To be sure, we make judgments about each other all the time.  It’s as natural, and as healthy, as breathing.  No one of us ever meets another without going through a process of in-gathering data. It’s normal to draw assessments and make judgments.  When, a few months back, I first came to meet the Staff-Parish Committee, no doubt your minds were sharpened to form opinions.  You had a host of observations to make,  “How do I feel about this man?  How does his voice sound? Can I picture him in our pulpit?  Is his wife polite and involved and supportive of his ministry?” Some were perhaps thinking along more trivial lines. “I wonder if he trout fishes?  I wonder if he can hit a golf ball straight?”

Of course, simultaneously, our minds were racing, making 1001 judgments about the church.  “What kind of questions are they asking?  What issues are they raising?  What do these issues tell me about the church?”  I too, had questions of the more trivial sort. “I wonder how well this church does with a potluck?”

Point being, both in the realms of the serious and the trivial, we are appraisers.  You are this very moment engaged in the process.  “What do I think about this sermon?”   Perhaps we have visitors seeking a church home.  You will, of course, be gathering data now.  “Are the people friendly?  Are the pastor’s messages adequate to feed me spiritually?  Is the music enjoyable and can it lead me to worship?  Are the people involved in missions and education?”   

You see, we form impressions by the millisecond about each other.  It’s both natural and healthy to do so.  So we need to ask this morning, what is Jesus condemning in these famous words, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged?” 

 Jesus is condemning a much more serious and pernicious side to humans judging one another.  When is our judging of others not pleasing to God?  Perhaps the primary indication of wrongful judging is the tendency to label others.  Labels are little verbal prisons we build for people, which we use to shield ourselves from knowing them, in exactly the same way I used that newspaper to shield myself from my Burger King table-companions.

Our gospel reading this morning from the 13^th chapter of Luke provides an example, I think, of how Jesus would have us rise above placing labels on people.  Here was a woman who had been crippled for 18 years.  “She was bent over and quite unable to stand up straight.”  Interesting, we never learn her name.  The text leaves her nameless.  Evidently, when the townspeople saw this woman creeping down the street, body bent, eyes to the ground, they didn’t say, “Here comes Mary,” or “Here comes Elizabeth.”  She was known by her disability.  “Here comes that bent woman.”  As far as the town was concerned, that was her name, her life, her destiny.  She was that one “bent and unable to stand up straight.”

 This woman bore upon her shoulders an invisible weight, the burden of being different, of not looking like others, of not being able to do what others do.  When Jesus meets her, he says something that is even more compassionate than healing her.  He calls her a “daughter of Abraham.”  How different is that from how the townspeople seemed to have known her!  Crippled.  Handicapped.  Dysfunctional.  Jesus will have none of that.  When he calls her a child of Abraham he renames her, inviting her to imagine herself other than the world has named her.

 Perhaps in this story we see enacted what should happen in this sanctuary every week. People come to church weighed down with various labels others have attached to them, labels they may have even come to accept for themselves.  In many ways, not just physical, our lives can be bent and crooked.  We suffer psychological, spiritual, and moral infirmities – things which just as surely disable us, fixing our eyes on the ground.  Should we not, in this place, learn to give others a new name, to cast a new verdict upon their lives?  Are we not, as Jesus did, to invite them to go forth from this sanctuary as newly freed people, having had a different word spoken over their condition?  Whatever weight you entered this sanctuary bearing, however you might suppose others think of you, however you may think of yourself, know that in this place Jesus means to rename you. 

I think kids have made great strides in learning how to accept others who are different.  I don’t think the incident I’m going to relate to you now is as likely to happen on an elementary school playground today, but it happened in my third grade world of Forrest Park Elementary School in Pine Bluff, in 1963.  The label for my day, now sounding silly, but then very serious, was Cooties.  One day in 1963 that label turned hateful.  It was meant to be fun, at first, when someone attached the stigma of Cooties to a 5^th grade girl named Nancy.  Somehow, though, the kids got carried away.  When Nancy arrived at school, kids would fall to the ground and begin their chant, not unlike the Old Testament cry shielding themselves from a leper, “Unclean! Unclean!”

 Funny the things we remember from childhood, the things that mark us forever.  It’s been 43 years now, I was only 9 and now have a granddaughter that age, but I still recall with some vividness a traumatic day in Nancy’s life that was a not-so-proud day in my own.  Nancy arrived at school and headed down the sidewalk through the playground, teeming with scores of kids.  The first few cries of Cooties peppered among the children.  Soon the hateful refrain spread like a forest fire at Forrest Park.  Kids fell to the ground, stopping whatever they were doing to join the ugly, malicious chorus.

I didn’t want to join.  I knew Nancy.  She lived in the house behind me, I on 33^rd and she on 34^th. I knew, after a firm talk from my parents, how badly this game, now turned serious was hurting her.  They had told me not to join the crowd.  But I did.  My friends fell to the ground.  So did I.  I don’t recall laughing, though.  I might have cried.  I wanted to stand, but couldn’t find the courage, wishing that just one person, one friend, would stand – just one brave person I could follow without risk of being alone.  Not a single child stood, least of all, me. 

At least, that’s the way I’ve recalled it, reliving it countless times.  As I say, it’s funny the things we remember from childhood, the things that mark us forever.  I remember her walking, tears flowing.  I’ve often wished I had had the courage to stand.  Maybe there were others who, like me, were just waiting on one leader, one who was different from the crowd, one who would stand, so they, too, could stand and not risk being alone.  On that day, though, none stood.  No one had the courage to give Nancy a new name. 

 In this area, I think young people have made strides since the 60s.  Schools, educators, parents, churches – all seem far more aware of these social dilemmas.  Much has, thankfully, changed.  Still, though, there are times, for youth and adults, when we know we should act, should stand for somebody who cannot stand for themselves. 

Yes, funny the things we remember from childhood, the things that mark us forever. Author Mary Ann Bird tells of a moment of grace and acceptance in her childhood.  Born different, with a cleft palate, her classmates in school made it clear how ugly she looked.  Misshapen lip.  Crooked nose. Lopsided teeth.  Garbled speech.  She didn’t fit in and the kids laughed.  Mary Ann grew sure that no one could love her.  She would tell other children that she had fallen and cut herself on glass.  Somehow it seemed more acceptable to have suffered an accident than to have been born different. 

In the second grade a teacher named Mrs. Leonard was giving a hearing test.  The kids would stand against a door and cover one ear.  The teacher whispered a sentence which the kids had to repeat.  She would whisper things like, “The sky is blue,” and the child would have to repeat that line.  Or, “Do you have new shoes?”  Mary Ann’s turn at the door came.  Mrs. Leonard looked her in the eye and whispered the seven words that put a smile on Mary Ann’s face.  She says it changed her life and gave her the confidence to become the successful author she is.  The seven whispered words?  “I wish you were my little girl.” 

Is this not what Jesus was saying to this woman? “You are a child of promise!”  I hope you can hear God saying to you today, “I wish you were my child!”

Sources and notes:

I’ve heard that good preaching is knowing where the best material is — so you can steal it!  The idea for this sermon and, in fact, the very title, is inspired by my  friend Rev. P. Thomas Wachterhauser, in 1986 Associate Pastor of First United Methodist Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Commentary on Luke 13:10-17 is based on a sermon by William Willimon, “What’s in a Name?,” Pulpit Resource, Volume 26, Number 3.