A homily for the Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 27, 2022
Sir 27:4-7, 1 Cor 15:54-58, Lk 6:39-45
I’ve been blessed — or cursed — with good peripheral vision, as well as a really quirky ability to see certain things really quickly. It manifests as words or phrases literally jumping off a bulletin board or something similar when I pass, and then I have to stop and read the whole poster or memo to find out where “Donald Duck” or “#6 Sub” was referenced.
And when I say “I have to stop,” I mean this phenomenon literally freezes me in my tracks. I can’t resist.
Training back in my Boy Scout days added to this. Long before “See something, say something” became the American mantra, we Scouts were taught to be highly aware of our surroundings. I recall our scoutmasters actually brought in experts from Fort Monmouth to run the workshops. The military chant is “Stay alert — stay alive!”
I must concede that being highly aware of your surroundings is a great skill to have on the Parkway at 80 mph at 8 a.m.
But back in Catholic school, during the other hours of my day, Sister Raphael Marie browbeat us nonstop with a totally opposite message:
MYOB
Mind. Your. Own. Business. (or Beeswax, when somebody was going for “cute”)
Don’t stick your nose in where it doesn’t belong.
And MYOB seemed diametrically opposed to WWJD.
Now, at first glance, today’s passage from Luke’s Gospel is a much-needed stern denunciation of the hypocrisy that abounded among the religious elites who dictated every aspect of life for the Israelites in the First Century, and during hundreds and perhaps thousands of years before.
And without a doubt, “Do as I say and not as I do” is a sin in itself, and it leads to many other sins, mostly shaped by lust, depersonalization, selfishness and greed.
Hypocrisy is easy to slip into, because there are many scenarios in which doing the wrong thing seems easier than doing the right thing. And in which doing the wrong thing seems like more fun.
Even though we know we’re being bad.
Yes, Jesus makes it clear that hypocrisy is rampant and that we should clean up our own messes before we start criticizing our sisters and brothers for theirs.
But this is only the surface of today’s message.
Jesus starts with someone offering to clear out another person’s eye. A mitzvah, right?
I’m not convinced.
It seems that this preliminary offer to remove the splinter has the air of superiority, of finding fault to put an ailing person down more than to lift them. To mock their affliction, to blame them for the bad luck or bad timing that jammed a tiny piece of wood into their cornea.
As if somebody intentionally harmed themselves.
Listen again to the second part of Jesus’ wooden beam-splinter statement. That segment carries the most weight here.
How can you say to your brother,
‘Brother, let me remove that splinter in your eye,’
when you do not even notice the wooden beam in your own eye?
You hypocrite! Remove the wooden beam from your eye first;
then you will see clearly
to remove the splinter in your brother’s eye.
Jesus transforms the scolding of MYOB into “We’re all in this together.”
Jesus transforms MYOB into “All of humankind is everyone’s business.”
After we get rid of the wooden beams in our own eyes, after we purge ourselves of that particular display of hypocrisy, we are challenged by our Creator to help heal our fellow children of God of whatever ails them.
Our eyes are opened to the Truth of the Law of Love.
Once those beams are out of our eyes, then we see we have something in common with the splinter victim, and through our shared human experience and our shared familial connections to the Almighty, we can pluck out the other person’s splinter with empathy.
Because at that point, MYOB takes on a much more mature interpretation. A far more global significance.
MYOB no longer means keeping our eyes on our own spelling tests. MYOB no longer means getting envious because Sally has a whole Zagnut and all we have is a Hershey’s Kiss.
MYOB means that the welfare of every person on Earth — and the welfare of all Creation — is Our Business, and we must mind that business.
MYOB means stopping and reading deeper into any situation we encounter in which another person is in need, and then acting according to our God-given gifts and abilities to aid that person, if we can.
MYOB means actively looking for our sisters and brothers with literal or figurative splinters. And there are billions of splinter victims.
MYOB means keeping our own eyes clear, so we can go about the business of saving the world.
WWJD? MYOB.
