Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
The fourth Sunday of Lent, March 15, 2026

Leviticus 19:9-18
Matthew 7:1-12

‘Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under foot and turn and maul you.’

I said last week that we had reached the part of the Sermon on the Mount to which biblical commentators give the title ‘Various Matters,’ where the author of the Gospel according to Matthew has gathered sayings of Jesus from various times and places and organised them around key words. Last week’s passage was about our attitudes toward wealth and treasure and material goods; this week’s passage seems to be about judging and praying. But, right in the middle of it, we have this very strange statement about dogs and pigs, holy things and pearls, and a terrifying warning about being mauled. How we understand that seems to depend on whether we attach the saying to what precedes it: advice about judging others, or to what follows it: advice about prayer. This week, I have spent some time down biblical rabbit holes, and I want to share some of my explorations with you.

The first section of today’s passage, with its little parable about people with logs or specks in their eyes, is often used to suggest that we should never judge others: ‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.’ This is another one of those phrases, like ‘sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,’ that sounds best in the King James Version: ‘Judge not, lest ye be judged.’ While the equivalent teaching from Leviticus is: ‘You shall not render an unjust judgement; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbour,’ the Sermon on the Mount seems to imply that we cannot judge our neighbour at all, not even if we do it with justice. But, as we know, this is impossible. We are watching a world in which the content and forms of international law are being challenged, and we can see that without an ‘international rules-based order’, the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must. Countries judging their neighbours when their neighbours start bombing is a good and wise thing to do. Judging our neighbour when our neighbour is accused of murder, sexual assault, arson, child abuse, or fraud is such a good and wise thing to do that we have an entire legal system set up to allow a representative jury to do it. So, what does Jesus mean here?

‘You hypocrite,’ says Jesus in today’s passage, which is a highly unusual way for Jesus to address his disciples. In the rest of the Gospel, those who are called hypocrites are the scribes and the Pharisees. What Jesus seems to be saying here is that those who behave as the Pharisees do, harshly judging others while ignoring their own sins, will be judged with equal harshness by God. Jesus had earlier said in the Sermon on the Mount that only those whose righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees will enter the kingdom of heaven, and our righteousness will exceed theirs if we do not judge others more harshly than we judge ourselves. But that does not mean that we should never judge others. Instead, we need to make sure that if we are going to point out the speck in someone else’s eye, we do not have a beam in our own. Brendan Byrne puts it this way, ‘only a person who has come to genuine self-knowledge and appreciation of his or her own weakness is qualified to set about fraternal correction’.[1] We must remember that with the judgment we make, we will be judged, and the measure we give will be the measure we get, so our judgments must be truthful, loving, and without self-righteousness.

If we read, ‘Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under foot and turn and maul you’ as a conclusion to this discussion of judgement, then it may mean something like the instruction in the Book of Proverbs, ‘A scoffer who is rebuked will only hate you; the wise, when rebuked, will love you’. (Proverbs 9:8) Do not throw the pearls of your careful, loving judgment before the fools who will not appreciate them. Later in this Gospel, Jesus will tell his disciples, ‘If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.’ (Matthew 10:14) Do not reprove fools who may turn on you. There is a reason that we have a legal system that deals with those who commit crimes like murder, sexual assault, arson, child abuse, or fraud, rather than suggesting that we individually rebuke them. Not only does vigilantism lead to more violence, but those who commit crimes might also turn and maul us.

On the other hand, if we read ‘Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine,’ as connected to the following advice about asking, searching and knocking, we may have an antithesis, in which Jesus is saying, ‘You have heard it said … but I say to you’. You have heard it said, Jesus might be saying, that you must not share the holy things that belong to the people of Israel, the Torah and Temple worship, with the Samaritans and the Gentiles. This reading of the statement about pearls and swine was later used by some early Christians to justify denying the Eucharist to the unbaptised, so it would make sense if its original use were to deny Jewish things to non-Jews. But – this statement is immediately followed by a description of the astounding generosity of our Father in heaven, who ensures that everyone who asks receives, and that everyone who searches finds, and that for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. So maybe the meaning of this passage is, ‘You have heard it said that holy things must not be given to outsiders, but I say to you that your Father in heaven gives good gifts to everyone, insider and outsider alike.’ Jesus may here be telling his disciples that they must be willing to share the most holy and precious things, his teachings, the authoritative interpretation of the Law and the Prophets, with ‘all nations,’ as he does at the very end of this Gospel. (Matthew 28:16-20)

I love this understanding of the pearls before swine, but it demands that we add extra words into the biblical text, so I am only going to suggest it.

Today’s passage ends, ‘In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.’ It provides an ‘inclusio’ with the statement that follows the Beatitudes at the beginning of the Sermon, ‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil.’ (Matthew 5:17) Jesus has come not to abolish the law and the prophets but to fulfil them, and everything between these two statements is that fulfilment: Jesus’ authoritative teaching. If we ever wonder how we, as Christians, are to understand the things we read in the Hebrew Scriptures, then we can look for the answer in the Sermon on the Mount. This is why, when some American Christians argue that their religion demands that they attack Iran, we know that they are wrong, because no matter how much of ‘the law and the prophets’ advocate violence, we read them through Jesus’ teachings on non-violence and non-retaliation.

Most of the world’s religions and a great many of its philosophies have a version of the ‘Golden Rule,’ do as you would be done by. ‘We must treat others as we wish others to treat us’ is part of The Declaration of a Global Ethic from the Parliament of the World’s Religions, which has been signed by leaders from faiths including Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Neo-Pagan, Sikhism, Taoism, and Unitarian Universalist. A world in which people of every faith and of none treat others as we wish to be treated ourselves would undoubtedly be an improvement on the world as it is. But while this is how Jesus ends his teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, this is not all that Jesus asks of us. Jesus has told his followers to treat others as they have not been treated: ‘If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.’ In this world of violence, we pray that those in power in the nations will in everything do to others as they would have those others do to them; pray that at the very least they might stop bombing each other, recognising that no one wants to be bombed. But the demands on us as Christians are greater; unless our righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, we will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

This is, of course, impossible. How can our righteousness exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees; how can we be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect? By asking, searching, and knocking. If this is what we genuinely want, to be able to live as children of God and followers of Jesus, then we can ask for that and, Jesus assures us, our Father in heaven will give us all good things. Every week, we ask for this when we gather here, that we may be able to live as God wants us to live, as citizens of the kingdom of God. In faith, hope, and love, we know that if we knock, the door to the kingdom will be opened to us. Thanks be to God, Amen.

[1] Brendan Byrne, Lifting the Burden: Reading Matthew’s Gospel in the Church Today (Strathfield: St Paul’s, 2004), p. 68.