Clear Eyes

In 1990 H.G. Bissinger released a book that followed the story of a Texas High School Football team in their pursuit of the prestigious Texas State Championship.

In 2004 that book was made into a movie, which was then adapted into a TV Series in 2006.

All of these modes of storytelling carry the same name:

Friday Night Lights

The story begins with the star quaterback of the Dillon Panthers suffering a season ending injury in the first game of the season. In the TV adaptation, this means that back up Quarterback Matt Sarison has to step in and perform in order to keep the hope of a state championship alive.

Now, here’s the thing. The loss of the star player isn’t the greatest obstacle that the team must overcome. The greatest obstacle that they must overcome is the fact that this is a group of young people who must come together and work together in order to function. And that’s really really difficult for people who are of the age where it is most natural to look out for the best interest of themself.

The greatest task that the Coach, Coach Eric Taylor, is up against is creating a team culture that can rally around not just a star quarterback, but around the team as a whole and go on to bring home the prize they seek after.

That culture is summed up by three simple phrases that they repeat over and over again until it becomes who they are…

Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.

And what we find when we really break down the anatomy of a healthy church is that these three phrases define the culture as well. So that’s the name of the sermon series. Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.

We are going to be looking at how we are called to function as a team — what our defining attributes are — that will help us to fulfill the mission of the church in the world. Because I believe in the Church. I believe that the church is the world’s best hope on this side of eternity. I believe the church matters.

But you know what: most people don’t. And that’s a shame. But they don’t believe that the church matters because the church in whatever ways and for whatever reasons has lost its ability to shine brightly in the world. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. In fact, I believe that God won’t allow it to stay that way.

So, we can’t expect God to do all of the work without our cooperation, so we’ve got to figure out who we are called to be so that we can, with God’s help, lean into that reality and become a church that matters, a church that shines as a beacon of hope and belonging to a hopeless and lonely world.

One of the chief complaints about the church and about Christians in general is that we are judgmental. Which honestly we’ve earned that criticism over the past hundred years or so. But also, so is most of the rest of the world. Like we didn’t invent judgmental-ism (I just made that word up) but we are certainly people for whom being judgmental is held most deeply against us. Why?

Well probably because it is fundamentally against the teaching of Jesus. And it’s not against some deep cut teaching of Jesus that only people who really read the Bible know. It goes against one of Jesus’s all time greatest hits.

As you may be aware, Jesus had a pretty common prophetic practice of confronting the hypocrisy of the religious and social systems of the first century Jewish world. And the thing is, Jesus didn’t do this to gain exposure or to amass a giant following. Jesus confronted the hypocrisy of these systems because they were not living up to the ideal that God had created them to be.

And this reality grieved Jesus, because this was his heritage, this was his people. This was the institution and the people that he loved. So he had something to say when it didn’t live up to the vision of the Kingdom of God.

In a very distinct bit of teaching from the Gospel of Matthew Jesus addressed in rather short order all of the things that he saw that were contrary to a life of human flourishing. Some of those things were personal, some of them communal, and some of them both. This teaching is something that is both:

Matthew 7:1–5 NRSV

“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, 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.

It’s a wonderfully descriptive analogy that Jesus uses to iterate a simple point: being judgmental is a characteristic that is in direct contradiction to the heart of God and the way that God wants us to exist in this world — especially the way we are called to live as the community called the church.

But the hard thing here is that being judgmental is like the easiest thing for human beings to do. All you need is one opinion and all of a sudden you find your mind and your mouth at odds with the people around you. You know what I’m saying?

So if it’s so hard — almost impossible — to not be judgmental, then why would Jesus even attempt to tell us not to be this way? Well Jesus wants us to understand the destructive force that judgment — particularly cruel, harsh, and petty fault finding — are within the community of faith and within the broader community.

For all intents and purposes the church is a team. And what any good team has is chemistry and culture that is free of toxic judgment. They have — as Jesus would say — Clear eyes. Eyes that are free of the logs of our own faults. Jesus doesn’t want us to ignore the flaws and growth opportunities of our fellows — but Jesus wants us to fix our own vision first. Jesus says clean up your own house before you go criticizing your neighbors front porch.

