Isaiah
11:1-10
Romans
15: 4-13
Matthew
3:1-12
When you think about your ultimate destiny, how does John’s promise of the wrath to come, or of an unquenchable fire grab you? It's the kind of language that reminds me of the kind of stickers that went around in the early '80s and that Christian teenagers would put on their files at school. I never had one, but several friends of mine had next to their twee Garfield stickers and Bay City Rollers’ stickers one which simply said this on it: “After death-the judgement”. Nice.
It also reminds me of when I took a
friend of mine called Sharon out on a hot date to the local Gospel Hall. We couldn't find anything else to do on a
Sunday evening. It was a small chapel
in a side street in Sherborne. All the
men were in suits and up the front, and all the women in hats and in the pews -
apart from the organist who had to pedal with both feet to get enough air into
the little organ. Needless to say,
Sharon and I were the youngest there-in fact the smallish congregation couldn't
actually believe that anyone of our age would walk through the door, and we
were ushered up to the front in wide eyed amazement. Well, the preacher that evening just happened to have chosen one
of the most gory passages from Revelation to preach about and did he preach-for
about an hour. I can't remember much
about the sermon except for it must have been about some kind of judgement
because every five minutes he would utter the phrase "the second
death" and turn and stare at me and Sharon with a particular meaning in
his eyes. You won't be surprised to
hear that things never really got anywhere with Sharon, but the whole place
felt like it was from another era. And
so did the man's message.
With associations like these it is
not surprising that we don't like the idea of judgement. The ways in which some of us have been
taught about judgement give us an impression of Christianity which thrives on
fear more than it does on love. My own
upbringing was in the Roman Catholic Church, and here this situation is just as
true.
It reminds me of when Father Murphy walks into a pub in Donegal, and says to the
first man he meets, "Do you want to go to heaven?"
The man said, "I do Father."
The priest said, "Then stand over there against the wall."
Then the priest asked the second man, "Do you want to got to heaven?"
"Certainly, Father," was the man's reply.
"Then stand over there against the wall," said the priest.
Then Father Murphy walked up to O'Toole and said, "Do you want to go to
heaven?"
O'Toole said, "No, I don't Father."
The priest said, "I don't believe this. You mean to tell me that when you
die you don't want to go to heaven?"
O'Toole said, "Oh, when I die, yes. I thought you were getting a group
together to go right now."
Throughout the last
century there has certainly been a public rejection of the kind of
scaremongering that was associated with Catholicism - the language of the
church on all sides about judgement now seems thankfully to have been consigned
to another era. Judgement is looked
down on in lots of other respects in our society - Mary Whitehouse’s campaigns
were mocked, tabloid tut tutting we find distasteful. These kind of things put the whole question of having any kind of
judgement at all into disrepute. But if
we return to the question of the judgement of God-surely one of the biggest
problems we have with this idea is created by the fact that we are aware of so
much suffering in the world, we are aware that people's lives are so broken by
their circumstances and that so many innocents have suffered in the last
century, that to be faced with a fearful judgement from God on top of it all
seems too overwhelming, even too unfair.
Whatever way we look at it, judgement as a concept throws up all kinds
of difficulties. If only we could find
a way to avoid it.
Well, we found it
difficult to avoid last week in the collect when we talked about Jesus “who
will come again in his glorious Majesty to judge the living and the dead.” We will find it difficult to avoid this
morning in the post communion prayer, when we will talk about the “son who was
sent to redeem the world and will come again to be our judge. And we have found it impossible to avoid
during our confession when we were reminded that “When the Lord
comes, he will bring to light the
things now hidden in darkness, and will disclose the purposes of the
heart.” In the worship at least we seem
to be pretty focused on God’s judgement.
When we look at the Scriptures it's
not difficult to see from the Old Testament that God is a god of judgement
whose day will come. And it is
certainly safe to assume that John the Baptist was pretty hot on
judgement. But what about Jesus? The man of compassion, the man of love. Where did he stand? It would be nice to think that Jesus
tempered things down a bit, told us God wasn't really serious. C.S. Lewis had in this to say about a
popular conception of Jesus: there is a most astonishing misconception that
Jesus preached a kindly and simple religion (found in the Gospels) and that St
Paul afterwards corrupted it into a cruel and complicated religion (found in
the epistles). This is really quite
untenable. All the most terrifying
texts came from the mouth of our Lord."
It was Jesus who said "if you
say, "you fool," you will be liable to the hell of fire." It was Jesus who said "I will declare
to them, "I never knew you; go away from me, you evil doers." The paradox of Jesus was that although he
was the most compassionate loving person, in his presence people knew
judgement. “Go away from me Lord, for I
am a sinful man." Jesus was in a
way the most judge mental person in history.
You have to go through some convoluted theological hoops to take
judgement out of Jesus.
But let's shift of the tone a
little. Let's start talking about
judgement as a positive thing.
Presumably when we hear Isaiah saying that “with righteousness he shall
judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth”; that kind of
judgement creates a different feeling in us.
