Holy Angels Anglican Church
Fourth Sunday after Trinity
(July 13, 2025)
St. Luke 6:36-42
Hypocrisy
Given by: The Rev. Fr. Vincent J. Varnas
From today’s Gospel reading, we heard: “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” (Lk. 6:41), meaning that one should put their own house in order before passing judgment upon others.
One might ask: Is it ever permissible to judge others?
When Jesus said: “Judge not and ye shall not be judged” (Lk. 6:36), He was not prohibiting the judgment of others. Judging the actions of others is not only allowable, but necessary in many instances. Jesus also said: “… if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault …" (Matt. 18:15-17). When we often get into trouble is when we attempt to judge what is in the hearts of others and by failing to get all the facts. What Jesus is telling us is that any judgment of the apparent behavioral misconduct of others must be undertaken for corrective purposes only, without hypocrisy and accomplished objectively with love and mercy for the faults of others.
As an Employee Relations Manager at the VA, often I would have to advise other supervisors to investigate before asking me to fire an employee accused of misconduct or unsatisfactory performance.
Because we are human beings and part of our fallen nature is that we often mistakenly see perfection in ourselves and faults in others, we notice only the mote in someone else’s eye and not the great splinter in our eye’s.
Today’s Gospel reading is about both judgment and hypocrisy.
To be judgmental is to be excessively critical of others without recognizing our own failings and weaknesses. To be hypocritical is: the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform (Oxford Dictionary); put another way: “do as I say; not as I do!
Jesus spent much of His time challenging the judgmental nature of the scribes and Pharisees and their abundant hypocrisy.
From today’s Gospel reading, Jesus askes the salient and pregnant question: “Can the blind lead the blind?” With that question, Jesus is condemning the scribes and Pharisees for their blindness to His truth. They are both judgmental and hypocritical in their’, “holier than thou attitude and behavior. And Jesus must have remarked (at least to Himself) at some point in His three-year ministry: “Up with this I will not put”!!
This “holier than thou” attitude was common among the scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ time and He was intent upon correcting it.
Prominent Scriptural examples are when the Pharisees criticized Jesus for dining with publicans and sinners and for allowing a woman with the alabaster box of ointment who was an accused sinner to touch Him by washing His feet.
Further examining what it means to be “judgmental”, consider St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, as he tells us: “... for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things” (Rom. 2:1). It is the hypocrisy of being judgmental that is condemned.
St. James Letter (4:12) also addresses this, saying: “Who art thou that judgest another?”. Here one might re-phrase the statement to read: “Who am I to judge?” In that sense, without recognizing one’s own faults and without invoking justice and mercy to judge is hypocritically to condemn.
Judgment must always to undertaken only for corrective purposes and that includes oneself along with others.
From the Book of Proverbs (31:9), we also learn that we should: “Open thy mouth, [and] judge righteously, ...” Thus, when we judge others, we are constructively judging their behavior not what is in their hearts. Anything other than this is called “jumping to conclusions”. Only God and a few saints from the past can read what is in one’s heart.
If we factually and objectively bring to the attention of others their faults while maintaining moral conduct ourselves, we are assisting others in finding their paths to holiness in life. The difference is that of hypocrisy vs truthfulness.
And must we always use the utmost of care in judging the actions of others, even when it seems obvious: especially when it seems obvious. The line dividing the observed actions of others and what is in a person’s heart and mind is sometimes a fine line.
There was a pastor who once gave a sermon on the afterlife. He began it by saying: “Every member of this church is going to die someday.” Then the pastor noticed that a man in the congregation began to grin. Thinking the man hadn’t heard him, the pastor repeated the same sentence several times, in a louder voice each time. The man was almost laughing by now. Perplexed, at the end of the service the pastor cornered the man and asked him why he was so happy. The man replied, “I’m not a member of this church” .
Indeed, we must be careful in judging the reaction of others to what we say! And never jump to conclusions.
“Judge not, lest ye be judged”? Does this sometimes mean we should not be judgmental of another’s actions, let alone what is in their hearts and minds?
Indeed, there are times that we should refrain from any judgments. And that is when we are emotionally affected or when we have some ulterior motive. In those circumstances, we most likely will judge falsely because we have lost our objectivity and will just make matters worse.
And just how do we judge the actions and not the minds and hearts of others?
We must be objective. We must put aside all prejudices and laziness of thinking. And most of all, we must investigate, obtaining all the facts, in finding the truth. Research, investigation, analysis and study are the hallmarks of objective and disciplined thinking. Jumping to conclusions is antithetical to finding the truth.
So what is truth? It is the Word of God manifested in our hearts and minds that blossoms forth like a beautiful flower with a loving fragrance from a plant or vine that is the Body of Christ, as we respond in an ingenuous way, always keeping an open mind with love and charity making our judgments about the actions of others in a helpful manner and not a hurtful way.
English poet John Keats defined it very well, saying: “'Beauty is Truth. Truth - Beauty' – that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know".