Discipline by Rev. Gabrielle Martone at Pearl River United Methodist Church on Sunday 16 February 2020
Jump to
Scripture of the Day
Sermon
Luke 6:37-45 NRSV
“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.” He also told them a parable: “Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit? A disciple is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully qualified will be like the teacher. 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, ‘Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log 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. “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit; for each tree is known by its own fruit. Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.
So growing up, when I was four years old, my parents decided to put me into martial arts. That was their plan to help deal with my gangly awkwardness. When I was growing up, I didn't ever crawl, you know how you're supposed to hit your mile markers? I didn't crawl. I stood up one day and ran and because I did that, my hip muscles never developed correctly and so I had zero ability to not fall and crash into everything. My parents wound up in the ER with me more times than was probably appropriate and thank God it was the nineties and CPS wasn't that on top of it, because I mean I was there for major bruises, massive eyes stitches, a concussion, like I did it all.
So my parents thought, okay, so we'll put her into martial arts. She's four. It will give her a good discipline and maybe it will help her have some control over her own body and I will tell you, it only worked while I was in karate. Everywhere else I was still a mess. I was when I was a senior in high school, I got a concussion by walking into a set piece. Okay. I literally, I just walked into a block of wood and gave myself a concussion. But I have been studying martial arts since I was four years old, religiously from the time that I was four until I was 22, and I was there every week. I taught and just a forewarning to parents, I'm just going to put this out there, if you put your kid in martial arts to learn discipline, practice that at home too. Okay. This is my caveat for parental figures because I can't discipline your child if they're not also being disciplined at home. Just saying.
One time I got yelled at because I made a kid do pushups cause he was climbing a pole. Yeah. I was like, "well, okay, whatever." But what that practice taught me, was discipline. And it taught me about the hierarchy of following people, right? So from the very beginning, I started out as a white belt and I studied a very traditional Okinawan martial art called Goju Ryu. And it is all about following the samurai code of bushido, about respect and humility and teaching those, listening to those who are ahead of you and teaching those who are behind you. All right. So when I turned 11 they moved me from the kid's class into the adult class and one of the responsibilities of being in the adult class was now we had to start teaching. So I would start helping out with the younger kids classes and I had to learn this dance of what it means to be a leader in some places and a student in others.
Because as much as I was working with the four year olds, there was still class time in which someone else was instructing me. Even as I grew, there was always someone who was ahead of me who knew more and who knew better than I did. And there's that constant ego check of, I think I've hit it, I think I've made it. And then someone like, I remember when the Okinawans came to visit and I was 15 and I was in my prime of thinking that I was the cat's meow. Right? And one of the Okinawans threw me on the floor really hard at a move that I thought I was the best at, and it was a reminder for me again that there are always people who know more than I do.
And I have two ways of being able to look at that. I can either look at that and say, I don't need to ever learn anything else and I am good right where I am because my ego can't handle someone knowing more than I do, or I can approach it humbly and ask to be taught, not for my own personal gain, but so that I can teach those who come after me.
And while there's some real fun drama with my karate school and I will tell all of you about that at another time, what I learned from my very, very serious years in studying martial arts has affected my Christian journey in the same way. We are called to be disciples, not masters, not know-it-alls, not people who have all of the answers all of the time. We are called to be disciples, which comes from the Latin word for student. We are called to follow Christ and bring up those who are behind us, right? Not to follow Christ so that we hit perfection at some point, but so that we make progress on a journey and turn around and help those behind us to also reach their potential. We are not doing our jobs as mature Christians if we do not have people that we are teaching and mentoring.
Because all of a sudden you begin to learn that those come after you have just as much to teach you as those who have come before you. Any teacher or person who works with kids knows that there is a moment in which your students come up with some of the most profound lines that stick with you forever. Now it's also your job to help grow them and help them to eventually [inaudible 00:06:29] being so embarrassed that they just follow the leader in church. Come on people, but you learned from them. They learned from you, and you become humble in the way that you approach those who lead you. Right? Luke's passage talks about how we have a log in our eye and we are so quick to want to take the speck out of the other person's eye.
I hear this so much surrounding church members and where they have been. You ever get those people who maybe you're sitting around at a coffee gathering, coffee hour or in a Bible study and we have to talk about all the people who haven't been around for all of the reasons that they haven't been around. We want to cast all kinds of blame on other people when we realize that maybe we are worshiping in the wrong attitude.
We are worshiping and our hearts are not in the right place. There is a giant log sticking out of all of our eyes and if you cannot notice it, but you can notice the speck in your neighbor's eye, you are doing something wrong. How can a blind person lead a blind person? Will they not fall into a pit? When you read that in the Greek, it actually causes you to chuckle. Jesus writes that very ... the Greek is written in a sarcastic tone that much of the other Greek tragedies are written in. This idea of if one of you doesn't know what you are doing, you're going to fall into a pit. Right? That's why Jasper, my beloved German shepherd failed out of the seeing eye program, because if anybody let him guide them, they'd be in traffic or in a pit, because he would see a squirrel or another person and he'd take off like he does to me every time we go for a walk. It's fine.
Part of this life that we have all signed up for is this dance of both being a leader and a follower all the time. Acknowledging that we know no more today than we did yesterday. That even if you can read the entirety of the commentaries of the biblical text, if you read every theologian's interpretation on what the text means, you will have more questions than you do answers. That is the nature of what we do and the humility with which we approach that. The humility of being able to say, "I do not know, but I trust who holds it all. I can't give you the perfect delineation of what the Trinity means in plain English, but I know the Trinity exists." That is the mark of a true disciple.
