REMOVE THE WOODEN BEAM IN YOUR OWN EYE FIRST

Introduction
The Northern kingdom of Israel is punished for deserting God through destruction of the country and its people’s exile.
For people who walk side-by-side with the Lord, there is no room for superiority complexes that look down on the people around us to condemn them. We have all the same calling in Christ. Do we not often judge and condemn in others that which, consciously or unconsciously, we condemn in ourselves? At times we even secretly rejoice that our brother or sister suffers from the same shortcoming to a greater extent than we do. If we apply the law to others, God will measure us with the same severity of the law. Let us look into ourselves and remove the beam from our own eyes before we discover the splinter in the eyes of others.

1 Reading 2 Kings 17:5-8, 13-15a, 18
Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, occupied the whole land
and attacked Samaria, which he besieged for three years.
In the ninth year of Hoshea, king of Israel
the king of Assyria took Samaria,
and deported the children of Israel to Assyria,
setting them in Halah, at the Habor, a river of Gozan,
and the cities of the Medes.

This came about because the children of Israel sinned against the LORD,
their God, who had brought them up from the land of Egypt,
from under the domination of Pharaoh, king of Egypt,
and because they venerated other gods.
They followed the rites of the nations
whom the LORD had cleared out of the way of the children of Israel
and the kings of Israel whom they set up.

And though the LORD warned Israel and Judah
by every prophet and seer,
“Give up your evil ways and keep my commandments and statutes,
in accordance with the entire law which I enjoined on your fathers
and which I sent you by my servants the prophets,”
they did not listen, but were as stiff-necked as their fathers,
who had not believed in the LORD, their God.
They rejected his statutes,
the covenant which he had made with their fathers,
and the warnings which he had given them, till,
in his great anger against Israel,
the LORD put them away out of his sight.
Only the tribe of Judah was left.

Responsorial Psalm 60:3, 4-5, 12-13
R. (7b) Help us with your right hand, O Lord, and answer us.

O God, you have rejected us and broken our defences;
you have been angry; rally us!
R. Help us with your right hand, O Lord, and answer us.

You have rocked the country and split it open;
repair the cracks in it, for it is tottering.
You have made your people feel hardships;
you have given us stupefying wine.
R. Help us with your right hand, O Lord, and answer us.

Have not you, O God, rejected us,
so that you go not forth, O God, with our armies?
Give us aid against the foe,
for worthless is the help of men.
R. Help us with your right hand, O Lord, and answer us.

Alleluia Hebrews 4:12
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The word of God is living and effective,
able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.

Gospel Matthew 7:1-5
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Stop judging, that you may not be judged.
For as you judge, so will you be judged,
and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.
Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye,
but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?
How can you say to your brother,
‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’
while the wooden beam is in your eye?
You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first;
then you will see clearly
to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.”

Commentary:
The measure you give is the measure you get: this was common Jewish teaching. In Wisdom 11:15, for example, the Egyptians’ punishment fitted their crime: “As they worshipped mindless reptiles… God sent mindless creatures to punish them.” And “well they deserved… to be imprisoned in darkness for having kept your children in prison” (18:4). St Paul added this: “In judging others you condemn yourself, since you behave no differently from those you judge” (Rom 2:1). Projection we would call this today: it is easier to condemn something in another than to condemn the same thing in yourself. You don’t feel any need to change yourself, while you have the pleasure of thinking that you have put the world to rights! – so much accomplished so easily! Psychology is sometimes blamed for making us too self-conscious; but to be fair, it has also made it harder for us to get away with lots of things: with projection in particular. Luke prefaces today’s passage with the words, “Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate” (6:36). That is the only proper context for judging.

Blessing
“Do not judge and you will not be judged.” The tendency among us is so strong and persistent that it is very difficult to eradicate. May God bless you to make you more deeply Christian, so that he can judge you more mildly: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen!