Seventh Sunday after Epiphany

Richard Davenport February 20, 2022 - Seventh Sunday after Epiphany Luke 6:27-38 "Judge not, and you will not be judged." This is one of the most prominent attacks leveled against the church by those who think they know what Jesus is all about. "Don't judge me! You're not supposed to judge me! You don't have the right to judge me, Jesus even says so." This notion of not judging others has gained a lot of traction in recent years. As peoples' lifestyles drift further and further away from the norm, all of those same people are scrambling to make what they do seem acceptable, something not worth worrying about, even something good. That's when this particular passage comes out. It's a defense. Those outside the church don't really care whether we are good Christians and doing what God tells us to do or not, they just want us to leave them alone. So they fling this particular passage around in the hopes that hearing something from Scripture will cow us and keep us quiet. Still, it really is there in Jesus' own words. Those people who tell us not to judge aren't really wrong when they cite this passage because that's clearly what Jesus says. You can see churches all over the place who make this a focus of their work. "No judgments here! Everyone accepted!" you see on church signs around town. You see the rainbows and the depictions of people of every skin color and gender all gathered together. "No judgments here! You can be whoever you want to be and do whatever you want to do and we won't judge you." Granted, some churches adopt this mentality because they don't want to come under attack from the world around them. But others do it because they genuinely feel it is the right thing to do. Just accept everyone. Judge no one. If someone is engaged in something you might think of as bad behavior, just keep it to yourself. Accept him as he is. After all, if God accepts him, shouldn't you? It becomes something we have a hard time finding a response to. We're told not to judge and we're accused of being hateful and unloving if we speak up, yet it still feels like something is wrong. Since we don't know how to respond, it ends up being easier to just say nothing at all. We keep to ourselves so we don't provoke a backlash, whether from people calling us hateful or just because we don't want to get in a confrontation. Still, it irks us when we see bad behavior. But, what can we do except remember that we are not to judge? It's unfortunate we allow those who have rejected the Holy Spirit to dictate Scripture to the church. It's unfortunate that we fall victim to the notion that by giving the world what it wants it will suddenly accept us and like us. It's unfortunate that by going along to get along we think we'll somehow arrive in a better society. Still, Jesus does say we are not to judge. Jesus wouldn't have to say something like that if there were no problem. But we do have a problem with judging others and Jesus calls us to account for that. Even as Christians who prize such things as forgiveness and love, we still make a point of judging others, condemning others, deeming them unworthy and worthless. We look down our noses at the riff-raff and rabble all around us. "We get up on Sunday mornings. We go to church. We know all about God. We give our tithes and offerings. We help our community. You people don't do any of that. You're guilty and you don't deserve anything from me." We may not say it in so many words, but our actions say it and more. Who we're willing to help, who we bother giving our attention to, who we claim to care about, all speak volumes about what we think of others. This passage in Luke continues right after the Beatitudes we heard last week, which marked the beginning of Jesus' notable "Sermon on the Mount." The Beatitudes are God's assurance that, even though it appears you lack something now, the time will come when you will have all that you need and more. God will provide even more than what you lack. God will provide so abundantly it spills over because you can't hold it all. But then he transitions to the passage for today without a break. "Love your enemies," he says. "Do good to those who hate you." Give to those who steal from you. Pray for those who abuse you. In short, he's calling for us to have a completely different view of those around us. He goes on from here to talk about the Commandments. The Fifth Commandment isn't just murder, but covers even such a small thing as an insult. The Sixth Commandment isn't just adultery, but even thinking about adultery. Not just deeds, but words and even thoughts are transgressions against God's Commandments. God's people probably should have known all this. Jesus teaches the disciples and others many things that he seems to think are pretty obvious if you took the time to think about them. But that was not the case at all. Jesus is having to correct a great many misunderstandings about God and his Commandments. He's calling for people to radically change the way they live, what they say, even how they think. Why go to all the trouble, though? I mean, sure, it would be nice to eradicate all of those bad thoughts, to never say anything mean, all of that stuff. But, I have a hard enough time not doing evil things, much less saying evil things, and trying not to think bad things is almost certainly a lost cause. Despite what many of the Jews of the day might have thought, the Pharisees being chief among them, no one escapes the condemnation of God's Law. It is comprehensive and covers every part of who we are and what we do. If any part of us is disordered, then everything is disordered. Either we are perfect or we are not and if we are not, then our bodies will break down and eventually die and we will do quite a bit of damage the world around us before we go. If we are not perfect, then our own words, deeds, and thoughts condemn us and we deserve every bit of what is coming for us. God wants a perfect creation and we're the ones here making a mess of things. Looking our lives from God's perspective, none of us escape. We are all guilty. We are all subject to condemnation. St. Paul helpfully reminds us, "None is righteous, no, not one." We are all on the same level, which is to say, the bottom. This gives us some insight into what Jesus means here. Judging someone else implies that we are above them, just like a judge in court who looks down from his bench on the condemned as he pronounces the verdict. It assumes we know all the relevant details about others, who they are and why they did what they did. It assumes we have the authority to make those kinds of decisions. Here, Jesus tells us quite clearly we do not. Passing sentence on someone else is nothing more than trying to make someone else look worse than you, in the hopes the authorities overlook you, in the hopes your crimes pale in comparison and are deemed not worth the trouble. But God judges each of us entirely on our own merits, or the lack thereof. There is no comparison with others. There is just you before the judge with all of the evidence of your sin arrayed around you. We cannot judge other people when we ourselves are guilty and were never given the authority to make those judgments in the first place. Jesus later tells a parable of two men praying to God, one, a Pharisee who is proud of who he is and is confident in his righteousness, and a tax collector who throws himself down and begs for mercy for his many sins. It is the tax collector who is held up as an example for us to follow, not the Pharisee. Jesus tells us not to judge so that we don't forget who we are and where we stand before God. Repenting of our sins and throwing ourselves on the mercy of the judge who rules over all creation, we receive exactly that. It is his perfection that is presented as evidence of who we are, rather than the evidence of our sins. It is he who pays the penalty for what we have done and with the penalty paid, there is nothing more to condemn us with. It is only in that repentance and forgiveness that we find mercy, that the verdict is withdrawn and we are set free. There is only one judge and he alone chooses to have mercy on those who seek it. So what are we to do with all of this discussion of sin. Are we truly to allow sin to run rampant around us? No, not at all. We do not judge sin, for that is not our job and we have no authority to do so. Instead, we do the job we have been given. We are messengers. Our job is merely to say what God has already said. He has told us what sin is. We are to declare sin to truly be sin. No amount of cover up or smooth talking will change sin from being sin and from sinners receiving what they deserve. Only those who acknowledge they are sinners can repent and only those who repent receive the mercy Christ freely gives. We declare the riches of Christ's mercy to all who seek it. No matter what the sin is and no matter how often one seeks it, it is always there. We have received that mercy and we want others to be able to share in that joy as well. I remember reading a story not long ago, a lament from a Methodist pastor. He explained how he had been a minister for a few years, but that it somehow had come out that he was attracted to other men. He never acted on this attraction, choosing instead to remain celibate. It didn't matter to many of the Christians in his church and the brother pastors around him. As a homosexual man, practicing or not, he was judging worthless and deemed unfit for ministry. Somehow his sin was worse than everyone else's and that justified their actions toward him. Brothers and sisters in Christ, we are all guilty of transgressing God's laws. We all deserve to live out eternity in our own private prison of shadow and silence. But Christ has had mercy on us and delivered us from that punishment. We are the same in our sins, and now we are the same in our righteousness, for it is not our righteousness, but Christ's, and his righteousness covers all sins.