October 28, 2007
Luke 18:9-14
“Judge, Jury, & Executioner”

[NOTE:  The section bracketed in the following text was not preached on Sunday.  I felt as I was in the midst of the sermon that my point was well made with the first example.  I leave it here because I think it will be easier to digest in written form, when one can read and ponder it at one's own pace.  AVH]

Luke 18:9-14 (NRSV)

Jesus also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, 'God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.'  But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!'  I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Such a parable begs the sarcastic question, “Who made you judge, jury, and executioner?”  After all, didn't Jesus say in Matthew 7:1-5 “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. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?  Or how can you say to your neighbor,  'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' while the log is in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye.”?

Ah, there's the rub!  To judge or not to judge, there's the question!  When is it right, helpful, and faithful to look at another person's behavior, thoughtfully consider its merit, and conclude whether it is worthy or not of the life to which God is calling us?

It seems, at first glance, that we have competing parables here.  The first tells us of two men who approach the temple.  One, a Pharisee, is obviously meant to portray someone who is righteous and faithful to God's laws.  The other man was a tax collector, clearly a stand in for all people who are outcasts, on the margins, deserving of our disdain.  The twist is, as all parables have a twist, the righteous man offers a prayer that makes even the most self-centered person a bit uncomfortable in its arrogance.  But then, the slimy guy offers a simple and eloquent expression of humility, which rings through the ages: “God be merciful to me, a sinner!”  This parable has judgment and criticism written all over it.

The second parable, which illustrates the equally memorable “Judge not, lest ye be judged!” with a visually painful example of seeing a speck in one's neighbor's eye without noticing the, dare I say it, LOG in your own eye.  This parable screams of the importance of humility, self-restraint, and self-examination over judgment and criticism.  What's a good person to do?

But let's not simply make this a sermon about the jots and tittles of us good church folks.  Who needs a sermon that simply argues about the likelihood of Mrs. Peacock getting into heaven first or Col. Mustard.  Let's make this a real life sermon.  Let's talk about Miss Scarlet!

I think we need to understand the differences between judging others and judging others as Jesus would have us judge them because we've got it all out of whack in our world today.  Let's talk about prostitutes, sexual predators, and women who have abortions.  Are not these three of the most despised, loathed, unloved… judged people in our society today?  Even naming in a sermon prostitutes, sexual predators, and women who choose abortion makes me nervous, knowing how these people have been pushed over the edge of society's cliff of acceptability, beyond the boundaries of being worthy of God's love.  I fear being dragged along with them.

Is it right to judge others?  Of course it is!  Our entire legal system, which is in part built on biblical foundations of justice, makes use of judgment, discernment, and differentiation between what is right and what is wrong, what is acceptable and what is unacceptable.  Jesus most certainly judged others, and in order for us to live together in community, both in the public, civic realm as well as in the private, religious domain, we will have to judge other people.

But looking more closely at the parable of the day, we discover a few things that may give us pause.

Baptist minister, Paul Duke, points out that there is a word in the prayer of the righteous Pharisee that is different from the usual form of a Jewish prayer, and it gives him away as a fraud and helps us to know what to do:
He doesn't give thanks that God has spared him from being a thief, rogue, adulterer or tax collector; he gives thanks that he is not like them.  "God, I thank you that I am not like other people . . . "  Really?  Here he crosses from the grammar of gratitude into the grammar of elitism.  It can be a very subtle line and we almost never notice when we cross it, but we do it all the time.  What betrays us is an unexamined refusal of kinship.  It shows every time we use us--them language.”

Rev. Duke goes on to point out a second word that gets the Pharisee into trouble:
“You can feel the distance in his use of the word "this": "this tax collector."  Now he has stopped praying and started peeking.  Coolly, he measures himself against a neighbor and is quietly pleased with the difference.  Had the tax collector measured himself against the Pharisee and despaired at the difference, his prayer would have been just as false.  It's the competitive sideward glance that distorts prayer. (1)

Yes, we are to judge one another in order to have a society which has order, decency, and allows everyone to flourish.  So it is not the judging that is at the pointed end of Jesus' parables… it is HOW we judge one another.  Comparing ourselves favorably over and against another is usually a set up for our own fall, for our own demise.  Distancing ourselves from the neighbor, the “other,” more often than not will come back to bite us when we are someone else's “other” or outsider.

It is here, of course, that the two parables come together and we see that, in fact, Jesus was talking about the exact same thing when he spoke of the Pharisee and the tax collector and noticing the log in one's own eye.  How we judge one another - and ourselves - is as important as the judging itself.

And this has been what has made me uncomfortable in how our society has allowed judgmentalism against prostitutes, sexual predators, and women who have abortions to intensify.  We spend a great deal of time distancing ourselves from them, figuratively and literally, and by inference emphasize how very, very different we are from them.  We refuse to see our common “kinship with them.

