I’ll never forget the first time I met my fifth grade teacher Mr. Harris. Mr. Harris was over six feet tall and very muscular. His hair was buzzed so short I could see his scalp, and his clothes were neatly pressed. Nothing about him was out of place – quite a contrast to me, the girl with glasses too big for her face and bits of hair that just couldn’t be tamed. I wasn’t surprised at all when I learned Mr. Harris had served in the military. He carried himself with purpose and dignity, and rumor had it he made a routine of running the 11 miles between Ft. Morgan and Brush on a regular basis. As a gangly, awkward fifth grader, Mr. Harris seemed like a giant to me. I was intimidated, but I also liked him immediately. He had this air about him, something that I would now define as gravitas.

When school started for the year, Mr. Harris told our class that he only had two rules: 1) Respect yourself, and 2) Respect others. If, at any point, we weren’t behaving as we should, Mr. Harris would stop the class and ask the person who was out of line, “Which rule are you not following?” I was surprised to find that Mr. Harris’s two-rule system worked out perfectly. It turns out, if we respected ourselves and respected others we would have an orderly classroom and we could also have fun. Respecting ourselves and respecting others summed up any other classroom rule we could have had.

When we respect ourselves–treat ourselves with honor–we will not behave in ways that are dishonorable. When we respect others–treat others with honor–we will not do things to them that dishonor them in any way. In a way, Mr. Harris’s rules were like the classroom version of Jesus telling us to love our neighbors as ourselves. And it worked. Mr. Harris’s classroom always felt like a safe, welcoming place where every student could learn and grow. 

As I reflect on those days in my fifth grade classroom, I can’t help but think about Paul’s call to think about “whatever is honorable.” Today, we are continuing our sermon series through the attributes listed in Philippians 4:8, “Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Last week, Pastor Jeff looked at whatever is true, and he encouraged us to learn what’s true by holding our lives up to the light of Jesus. Today, we continue our journey through Philippians 4:8 by reflecting on “whatever is honorable.” 

In Greek, the word “honorable” is “semnos,” and it occurs only four times in the New Testament. Of these four occurrences, the word is translated as “dignified” twice. Paul says we should think about whatever is honorable, whatever is dignified, whatever is worthy of respect. How are we to do that? I love the way Strong’s Concordance talks about this. It says, “By anchoring semnós in the realm of the mind, Paul shows that public dignity begins with private meditation. The believer disciplines the inner world to dwell on what is weighty with moral worth; honorable thoughts seed honorable actions.” In other words, if we want to live honorable lives, we must first begin with honorable thoughts.

To help us understand what it means to think about whatever is honorable, we have two teachings from Jesus in Matthew 7: a teaching about not judging others, and a teaching about good trees bearing good fruit. In the first teaching, Jesus says, “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.” And then he uses a humorous scenario to make the point. If we had a giant log in our own eye, why would we be concerned with removing a speck from our neighbor’s eye. Can you even imagine? And yet, when we judge others, this is quite often exactly what happens. We are so concerned with what is going on with someone else that we don’t even consider what is going on with ourselves. We ignore glaring issues in our own lives because we are worried about the tiniest of things in other people’s lives.

In the book Appreciate These Things by Rev. Jill J. Duffield, she tells the story of a man she calls Mr. Jesse. Mr. Jesse was a member of her congregation in a church in the South. On the back of his blue pickup truck was a bumper sticker that said something like, “We don’t care how it was done ‘Up North,” if you don’t like it here, you can leave.” She wrote that this kind of bumper sticker wasn’t uncommon in her area, but what surprised her was that the man who drove the truck acted nothing like his bumper sticker would have you believe. Mr. Jesse always knew what was going on in the community and who needed help. He would call Rev. Jill and let her know who “needed to be remembered” and urged her to visit. He didn’t call her to make her feel like she wasn’t doing her job, but because he knew he had information she didn’t have. And he always went along with her on these visits. Mr. Jesse was always helping anyone who needed help. He encouraged their church to open up the manse to a family fleeing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, even though the manse needed a lot of expensive work done to it first. He made sure kids had what they needed, and he never wanted anyone to feel alone.

