Sermon: The Examined Life

Matthew 7:1-11

You know what can be excruciatingly funny? Comedic irony. I say ‘excruciating’ because it can be painfully awkward to watch, but I say ‘funny’ because. . . in certain situations, it’s just funny! Case in point: NBC’s hit show, The Office. Wow, that show is awkward! Have you seen it? I personally happen to love awkward humor, so as you might imagine, that show ranks high on my tv list.

Now when I was in 8th grade, I learned that there are three types of irony: First, there’s verbal irony. Sarcasm fits into that type. There’s also situational irony. That’s when the outcome of a situation doesn’t line up with what was expected, kind of ala Alanis Morrissette: “It’s like rain on your wedding day! Isn’t it – ironic?” But lastly, there’s dramatic irony. This involves the contrast between what a character believes to be true and what we, the audience, know to be actually true. This kind of irony runs rampant on The Office.

Just take the myriad of pranks that happen on the show. These are prime-time examples of a lack of self-awareness, a characteristic that is often truly. . .well, lacking on the show. Most of these pranks involve Jim, Pam, and of course, the most frequently pranked employee of the office, Dwight Schrute. (You just gotta love Dwight Schrute). Well here’s an example of a rather absurd case of dramatic irony:

In the third season, Jim, one of the employees, is transferred to another branch of the Dunder Mifflin paper company, but before he leaves, he steals some of Dwight’s personal stationary. And from the new branch, Jim begins to send Dwight faxes from. . . himself. From . . .the future. That’s right, faxes to Dwight from “Future Dwight.” We know what’s happening, of course – Jim is obviously sending these -- but Dwight somehow buys into it hook, line, and sinker. He receives one such fax early in the morning from his ‘future self’:

“Dwight, at 8am today someone poisons the coffee. Do NOT drink the coffee. More instructions will follow. Cordially, Future Dwight.”

After reading this fax from himself, Dwight looks up and happens to see Stanley, another employee across the office holding a coffee mug, primed to take a sip. Dwight hustles to the other side of the room, bellows “Nooooooo!” and knocks the mug out of Stanley’s hand before he has a chance to take a drink. Confidently, Dwight says, “You’ll thank me later,” right in the face of Stanley’s annoyance.

This is a comical – and I admit, an absurd example – of an ironic lack of self-awareness. Dwight is completely oblivious to the fact that he’s being pranked. In fact, Dwight is so unaware of his selfhood that he believes a divided, future self could plausibly contact him in the present moment. Dwight is painfully un-self-aware.

And when we come to our scripture tonight, we’re hearing about serious issues for sure, but there’s some humor in it too. There’s a bit of absurdity:

Who are you to judge your neighbor? There you are sleuthing out every fault you can find. “Hey friend,” you say, “Come here, you have a little, tweeny-weeny, miniscule speck in your eye. See? Right here.” Or perhaps more likely, in a more judgmental tone, you wander off with some of your friends in a corner to talk about another person. “Did you see that speck in her eye? Wow. Not attractive.” You look in her direction so you can point, but in the process, you give your friends concussions. Why? When you turn your head, the gargantuan telephone pole in your own eye takes them out.

I think there was probably some humor as Jesus told this story. Some absurdity.

But perhaps it’s humorous because it’s so true. So often, we live our lives in harsh judgment of others, but we’re unwilling to examine our own lives. We don’t know who we are or how we are. We don’t know our needs. We don’t know our growing edges. We’re painfully unaware of how we might serve someone else. We’re either sleuthing around looking at everyone else, or perhaps worse, we aren’t paying any attention at all.

There’s that famous quote attributed to Socrates: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” It probably is true to say that the unexamined life is certainly less rich while the examined life is infinitely rich. Have you found this to be true?

This week I read The Road Less Traveled, a classic best-seller by psychiatrist M. Scott Peck. One of the questions he seems asks throughout the book is this: Why do we often live an unexamined life? What is it that holds us back from truly living – from knowing ourselves intimately, growing, and extending ourselves to others? After reading his book, I think he would answer it in two ways: 1) We’re often too lazy for this kind of truly-alive living and 2) We’re often lazy because living a fully-alive life (that is, growing in knowledge and the extension of love) can be painful. It means that we address our growing pains. It means that we’re willing to enter the pains of another by extending ourselves in love.

In fact, I really like how he defines love. It involves an extension of ourselves. He defines love not as a feeling – and definitely not an oohey-gooey feeling that we hear about so often – but instead, he defines love as an action – a willful choice to extend ourselves for our spiritual growth and the spiritual growth of another. That’s an interesting definition, isn’t it?

