Love one another as Jesus loves

The arresting, almost Pythonesque “parable” of the splinter and the plank (variously a “speck and a log” or, in the Authorised Version, a “mote and beam”) follows on from what was said earlier in last week’s gospel about judgment: “Do not judge, and you will not be judged yourselves; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned yourselves; grant pardon, and you will be pardoned.” In this week’s gospel, our proclivity for condeming others is traced to its origin in hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy is one of the very few things against which Jesus consistently rails in the gospels and here Luke makes it plain that it is a universal vice, something to which we are all prone. Jesus makes the same point in the episode in John’s gospel of the woman taken in adultery: in an exquisite paradox, he demonstrates that only the sinless are in a position to censure others, but precisely because they are without sin, the sinless are the last to “cast the first stone”, exemplified, of course, by Jesus himself who, rather than condemning her, helps the woman to leave her sin behind.

The word “hypocrisy” comes from the Greek for “speaking from under or behind” and originally referred to actors, who in Greek plays spoke from behind a mask, which both designated their character in dramatis personae and enabled them to project their voice.

Hypocrisy is a kind of acting, acting, that is, as if we were superior and therefore in a position to lecture or censure others. What hypocrisy conceals, of course, is the very opposite. The hypocrite is debilitated more than most by their flaws and failings and usual in denial. Which is why those things we most often criticise in others are the faults from which we suffer ourselves, and usually the ones we most dislike about our character. Instead of a bracing bout of self-criticism, however, we indulge in the much less arduous exercise of criticising others. When we find ourselves engaging in what St Thomas More called “the poison dart of murmuring”, we should jot down the precise nature of the faults we dislike, deplore or despise in others. Unfailingly, the picture that emerges will be of ourselves.

The truth that we find difficult to admit even to ourselves is that there is quite enough to be getting on with dealing with our own faults and failings, without intrusively peering into the souls of others, often under the guise of offering “help”. (Our therapeutic culture affords great scope for the co-dependent, who would quite willingly push you into the lake, in order to save you.)

Today’s gospel concludes this series of extracts from Luke’s Sermon on the Plain, which parallels Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. Both were regarded by our ancient and medieval forbears as the quintessential statement of Christian moral teaching. Only in the early modern period did they appear as counsels of unattainable perfection. Martin Luther, for one, saw them as an impossible ideal.

But that development was allied to the view that had by then taken root that morality is essentially a question of laws, rules, duties, and obligations. In the light of that understanding, the Sermon on the Mount/Plain makes little sense as a moral charter. But read in the light of a more ancient and traditional understanding of morality, namely, as the quest for happiness, flourishing and authenticity secured in virtue, they present us with a quite different vision. In them, and in Luke generally, the world of worthiness, fair-play, decency, and measured charity, gives way to a topsy-turvy world of unpredictable and un-calculating generosity, life lived with trusting abandon and a confidence and security that exceed anything wealth or reputation could ever afford us.

And underlying all this teaching is the moral imperative of integrity, specified by reference to the heart, not as the locus of sentiment or romance, but as the true self, created by God in his own image and likeness, the place of authenticity and transparency. In this sense, the heart is where all the most important battles in life are won or lost. As Jesus in this gospel says, “For a person’s words flow out of what fills his heart.”

The Sermon on the Mount/Plain turns the world not so much “inside out” as “outside in”, directing our attention from conformism to a law outside of ourselves to the work of the Spirit within. Jesus says explicitly: “I give you a new law, love one another as I have loved you.” Using the word “law” analogically, as Jesus does, St Thomas Aquinas can say: “The New Law consists chiefly in the grace of the Holy Spirit, which is shown forth by faith working through love.”  The Old Law, he says, “was a written law to be obeyed, whether out of fear or for reward”. The New Law, by contrast, “is instilled in our hearts…and is called the Law of Love”.