

Judging others is simply another form of suffering. For example, if something happened years ago, and you are angry about it. Maybe someone hurt you. You didn’t deserve it. But they hurt you. And you have carried a grudge for years. It burns in your heart like a smoldering hot coal. And you judge that person because you know you didn’t do anything wrong. This is a kind of self-righteous anger. You know? It’s a victim mentality. You play the victim. There is something really powerful and satisfying about being a legitimate victim. It can become an identity. “He hurt me. He wronged me.”

The other day I read a story about a man whose father beat him with a belt. He was a child, and his father beat him with a belt to punish him. And it took him years to heal from that wounding. Eventually he did. He was able to go to his father and tell say, “Dad, I love you.” Because he finally understood that his father was confused. He had made a mistake. For year, he had judged his father harshly. But finally, he was able to let it go before his father died, he was able to say, “Dad, I love you.” He found freedom in forgiveness.

This is the Mind of Christ. Do not judge others. Take the log out of your own eye. Find out what is holding you back from freedom. Some people are never able to get there. Not everyone can get there. But to the extent that there is still judgement, the spiritual heart has not fully opened.

You see, we are spiritual beings. We are not this body. We are something much more beautiful and precious and infinite and holy. We are here in this life to do the work we need to do, the spiritual work we need to do, to open our heart. Yes, we receive God’s grace. And then, there is more work to do. Our suffering will show us where that work is. Our suffering will show us where the spiritual heart is not open.

So there is so much goodness here. There is so much room for learning and growth here. This text is very important. Please take a look at it. And if you have questions about it, call me and let’s talk about it. When you begin to catch yourself judging others, this can be a window into your own soul.

 Societal Anxiety

You know, there is a great deal of anxiety in our country right now. The United States is struggling right now. Let’s be clear. The level of anxiety among the general population is very high. And when anxiety levels are high in a population, the society regresses.

You probably have felt this before. If something happens, an accident, or a sudden emergency, something life-threatening, a stress event, we react with a fight or flight response. And if you have ever experienced this, you will know that it can make you do very weird things. It feels terrible, like being punched in the stomach and having a headache at the same time. It can make you feel disconnected from reality, like you are floating, or having hallucinations. Fight or flight response is very strange and very powerful. It makes us regress to an immature state. It happens in individuals, and it can happen to families. It can happen to entire societies.

We regress to a more primitive state because of anxiety. It is an emotional process. Fear takes over. Anxiety takes over. And we drop down into the most primitive part of our brain. Regression. You know? Regression means going backwards. We regress to a primitive state.

Edwin Friedman talks about this. In his book, Failure of Nerve, Friedman describes what happens in individuals, families, and societies when anxiety drives the bus, so to speak. He calls it a “decline in maturity.” In a regressed system, people judge each other. People look around to find what is wrong with everyone else. Instead of looking at themselves, people judge others. This is a symptom of an anxiously regressed system. It is a symptom of dysfunction, that is, a decline in maturity, and it causes an inability to envision creative new outcomes.

You know, everything is connected to everything else. What we do in the United States is connected to the rest of the world. There is no such thing as isolation. When the missiles start flying and the bombs start falling, this affects everyone in the whole world. And it affects us, too, right here is Searsport, Maine. The level of anxiety in the entire world is very high right now. And anxiety is running rampant right here, on Route 1, on Main Street, in the grocery stores, everywhere. And it shows in the way people are behaving.

This is exactly what Jesus is talking about when he says, “Take the log out of your own eye.” Work on yourself. Don’t look around and blame other people. Don’t judge others. Work on yourself. The best thing you can do for the entire world is manage your own anxiety. Take care of your anxiety. Monitor your anxiety. Learn how to soothe your anxiety. You know, self-soothing? What are your methods for self-soothing? How do you calm yourself? This is actually very important. Because we are all connected.

This is actually very important. You can really help the world and all the people around you if you can regulate your own emotional process. Regulate your anxiety. Work on yourself so that you can be the calm at the center of the storm.

You know, so much of our reactivity comes from our wounds. We have all been wounded. Maybe your parents wounded you. Maybe you had a traumatic event, or experienced great loss, you know, death in the family, horrible loss, and these wounds can go unhealed for years. And when people are unable to get their wounds healed, they act out, and do a lot of damage. If we can see that. If we can understand that, we will be less likely to judge others. Understand that there is a world of hurting people, people who are acting out on their wounds. And we act out on our wounds, too. We all do this.

And so how to help? What to do? The best thing is to understand myself, and to work on myself. Not trying to change others. The best thing I can do for others is to heal my own wounds and become a source of calm for others. Allow suffering to open the spiritual heart. When it is closed, you will know it because everything will fell dull. You are numb. You can’t feel joy.

So we have to keep coming back to this. Allow our suffering to open this spiritual heart. Notice when you are judging others. This judging comes from your own pain. The best thing I can do is to become aware of it, and take a hard look at myself and do the difficult thing, the most difficult thing, that is, take the log out of my own eye. That is the way the spiritual heart opens to living the life we are meant to life: Living La Dolcevita. Savor each moment of life. Living our best life. Our calmest and healthiest life, savoring each moment. And this is the best example we can give to our children and our community.

May it be so for you.

Amen? Amen.