When It Comes to Being Judged…
Go back with me a few Sundays when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness by the devil. We read then that Jesus successfully withstood the evil one, who departed from him, but with the reminder that he would be back again “at an opportune time”: to tempt, to corrupt, to wreak havoc whenever possible. It is a good reminder for Lent – and the rest of the time as well – to be on your guard. The seasons of evil, the opportunities for sin, are endless.
This morning we read of another great wreaker of havoc. For the first time, apart from the events of Holy Week, Pontius Pilate makes his appearance as well.
Here is the incident from Luke chapter 13: “There were some present who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, ‘"Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them--do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did."’”
The discussion is about why it is necessary for innocent people to suffer. The first incident probably had to do with a demonstration in the temple at Jerusalem during Passover. The Jews were evidently protesting the use of temple money for Roman civic improvements: sacred money being used by the hated Roman occupiers. Pilate suppressed that protest in a thoroughly brutal, typically Roman way: take no prisoners and kill them all. The second event had to do with a natural disaster: a water tower collapsed on passersby.
Jesus asks the logical question of his hearers: Do you think this happened to them because they were worse than everyone else, that this was a particular form of judgment addressed specifically to them? And he answered his own question with “no”. Judgment is around the corner for all of us, whether it is deserved or not. And we cannot hope to escape it unless we repent of our sins.
It’s just the type of direct admonition we don’t want to hear: that all kinds of things happen to us in life, some just and some unjust, but that our only hope in this life, our only real hope, is to turn from our selfish and self-centered ways and to turn into God’s just ways, onto God’s path.
Then Jesus follows that rather sobering advice with a story that might make us feel somewhat better. He speaks of the barren fig tree and of the gardener’s patience and love for the plant. When the owner would tear it out and replace it, throw it into the fire of destruction because it has not been productive, the gardener pleads (successfully) for one more growing season, one more attempt to produce life, before judgment is surely and swiftly delivered.
The good news here tempers the harsh reminder: if we are all slated for – and cannot escape – judgment, God will not give up on us so readily. God has an investment in us and a love for us which he will not allow us to readily surrender to “typical human nature”: that is to being less than we are capable of being and called to be as sons and daughters of the Living God. God is a just judge, a temperate judge, a judge who wants us to want what is best for us.
Pontius Pilate is just the opposite kind of judge. For Pilate, it’s mostly a matter of raw human power.1 He treated a relatively minor demonstration within the temple precincts with brutal indifference. Any infraction of the Roman law received the harshest, most graphic treatment: death without mercy.
In a few weeks we will read again the story of Jesus condemned before Pilate, brought there to receive the sentence of death because the Jewish authorities did not have the right to pronounce it themselves. There we will see the mark of the unjust judge: the one who, for political expediency to keep the Jewish authorities quiet and under his control, sends an innocent man off to his death, all the while protesting that it’s their problem and not his. He washes his hands in mock innocence, tries to wash away the blood of Jesus, and perhaps (and here I give him the benefit of the doubt) to try to absolve his own fairly bloody conscience just a bit. If he had a conscience….
In stark contrast, there is Jesus who turns the tables on his own judge, his final judge, Pilate. Jesus does not have to repent of anything. He simply stands before Pilate, who asks him with great cynicism “What is truth?” His tone is says truth means nothing, that it is all relative to whatever works in the particular moment, that there is nothing right or wrong about human behavior, that there is nothing eternal under the heavens except the frailty and corruption of human nature.
So he asks Jesus, with great contempt, “What is truth?” And, if Pilate had just remained silent for a moment and looked on Jesus who stood before him, he would have seen the Truth, right before him.
Jesus neatly turned the tables on his judge by allowing Pilate to expose his own shallow cowardice. While Pilate protested Jesus’ innocence to the crowd, in the end he did nothing to spare an innocent life. In the end, his words were worthless and his actions proclaimed all for the world around him to see. Pilate sentenced himself to eternal judgment. The harsh and merciless judge had the tables turned on him by his own behavior.
Jesus is a temperate and merciful judge by comparison: a judge who wants us to want what is best for us. Thus it is that he calls us into account for the way we are living right now.
Here’s something William Willimon wrote which might be similar to something you and I may have experienced.
“I think of those times, in my years of schooling, when some teacher gave me a grade that was a lower than the grade I thought I deserved. How dare that teacher judge my work to be merely average when I thought it was excellent!
“But some of the worst grades that I received, some of the toughest assignments a teacher gave me, were those times when a teacher said to me, ‘”Well, I gave you a B, but not happily. You can do better. I was disappointed that you did not put more into this paper, and I think you are disappointed, too.”’
“How I wished that teacher had simply failed me. That way I could blame the teacher or turn my anger toward the teacher. But with that speech, I had no one to blame but myself. The toughest words of judgment are words of disappointment, words that are true.”2
The toughest words of judgment are words of disappointment, words that are true.
“We have left undone those things which we ought to have done and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.” And when we behave that way – and we all do behave that way from time to time – we must swallow hard and admit that “there is no health us”. Being healthy and whole lies in wanting what God wants for us: putting self aside from time to time and focusing on service to others and for others in God’s Name.
Such thoughts, such a way of life, goes much against the grain of contemporary society, we know. Modern advertising and culture go to great lengths to assure us, you and me, that we are the most important beings in the world. By extension too often the modern church wants to assure us that sin is all relative to time and place and culture: that yesterday’s sin is now perfectly acceptable and that today’s sin will be perfectly acceptable in the future. Why get bent out of shape, inconvenienced and made unhappy, when we are reminded that we have fallen short of the mark, been selfish and self-centered, when Jesus calls us to a better life: to have us want the things he wants for us?
Why, indeed? Possibly because, like it or not, we will all stand before that Judge, who will also be our Savior. The poet John Betjman writes of the words of one of the thieves who hung next to Jesus on Good Friday.
I must confess that for my part
In time of pain and mortal stress
I’ve been like him, my trust grown less
And thought that Christ can never know
The suffering I undergo.
Oh, when my life draws near its end,
God give me grace to make amend
For wrongs I’ve done. Give firm belief,
May I be like the penitent thief
And turn to Christ with trusting eyes
And hear him promise Paradise.
Three crosses stand upon a hill
So black against the sky and still,
So still and black against the sky
The three of them. And we stand by.
After the pain, the blest relief,
After the doubt, the firm belief,
After the dark, the dread, the sinister
The moment comes when angels minister.
Judgment, while inescapable, is finally in the hands of a merciful Savior, who wants us to want him as our Way to Life.
The Very Rev. Theodore W.Bean, Jr.
Dean
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1 Pulpit Resource, Vol. 38, No. 1, p. 42
2 Ibid., p. 44
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