Sam Bush, “A Brief Study on Pettiness”

I’d like to start by asking a few questions. Do you ever take offense when you hold the door for someone and they don’t say thank you? Do you think someone who eats a generous portion of your french fries and doesn’t offer to split the tab should be legally reprimanded? Do you feel a slight bit of murderous rage when the passenger in front of you reclines their seat to the fullest extent - their head practically in your lap? If you answered “Yes” to any of these, you may suffer from a disease called pettiness. You’re not alone. Millions of people suffer from pettiness without ever being properly diagnosed. You probably know or even live with someone who is petty. I was diagnosed with this affliction shortly after getting married. It is something I have learned to live with ever since.

What exactly is pettiness? It is insisting on one’s own personal code of law. Pettiness is appointing oneself as the merciless judge in one’s own tiny courthouse, conducting his sessions with the smallest of gavels. The king of pettiness, by the way, is Larry David, the writer and star of the show Curb Your Enthusiasm. Larry ignores someone’s house rule to take your shoes off inside. He accuses a stranger of taking too many free samples at an ice cream shop. He scolds two teenagers who pretend to be little kids on Halloween and sends them away. When he complains about the teenagers to his wife, she poignantly responds, “Not everybody knows your rules, Larry.” Can you relate? Does everybody know your rules?

If you are at all petty, chances are, you live in a court of law. Most of your headspace is made up of enforcing your own laws while simultaneously defending yourself for violating other people’s laws. Pettiness, by the way, is extremely contagious. Thankfully, there’s a cure.

Today’s gospel reading overthrows our own personal legal systems. Jesus is establishing new laws, laws that seem to break all of our own laws. “Love your enemies! Do good to those who hate you!” These laws don’t seem to apply to everyday reality. It would be more useful if Jesus established whether it’s ever appropriate to leave dirty dishes in the sink (the answer is no). But “Bless those who curse you and pray for those who abuse you?” He doesn’t seem to understand what laws are for. Laws are meant to protect us! Jesus’ laws seem to put us in danger.

We blankly nod along to his command, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged.” The conditional element - that we won’t be judged as long as we don’t judge - sounds a bit threatening so we try to play along. We become masters of disguise. We sugarcoat our judgment with kindness. We’ll say, “I love that guy, but I will say he can be a little self-obsessed.” We’ll say, “She’s sweet, but I will say she can be needy sometimes.” Translation: “I don’t actually love that guy and that woman is extremely needy. Jesus’ law to not judge is so extreme that our feeble attempts to seem non-judgmental are laughable. Nobody gets off the hook.

Before the cure comes the diagnosis. We all have a propensity to judge each other. Oscar Wilde once said, “Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.” We judge our parents, our children, our spouses, our coworkers, our friends, the driver in front of us. Take our judgmental nature to its limit and it won’t be long until life is completely unbearable. There will be no survivors because no one can tolerate life under incessant scrutiny. Each act of petty judgment might be a papercut, but the eventual cause of death is 1,000 papercuts.

We are convinced that the opposite of what Jesus says is true, that we better judge others lest we be judged. But, the sooner we can accept the judgment we deserve, the better. In his book How to Stay Married, Harrison Scott Key writes, "One of your greatest misconceptions, the one you must jettison as soon as is convenient to you, is that you're easy to live with. You're not. You're a monster. Marriage reveals this to you, though you'd prefer to blame your partner, your parents or the Supreme Court. Their monstrousness is so much easier to see."

That’s the diagnosis. So, what’s the cure? How will you ever lay down your tiny gavel? By laying down your life. “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also. From anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt.” These commands sound like a death sentence and, in a way, they are: the death of your ego, the death of your deservedness, the death of your inner judge. God must put our paltry ways to death before he can raise us up in truth and grace. Keep in mind, our gospel reading comes on the heels of the Beatitudes where Jesus says “Blessed are you who are poor, who are hungry, who weep and mourn.” Why are they blessed? Because people who are weeping and mourning are not in the business of pointing fingers, but getting on their knees. Jesus invites us to surrender our rights and our need to be right for his love’s sake.

In his book The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis writes this: “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.” Jesus’ laws, you see, are not to keep us safe, but to break our hearts that he might restore them. He promises, “Give and it will be given to you.” And yet, even with his assurance, none of us can choose to give our hearts away. That’s why our hope is not in our ability to give, but in the one who gave up everything for us, who, when struck by the centurions, turned the other cheek to be struck again, who prayed for his enemies as he’s being killed, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

There’s a book about whales called Touching This Leviathan that sets a scene in a natural history museum in Norway which houses 24 complete whale skeletons dating to the 1800s. The author, Peter Moe, writes, “Suspended from the ceiling by chains and metal bars, the skeletons still drip oil. The same whale oil that once greased the machines and lit the streets and parlors of the 19th century, that made the oil of soap and margarine, all that oil, here they were, dead for a century, still giving out oil.” “Poor whales,” his friend says. “Don’t they know when to stop?” The same, of course, could be said about God. Poor God. Doesn’t he know when to stop? Two-thousand years later and Jesus’ blood is still being given out.

What’s so outrageous is not that God died for our murders and misdemeanors, but even for our most minor infractions. He died for our gossiping and trivial slighting; for your white lies and dirty dishes. All of our petty judgment towards others was put to death, not by a thousand cuts but by crucifixion. And through his resurrection, we have been cured of our disease. Whenever you are reminded of this gospel truth, you may tend to hold your own list of rules less tightly, if only for a moment. After all, the world wasn’t saved by rules - not your rules or even God’s - but by the one who rules the world with truth and grace, the righteous judge who laid his gavel down for you.

Amen.