READINGS

Luke 6:39-45 - Do Not Judge, A Tree and Its Fruit

HOMILY

Last time we were looking at the ways in which Jesus was teaching us how we are reflexive and mimetic and therefore how in judging someone else we are judging ourselves.

How we shouldn't do that and how God's goodness is shown by turning us towards others so that we can be as God is towards them.

Luke starts by saying he also told them a parable.

This isn't a story in the ordinary sense, so I think that what He means here by parable is a connected set of teachings in which we're invited to find ourselves, because as we pick these apart and find ourselves in it, they come alive.

Can the blind guide the blind? Won’t they both fall into a pit?

The answer of course is: yes, they can nowadays with sticks and being able to do it, but that's obviously not what he meant here.

He's talking about eyes which in the Hebrew world were understood to be the seat of envy according to the sort of eye you had, you were envious.

So here He's talking about: can two envious people guide each other, people who are utterly occluded by their the envy? The answer is no, of course they can't. They fall into a pit.

Two envious people seeking to push each other along and end up in a squabble.

40 A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.

The difference between a disciple being above the teacher is that this disciple is someone who's envious of the teacher, but a good disciple is someone who's not envious, but wants to imitate the teacher.

If you are envious of them, then you're not imitating them properly, you're trying to grasp something instead of acquiring it slowly by peaceful imitation.

So this is the reverse of the blind person.

A good disciple is one who's allowing themselves to be brought into a place of equality by peaceful imitation.

The word for "fully trained", which in Greek is (...) actually means: is brought to perfection, fullness of being restored or created.

41 Why do you look at the splinter in your brother’s eye, but don’t notice the beam of wood in your own eye?

This is exactly how rivalry works: how envy works.

I get really annoyed by something in someone else and everyone else except me can see that what really annoys me in them is in me, it's my issue.

This is exactly how rivalry works: you tend to blame other people for that which is most strongly in you, and if you are in rivalry with them, you fight in order to take it out of them, but really screw yourself up.

42 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the splinter that is in your eye,’ when you yourself don’t see the beam of wood in your eye? Hypocrite! First take the beam of wood out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the splinter in your brother’s eye.

This is not a moral teaching. This is a description of how we are. This is an indication of the central mimetic reflexive nature of being human, which Jesus is teaching about. He's not saying: behave in this way.

This is probably the first absolutely classic definition of hypocrite, which means exactly what we now take it to mean: someone who's in judgment against themselves. You say something, this is in fact a judgment against you.

If you want to be in the position to talk critically with someone else, first the criticism must be applied to you.

First you've got to sift through your pattern of desire towards them and only then can you begin to talk about them.

Only then will you have started to become objective.

43 A good tree doesn’t produce bad fruit; on the other hand, a bad tree doesn’t produce good fruit.

44 For each tree is known by its own fruit. Figs aren’t gathered from thornbushes, or grapes picked from a bramble bush.

45 A good person produces good out of the good stored up in his heart. An evil person produces evil out of the evil stored up in his heart, for his mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart.

Apparently the Aramaic word behind this is not treasury, but it's more like the notion of layers of sedimentation.

The good person out of the layers of sedimentation of the heart produces good.

The notion being that some layers of sedimentation, some silt will be gold bearing, in which case your heart becomes a treasury, whereas the evil person have the deposits of silt, the sedimentation that builds up and produces evil.

The implication is that sediment builds up over time. This is something which we're involved.

This is precisely our relationships of rivalry or not with others that leads to this building up of the heart in a way that it can be a bearer of treasure, so the sedimentation gradually builds us up, slow, deliberate.

Who we are is not simply given, it's something in which we participate. It comes to produce either good or evil, depending on the sedimentation.

And then, at the end, the mouth.

So we started with the eye, the rivalry of the heart, the ongoing process of sedimentation.

Then our slightly misleading translation, for it's out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks well.

Apparently the Aramaic word behind this is not abundance as "oh my heart fell and let me speak", it's much more as the overspill of the heart that the mouth speaks something much closer, like when you give yourself away when you say something in a slightly unguarded moment and that shows who you really are.

He's saying that your mouth is actually going to give away by its overspill.

He's talking about the process of the building up to the mouth and that's going to be the really difficult thing dealing with envy engaging in relationships such that there is a sedimentation of treasure building up in you and then actually finding yourself speaking out of that.

It's interesting that He doesn't place the mouth as the control point.

He places the mouth as the spillover point, which is really quite interesting and immediately in the next verse He says *why do you call me Lord Lord and not do what I tell you.

That would be the classic example of people using words that are not the overflow of having built yourself up according to what he has shown you in terms of how you relate to others.

He then makes the point that you know someone is like who comes to him and hears his words and acts on them that one is like a man building a house which digs deeply and laid the foundation on rock so that's the sedimentation process going and the other is the one who hears and does not act.

It's like a man who built the house on ground without a foundation. When the river burst it again immediately it fell and great was the fall.

That's the the silt sedimentation that doesn't bear treasure, but it's the why do you call me Lord Lord.

The word does not necessarily give a sign of what's going on unless there has been an eye made good.

The good eye that is able to imitate and learn the good heart that has been built up by sedimented goodness in relationship with others.