NOTES for Luk 6:37-49
Today's reading is devoted to one of the central themes of the Sermon on the Mount—the theme of judgment. Jesus evidently links a person's ability to abide in the Kingdom directly to the way they judge their neighbor (vv. 37–42). At first glance, such an attitude toward others would seem to rule out any assessment of them at all. A closer reading, however, shows that this is not quite so. For Jesus clearly links the prohibition on judging to the possibility that the person making the judgment may be mistaken about their neighbor (vv. 41–42).
It might seem that there is nothing terrible about such a mistake. And that would be true if we did not turn our judgments about our neighbors into absolutes. It is no accident that Jesus compares our assessments to the behavior of a blind person leading another person just as blind (v. 39). The point here is not who is more sinful. The point is that any sin of ours, even if, compared with our neighbor's sin, it really is like a speck compared with a log, prevents us both from seeing the person beside us clearly and from helping them. The only things we can assess more or less adequately are specific deeds and actions, which Jesus advises us to take as our guide (vv. 43–44).
In a sense, we could say that outside the Kingdom we are all equally helpless before sin, and in this sinfulness and helplessness we are equal before God and one another. Of course, we can try to deny the obvious and begin counting our own sins and those of others, but then God too will count our sins as meticulously as we count our neighbors' sins (v. 37). This is not a matter of forgiving everything, nor of God's desire to “humble” us. The point is that a position which gives us the moral right to count our own and other people's sins necessarily rules out abiding in the Kingdom. For in the Kingdom everyone receives life in all its fullness—a fullness that excludes every sin, even the most insignificant—so that our earthly moral arithmetic loses all meaning there. And if such arithmetic still matters to us, it means we are not yet ready to enter the Kingdom.
But something else also matters for abiding in the Kingdom: the degree of our openness to our neighbor. For the Kingdom is not only a space; it is also a relationship—or rather, an entire system of relationships between people and God and between people themselves. And the relationships of the Kingdom presuppose unconditional openness, a readiness to share what we have been given with everyone who needs what we have received. If we decide to share only with those we consider worthy, there will be no place for us in the Kingdom. For the fullness of the Kingdom can be given to us if we are ready to share it with everyone. Not everyone who is worthy, but everyone who seeks and thirsts for the Kingdom.