Jill Duffield may have missed out on the beautiful heart of the person driving the truck if she had pre-judged him based on his bumper sticker. Instead she wrote, “I never asked him about the origin of that sticker, where he got it, why it adorned his truck. After a while, I didn’t notice it, instead focusing on the honorable person in the cab beside me, the one driving me across county lines to tend to the vulnerable and lonely, the fearful and in trouble, the one who made sure I saw those who needed to be seen. His actions rendered [the sticker] invisible.”

When we judge others, two things happen: we stop seeing the other person for who they are, and we stop seeing ourselves for who we are. We become fixated on whatever small thing we are judging, and we miss out on the whole, deep, complex person in front of us. When we focus in on someone else and what we think are their flaws, we stop seeing our own flaws–our own logs in our eyes. The apostle Paul urges us to think about what is honorable, to think about what is worthy of respect, what is dignified, and as we do this, we will begin to see things in a new way. We will begin to see what is good, what is respectable, what is worthy of our time, attention, and focus.

In the book Appreciate These Things, Jill Duffield lists this as something to try as we think about what is honorable. She writes: “When you find yourself judging someone, try instead to wonder about them, their behavior, their story, and see if this enables you to have more compassion and empathy, for them and for everyone.” Have you ever tried wondering instead of judging? It’s a powerful practice. When someone cuts you off in traffic, you might think to yourself, “I wonder if they didn’t see me” or “I wonder if they are rushing to something important,” rather than “That person is a terrible driver!”  or whatever other colorful language we might be inclined to use. Or, if a person chooses something at the store that you’re inclined to judge them for, instead wonder about it. It’s difficult to get ourselves out of the habit of judging others. Judging others is easy. It’s contagious. It can become second nature. But, as we begin to wonder about others instead of judging them, we might find ourselves becoming more compassionate toward them. Maybe as we wonder about others, we will also learn some things about ourselves.

Jesus’s teaching in Matthew 7 continues with a lesson from trees and the fruit that they bear. He says, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits.” And then he says that good trees bear good fruit, and bad trees bear bad fruit. What the false prophets say isn’t nearly as important as what the false prophets actually do. Or, as Jill Duffield writes, “What we do ought to take priority over what we seem.” It’s not enough to give a Sunday School answer or say we are Christians; our actions need to prove this true.

I used to think telling good fruit from bad fruit was easy. And sometimes, it’s still pretty obvious. However, in this world with so many voices telling us loudly what we should believe, in this world where false information can be spread like wildfire online and on social media, in this world where opinions and facts get mixed up as being the same thing, discovering which fruit is good and which fruit is bad can be challenging. How can we know? How can we know which things are honorable so that we can think upon these things?

A couple of years ago, I learned about something called “toxic squash syndrome.” Basically, all types of squash contain a compound called cucurbitacin. This compound contains a bitter flavor and is toxic to humans in large quantities. The seeds we buy in the store for zucchini and other kinds of squash have been selectively bred and monitored so that they contain low levels of cucurbitacins. Wild squash plants and squash plants that volunteer in the compost may have too high of levels of this compound, and when consumed, a person can get very sick. You can’t tell by looking at the squash that it is toxic. It isn’t until you taste it and experience the bitterness that you know something is off. 

It has always been true–basically since the beginning of time–that people and situations aren’t always what they seem. We might think we know a person, or we might think we know the right thing in a situation, only to discover we were terribly mistaken. We don’t discover the bitter center until it’s too late, and our hearts are broken. Social media presents a unique challenge because there are hundreds–thousands?–of people working behind the scenes to influence the way we perceive the world, but none of this is new. How can we tell if a tree’s fruit is good or bad? We need to be constantly returning to Scripture and to Jesus, praying for our minds to be opened. We must be careful not to become so convinced of our own opinions that we aren’t open to correction when it is needed.

Paul urges us to think about whatever is honorable–whatever is worthy of respect–so that we might be transformed into honorable people. Part of how we do that is by admitting when we have missed the mark. This week, as you practice wondering about people rather than judging them, also take some time to reflect on when you have been less than honorable in your life. Were you able to make amends? If you still need to make amends, it’s time to do so.  Mr. Harris helped us with this too. When we were misbehaving in some way, he would ask, “What rule are you not following?” We might say, “We were not respecting others.” He’d respond, “That’s right. What do you need to do now?” If we had disrespected someone else, we apologized. We made amends. And then we had to change our behavior. May we be people who think upon honorable things. And may God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, continue to transform us into honorable people who bear good fruit in the world. Amen.