Perhaps it's hardly surprising that those who find the idea of God's
judgement difficult are those in the richer countries of the world-those with
the money, those with the power. I
wonder if the starving of Africa have a problem with the idea of God's
judgement. I wonder if the oppressed of
South America quibble over it. I wonder
if the refugee or the outcast or the wrongfully imprisoned are concerned to
water down God's judgement. And
presumably too our spirits were lifted a little by the thought of how John
promises that the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and Saducees and their like will
be exposed. And presumably also when it
comes to the blatant evil of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and the more heinous
crimes we can imagine it would be good to think that God was interested in
calling those perpetrators to account.
It's just perhaps when I think of myself the judgement becomes a little
more tricky.
The concept of judging then can be
a good thing. It can bring
justice. In fact, if there’s one reason
to believe in the judgement of God it’s this:
that there is only one thing worse than justice, and that is
injustice. God must be, if anything,
just. He must lay bare the things which
history has hidden. He must judge for
the mothers of the disappeared in Chile – to ignore them would be injustice. He must lay to rest those have been wiped
out from history. He must put to right all those matters,
great and small, which have marred his creation. To ignore them would be injustice. I also believe in the justice of God for another simple reason. My conscience is flawed, my morality
inconsistent, and yet there burns inside of me a determination for justice to
be done, for wrong to be put right. I
believe that has come from somewhere, I believe it is something to do with the
image of God in us. And if our desire
for wrongs to be righted, fickle as it is, is so much a part of who we are as
human beings, then I believe it must all the more be part of God.
In addition, it is perhaps in
judgement that God takes us most seriously.
He says our decisions count for something. As a contrast, the atheist professor Richard Dawkins has argued
that life has in essence no real justice.
He writes this:
“The universe we observe has
precisely the properties we would expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no
purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference….DNA neither
cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.”
A universe without the justice of
God is cut adrift – no consequence, no good to be strived for, no evil to be
vanquished. No reckoning for Hitler,
for Stalin, for anyone. Just one amoral
act followed by the next. Without
understanding the judgement of God where then will we find a framework for
believing in morality – for choosing between right and wrong – that is more
than about self interest? We need a
greater reason than self-preservation to believe our moral choices are
important.
Three men died in a car accident
and met Jesus himself at the Pearly Gates.
The Lord spoke unto them saying, "I will ask you each a simple question.
If you tell the truth I will allow you into heaven, but if you lie....Hell is
waiting for you.
To the first man the Lord asked, "How many times did you cheat on your
wife?" The first man replied, "Lord, I was a good husband. I never
cheated on my wife." The Lord replied, "Very good! Not only will I
allow you in, but for being faithful to your wife I will give you a huge
mansion and a limo for your transportation.
To the second man the Lord asked, "How many times did you cheat on your
wife?" The second man replied, "Lord, I cheated on my wife
twice." The Lord replied, "I will allow you to come in, but for your
unfaithfulness, you will get a four- bedroom house and a BMW.
To the third man the Lord asked, "So, how many times did you cheat on your
wife?" The third man replied, "Lord, I cheated on my wife about 8
times." The Lord replied, "I will allow you to come in, but for your
unfaithfulness, you will get a one-room apartment, and a Yugo for your
transportation.
A couple hours later the second and third men saw the first man crying his eyes
out. "Why are you crying?" the two men asked. "You got the
mansion and limo!" The first man replied, "I'm crying because I saw
my wife a little while ago, and she was riding a skateboard!"
God
calling us to account gives us an imperative not to hurt each other. Judgement on a human level is ultimately
necessary for our life together. Ask
any parent trying to bring up a child.
Judgement says we matter, judgement says others matter, and judgement
says we are too precious to stay as we are.
At this point several of us are
probably thinking, “If God judges us, then what about my neighbour, my friend,
my lover, my husband, my wife? Or even
worse, what about those I have loved who have died? How are they judged?”
Many people spend years of their lives paralysed by such questions. We don’t know the mind of God. We can get into all kinds of hypothetical
imaginings and calculations. But the
real answer is in a question: Do we
trust God to be more sensible about these matters than we could come close to
being? What, after all is this God of
judgement like? Isn’t the spirit of the
Lord about wisdom and understanding, of knowledge and insight in Isaiah? Isn’t he the God of steadfastness and
encouragement and hope and peace in Romans?
Isn’t the judge the crucified one?
Yes he judges, but is he likely to make a dodgy decision? Are we likely to be able to pick him up on a
couple of points of order? Will not the
judge of all the earth do right?
God is the God then who will lay
bare every aspect of our lives, and who will call us to account for them. He will lay bare our money, he will lay bare
our power, he will lay bare how we have used our sexuality, he will lay bare
how we have treated our family, our neighbours, he will lay bare our commitment
to the body of Christ, he will lay bare our hearts. This knowledge calls us on.
It calls us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. It calls us not just to be slightly improved
versions of our old selves, but redeemed people. This knowledge calls us to be baptized by the Spirit, who will
work in us as a purifier, to bring change.
It calls us to prepare the way of the Lord in our lives, so that we are
ready to see him face to face.
That is the personal calling to
each of us as individuals. But we have
too a joint calling as brothers and sisters in Christ which the judgement of
God requires of us. And that is to
affirm to the world around us that values, decisions, morals in all areas of
life matter. That they are not a matter
for individuals but for all. That God’s
judgement gives us an imperative to see justice done. It doesn’t make us into judges, standing aloof and
self-important. But by the quality of
our own lives and the things we stand for we show that we take this world and
the people in it seriously, as God takes it seriously. Seriously enough to be its judge.