And here's the thing. We can look up at all of these disciples names and we know, Judas. What does he do? He betrays him, right? Yep. And we have Peter. What does he do? He denies him and Bartholomew and Andrew and Luke and all of them. Imagine that they all flip up. They all run away. The disciples also don't all have it figured out and they constantly make mistakes and they turn down a path that is not particularly what Jesus would have wanted for them, but they don't stop trying.
We had a really great conversation this morning in our confirmation class about progress not perfection. That is what the Christian journey is about. Progress not perfection. And here's where your progress comes in, from the Sirach reading today from the Apocrypha, you have a choice. Every single day you have a choice. God has put all of the options in front of you. What are you going to choose? It's like in your kitchen, it's girl scout cookie season and there's a bowl of fruit and there's a box of girl scout cookies. You have a choice of what you're going to choose, right? Sunday mornings you have a choice of what you're going to choose. In your relationships you have a choice, who are you going to choose? Every single day our options are offered us and we decide where we go. It's like the Garden of Eden where God lays out the beauty of creation, where God creates literal perfection and says to Adam and Eve, "you have a choice. All of this is yours. Just don't eat from that one tree, but ultimately the decision is yours and yours alone to make."
Now some of our neighbors and brothers and sisters in different denominations believe in this theological concept called Election or this idea that God has already decided who is going to Heaven and who is going to Hell. And there is nothing that any of you can do to make a decision about this or to change God's mind. So our Presbyterian brothers and sisters are one of these denominations that believe in the Election. And my friend is a good Presbyterian minister. And I said to her the other day, I said, "so Amy, what of you're not going to go to Heaven? Like what if God has not chosen that you are going to go to Heaven and you've dedicated your entire life to being in ministry and serving God and you still wind up in Hell?"
And she kind of looks at me and she goes, "seriously?"
And I go, "I just want to know."
And she said, "well, at least I know I will have known that I lived a good life."
And I was like, "yeah, but you're going to be in Hell, like, I don't get it."
Methodists believe instead in choice. We believe that God's grace is universally offered to everybody. So when Jesus died on the cross, it was for all people and we make a decision about how we respond to that. So it's like God is constantly offering to you salvation. God is constantly saying, "I love you. I want you to come home. I want you to be a part of the eternal life. I want you to spend the rest of your life with me. I want you to choose the best things for yourself, but I will not choose for you. The choice is yours and yours alone to make."
It's like when you have children and as you are raising babies, you want so much for them to have the best life. And if you could, you'd pick out their life for them. Right? How many of us ... because I have a Goddaughter who I have plans for her. She's going to be an ordained Methodist minister. I'm just saying. How many people have had children and said, "wouldn't it be wonderful if you grew up to be a doctor or an NFL star" or "I would love it if you grew up and traveled the world or you found the cure for cancer."
We have these hopes and these dreams and ultimately when you peel back all of the layers, our biggest hope and our biggest dream for those that we love is that they live into the best versions of themselves. But you cannot choose for your children. How many of you parents have had kids who have made decisions that you really wish they had not done? My mom has like a whole list of things she wished I had done. How many times do you look at your child and say, "if I had been able to do this for you, I would have chosen differently," but you can't. All you can want is for the best for them. And, and you help them and you pray over them and you love on them and you give them the best life possible, so that they can choose their path of destruction.
Ultimately, that's what we all do, right? We all have to go down the little path of destruction, make some poor choices before we can come back and find the fullness of who we are. I know some of your stories, I know the path of destruction you all walk down. I get it. It's fine. But ultimately it's each person's choice to decide how they will live. And that is what God calls us to. Not of a life of compulsion and force, and you better do this my way or else, but a life that says, "I love you and I want you to come home and I want you to desire to be a part of this, but I cannot choose it for you. You have to choose it for yourself."
I have several friends who wrestle with addiction, and I think that pretty much everybody in the world, if they had a magic wand, to be able to erase out all of the ways that addiction depletes families and lives and the amount of people who have been lost to this horrific disease. And so many people want to say, "well, if you just stop using, you will be fine." But it is a choice you have to make every single day. And here's the deal. We're all addicted to something. Your choice may not be opioids, oh Lord, or methamphetamine or alcohol. Your addiction may be your work, it may be food, it may be guilt. You may be addicted to the shame that you feel about life. You could be addicted to being alone. There are so many things that you and I can be addicted to.
It is a wrestling and a choice. Every day we have to choose. I have an eating disorder, right? So my addiction is both food and the controlling of my food. And while I may be in recovery every single day, I have to make a decision about who is going to win. Will it be Gabrielle, the happy, bubbly, ridiculous tomfoolery, I'm totally cool with who I am? Or will it be my eating disorder? And I will tell you that sometimes, even on my best days, my eating disorder wins. And that's not so easy to talk about. But, but even on the days when my eating disorder wins, ultimately God still wins, right? Because I choose then the next day to get up and say, "I can fight this and I will and God still loves me and I am still worthy and I still matter and this is still an important thing that I do."
But the choice is ultimately and always mine. The choice to lead and the choice to follow is mine and mine alone. In the same way that your decision to be a fan, so there are fans in the world, right? "Yay Jesus. He's really great. I think he's a nice guy. He says some nice things. Woo." We could be a fan who steps away from and says, "yeah, Jesus, like you're great and I'm all in when we're winning." But to be totally sold out for God, to be a disciple, means you humble yourself to walk the path of choice and of following and of leading those who come after you.
So the choice is yours. Who will you be? What will you be? Where will you be? You make 100,000 choices every single day. What are you going to wear? What are you going to eat? Where are you going to sleep? Where are you going to drive your car to? Are you going to go to work today? Our world is all about choices. What God offers to us is a path, not an easy one, because none of this life is easy, but a choice to follow a path that leads us to eternal life. And where you get on and where you get off is your call, today and every day.
Amen.
Explore services in this series