Biblical Scholar Douglas Hare writes these words in response to Jesus’s challenge:

Matthew Judge Not! (7:1–6)

The word “judgmentalism” does not appear in all dictionaries, but it names a phenomenon we know all too well. Judgmentalism is a social sin; it is the habit of constantly finding fault with what others say and do. It is a disease of the spirit. The critic arrogantly assumes a superiority that entitles him or her to assess the failings of others.

In this passage Jesus declares that the higher righteousness of the kingdom of God (5:20) involves the resolute renunciation of our proclivity to judge others more harshly than we judge ourselves. Just as obesity can be cured only by persistent dieting, so the insidious self-indulgence of faultfinding can be mastered only by rigorous discipline.

These words are like a knife right? But they help us understand the reality of our predicament. And that predicament is that these accusations against us — real or perceived — are a major reason why so many people have decided that the church is not worth the effort. And we can’t just go and fix that today.

But we can be a part of a major culture shift within the larger church. You see the number one way that we grow, the number one way that we continue leaning into a vision that we have that we will create, equip, and mobilize 610 disciples of Jesus Christ by 2030 so that heaven and earth collide on the treasure coast is by leaning fiercely into our call to be a church that is open, inclusive, and hospitable to those who walk through our doors.

And we are pretty good at this. This sermon is not meant to be a means of beating you over the head. Its meant to be a means of making you deeply aware of the qualities that Jesus is looking for in the community of God, which just so happen to be the qualities that the people that God wants inside of the church are looking for.

Now just to be completely transparent — not judging does not mean that we don’t do our very best to correct behavior that is destructive and counterintuitive to the flourishing life that Jesus wants for all human beings. Part of following Jesus and being part of the community of faith is committing ourselves to personal and communal transformation. But we do this work in a way that is loving, supportive, and cooperative.

This means that we don’t lay down ultimatums or decide people’s eternal fate for them. It means that we see ways that we can support the growth of one another and then join together with those who are maybe in need of some transformation in an area of their life in a supportive way. We walk alongside of one another rather than talking down to one another.

And here’s the really important thing: this is how we conduct ourselves in the broader community. When we live this way then we become what God has intended the church to be from the very beginning of this 2000 year institution. When we do this, we become a place and a people that is naturally inviting to those who haven’t found their way inside of the doors yet.

When we live this way we become the very thing that stands against the popular narrative that the church and the christians of this world are judgmental. We become what people are actually looking for in life — a safe place to land. A safe place to breath. A safe space to just be as they are and encounter the love of God.

When we live this way, with clear eyes, we become people who can see and meet people exactly where they are… rather than as we would have them be.

In the 1980s two friends who were avid skateboarders — and avid consumers of the drugs, alcohol, and crime that often accompanied the lifestyle — had a radical conversion after encountering the love of Jesus. In 1987 they started an outreach known as Skate Church in Portland Oregon that sought to bring the good news of Jesus and the love of community to some of the people that were most overlooked or judged by the established church — kids just like them.

With the help of a very faithful church community they launched their movement that continues today. Most notably, two of the kids that got interested in and then began following Jesus as a result of attending what had become known as “Skate Church” became stand out theologians and founders of The Bible Project — a resource that has been making sense of the Bible in a way that normal people like you and me can understand it.

The willingness of some people to see their city and its skateboarding inhabitants with Clear eyes rather than judgment and suspicion has netted the world and the church at large with one of the greatest gifts we have ever received. To date Skate Church has ministered to over 12,000 people and counting. All because one church congregation took 2 skateboarding kids seriously.

In order for the Dillon Panthers to continue their quest for a state championship after the star quarterback went down they were going to need to see past the flaws that their young second string QB possessed. They were going to need to see the potential, and see how being a supportive and loving community would shape him into the player they needed him to be.

And this is how we operate as the church as well. We are all in this thing together. But when we see one another for the potential that we have in Christ, then we are better equipped to see our world for the potential that it has as well. And that potential is unlocked with love and hospitality. So let’s leave the judgment behind us and move into a new way of thinking and living.

To do this I’ve got an assignment for all of you. Because you’re gonna be judgmental. So am I. Its innate and ingrained. Every time this week that you find yourself being judgmental — of someone you know or of someone you see on the TV or whatever — I want you to write it down. Take an inventory of this. Use the little note section on your phone or just keep a little tally mark. And then just say a prayer — God give me clear eyes. I guarantee God will begin to remove the log from your eyes.