It makes me think that in our lives, we have a choice about how to expand. As we’ve been saying over the course of weeks while we’ve studied the Sermon on the Mount, we’re often caught between two ways of living – Kingdom living and Gehenna Living (Gehenna being the ancient burning garbage heap that Jesus mentions earlier in the Sermon).

A Gehenna-type expansion of ourselves might look like this: We become full of hot air. We don’t look inward to live the ‘examined life.’ We don’t grow. Instead, we become full of things that can easily be deflated: Money. An abundance of money. Possessions. Prestige. Flattering praise. Reputation. Success. We let an image of ourselves grow. We expand. We inflate. We do all we can to lie to ourselves, to tell ourselves that this untouchable image is who we really are, that this is who we were made to be. But as all these things can be gained, they can also be taken away, and our balloon-like expansion of ourselves pops in a fleeting moment, and we’re reduced down to a person who has forgotten to truly grow. We often find ourselves in this boat, and honestly, thank God that our false images of ourselves do pop from time to time, because that pop is an entry point true growth, true expansion.

What might Kingdom expansion of ourselves look like? It’s almost hard to come up with an image for this, because when we think of expanding ourselves, we almost always associate it with pride – perhaps because we fall into it so often. But maybe there’s another way. Again, I will turn to M. Scott Peck and The Road Less Traveled. When we know ourselves and extend our truest selves toward others in love for the purpose of spiritual growth, we nurture others toward growth, and as a result, we grow ourselves. In acts of love, it’s as if we are gifted to internalize others – internalize their personalities, their voices, their gifts, what we learn from them. We don’t gobble them up. We don’t consume them. But we make room for them in our lives. We invite them in. We love them. We extend ourselves for their benefit. And in the process as we extend, we stretch. We learn from them, we internalize them. And though we are one individual, inside, we are somehow we’re a community of loving influences. This is Kingdom growth – Kingdom expansion of ourselves. A good, healthy, inward expansion of outward community that comes inward into our lives.

My self-awareness grows as I allow others into my life. I learn more about me by living in community. There are certain people I’ve internalized so deeply, that they really are a part of me. I’ll give you an example. Growing up in Southern Indiana, I was given a gift so beautiful that it is a part of me every day. That gift was St. John United Presbyterian Church in little New Albany, Indiana. In that community, I discovered what family truly means. All of the sudden, I was the collective daughter of a congregation, and I have never been the same since I experienced their love. It stretched me. It made me expand.

This little congregation really raised me. Chief among them was the pastor of that church, David Roth, who parented me, who fathered me. Many of you know that he died in January after a long battle with prostate cancer.

I am telling you, for years and years as he pastored that church and then later retired, David Roth lived to find teaching moments for me. He really did! He was my teacher. He loved me. He fought for me. He adopted me to himself. Now, like any parent, he drove me crazy from time to time, but always knew then, and I know now, that loving me was one of the chief joys of his life. And as a result, I know his voice deep within himself. I have internalized his life within me. You could say that David Roth and Renee Roederer extended themselves toward each other for the purpose of spiritual growth. And his life is now a part of mine – deeply and richly in a way that not even death can divide. And I could say this about others in my life too, others who dwell within me. I could say this about you. You are gifts that dwell within me. All of these people in my life interact within me, and they continue to influence others in and through my life. I often fall short, but when I’m at my best, I'm passing their love onto others.

And so it is with you too. You have a community within. You have the opportunity every day to live an examined life – to know yourselves, to extend yourselves, and to invite more in.

Self awareness, what a gift! Self-awareness that becomes ‘peopled’ in and through the lives of others who flow through your experience – perhaps that’s one of the most beautiful gifts we can receive.

And so, let’s bring that opportunity back to our scripture passage from tonight. Do you know yourselves? Who lives within you? How might you examine yourselves? What are the telephone poles in your lives that you need to remove? Will you let anyone help you with them? Who will you let in?

“Don’t throw your pearls to the pigs,” Jesus says. Don’t take what’s sacred to you and casually toss it aside anywhere. Do you know yourselves? Do you know what’s sacred to you? – Who is sacred to you? Will you let others help you find out?

“Ask, and it will be given to you.” Do you know yourselves? Do you know your deepest questions? “Search, and you will find.” Do you know yourselves? Do you know what you’re looking for? “Knock, and the door will be opened to you.” Do you know yourselves? Do you know Who waits on the other side of that door? Do you know the One who Created You in Love so that you might enter? Do you know Whose you are?

These are good questions. And thank God we are given the opportunity to know ourselves in community, to know ourselves together. There’s nothing absurd or ironic about that. We were made for this. So what are you waiting for? May God open our eyes that we may truly see, truly examine, and truly live. Amen.

-Renee Roederer, Campus Minister