Let me tell you a story.  At one of the General Assemblies of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) I was at in the early 1990's I was staffing a booth in the exhibit hall.  The booth next to ours was being run by First Christian Church of Honolulu, Hawaii.  At first, I thought, “Cool! This is going to be my ticket to visiting Hawaii!”  Well, that came to a crash when I learned the booth wasn't a tourism booth - but an explanation and celebration of the ministry that church had with prostitutes in their neighborhood.   “Sex workers” was the term they used, which wasn't so much a euphemism as much as it was a more honest appraisal of how these women saw what they did.

Spending some time talking to the minister and the lay leader of the program, I learned that my simplistic judgmentalism about these women let me off the hook in seeing them as children of the living God who needed the grace of God JUST AS I DID!  Many, if not most, of the women involved in prostitution feel desperate, and simply don't see any other option for earning a living, frequently in order to raise their children.  I've never known the pressure of a crushing poverty, linked with the pressure of a society obsessed with sex, that would compel me to use my body as a means to make money.  There is a unique and heartfelt story behind each person we label as “prostitute.”  God calls us to see their pain as ours, and work for a just and equitable society that doesn't create such limited options for women.

Similarly, I have been impressed with St. Paul's Community United Church of Christ in our own neighborhood as they have had an important and caring ministry reaching out to the sex workers of the Ohio City community, particularly through HIV/AIDS education and prevention.  Clearly, First Christian Church, Honolulu, and St. Paul's Community UCC have learned from the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, and look first at the log in their own eye before worrying so much about the speck in someone else's eye.

[Likewise, I am unnerved by some of the venomous language used about sex offenders and sexual predators, especially in recent years.  Please hear me out: I am clear and consistent about my condemnation of the abuse of our children and the harassment our young people, and many women and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons receive in our society.  The violence and exploitation of a child or seemingly weaker member of our society by a person in power or authority is never acceptable and must be punished.

But the story this week out of Atlanta points out that there are finer lines than our rhetoric sometimes allows for.  After more than two years in prison for having consensual sex with a fellow teenager, Genarlow Wilson was released just hours after the Georgia Supreme Court ended his 10-year prison sentence.  The court said the sentence for the act, which was considered a felony at the time, violated the Constitution's protection against cruel and unusual punishment.  In a 4-to-3 ruling, the court's majority said the sentence was “grossly disproportionate” to the crime, which “did not rise to the level of culpability of adults who prey on children.”  At the time he was 17 and the woman he had sex with was 15.  (2)  A felony and a ten-year prison term for two teenagers having sex!]

Again, what Jesus is calling us to is not an abdication of justice, but a justice born in the wisdom of humility.  Rather than make us weaker on crime, I think such a humble wisdom will, in fact, make our criminal justice system better, sharper, more effective because understanding how we judge one another to be as important as whether we judge one another will help us spend our time on those among us who are truly criminal, will ensure the punishment fits the crime, and will allow for the possibility of repentance, liberation, redemption, and resurrection - which is, after all, what those of us who are Christian are all about, right?

The story of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector reminds us that Jesus calls us to see that there really is always more to the story than we can see on the surface.  Isn't it true, that authentic justice really comes when we are judged by one who knows us as a human being, who really sees us for who we are, with all our complexities and contradictions? As Christians, we call this level of understanding love, and isn't justice much more effective when love plays a major part in it?  When you were a child, didn't you take the reprimand of your grandmother better than the mean ol' neighbor next door, because you knew she knew you and she loved you?  I know we can't possibly make love a defining characteristic for every judge in every courtroom, every member of every jury, and every bailiff and officer who must execute justice, but if those of us who follow the Lord of Love don't try to live by his example, who will?

Finally, if nothing else in this sermon makes sense, then remember this.  God does judge us, but it is as one who knows us better than we know ourselves, one who knows our moments of self-righteous pompousness and our abject humility.  God judges us as one who knows us well, and loves us all the more.  Certainly, in the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Christ we see God's judgment at its best, most refined, most loving level possible.

Who made us judge, jury, and executioner?  No one.  And our human judges, juries, and executioners are only vain human attempts to imitate the One who is justice incarnate.  Only One holds that role ultimately, and this is the One about whom the Apostle Paul writes:

What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? [God] who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31-39)

That, my beloved, is true justice.  Amen.

(1) “Praying With A Sideward Glance” by Paul D. Duke, Christian Century, October 11, 1995, found at Praying With A Sidewards Glance

(2) New York Times, “Georgia Court Frees Man Convicted In Sex Case” found at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/27/us/27georgia.html?_r=1&ex=1351137600&en=10beda2b05499682&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin





Rev. Allen V. Harris
Franklin Circle Christian Church
www.FranklinCircleChurch.org


 

Copyright 2007 -- The Rev. Allen V. Harris

Franklin Circle Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

1688 Fulton Rd., Cleveland, OH 44113-3096