Word to the Wise
Friday, September 11, 2015 - Friday in the 23th Week in Ordinary Time
[1 Tim 1:1-2, 12-14 and Luke 6:39-42]"Why do you notice the splinter in your brother's eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own?" [Luke]
Vivid imagery like the splinter and the beam is one of the greatest strengths and attractions of Jesus' preaching. On occasion, when preaching on this passage from Luke's "Sermon on the Plain," I have first checked around the place where I was preaching to see if I could find a piece of wood with lots of splinters in it to pass around the congregation hand to hand while I was speaking! There is no missing the strength of the image, but one hopes that the message comes through as well! Self-knowledge leading to proper humility is the foundation of challenging others.
What kind of wooden beams can be in our eyes? Is the splinter that we see in someone else's eye really only a splinter in our own eye from the beam that we have been ignoring or perhaps don't even know is there? To avoid hypocrisy, whether intentional or not, we have to be honest (not hypercritical) with ourselves. Why are we concerned about the splinter in someone's eye (aside from optometry and opthalmology)? Knowing why we react to something someone else is doing can help us to understand that other person as well as ourselves. Jesus' image offers us a daily challenge. AMEN
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