Zephaniah 3.14-20, Luke 3.7-18
Third Sunday of Advent, 16 December 2018
Austwick, Clapham
We believe in the Last Judgement. Week by week we say together, ‘He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead’. Our creeds affirm that, after the Resurrection of the Dead and the Second Coming of Christ, every nation will be finally and eternally judged by God. But such language might seem a little disconnected from our lives, in a week when our judgements have mostly been on the level of who to include on this year’s Christmas Card list.
John the Baptist believed in the Last Judgement. He believed the Last Judgement was coming soon: ‘Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees’, he said, ‘every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire’. The Judgement of John is a Judgement to fear. He expected the coming Judge to judge with great force. John’s Judge comes carrying tools of destruction and wielding lethal fire. It is the fear of death that motivates those who want to escape that Judgement. Their good works, their obedient behaviour, are driven by fear of destruction.
Do you believe in the Judgement of John? Many people do. Many people believe that at the end of time we will each stand before Christ, who will send us to an eternity of either life or the lake of fire. Only if we surrender ourselves to Him will he save us. But all this fear, and all this fire: does it ring true to us? Maybe not, for the judgement of Jesus is something else altogether.
Gospel scholars tend to agree that Jesus started out as a disciple of John; he was baptised by him and there’s quite a trace of John’s apocalyptic judgement language in some passages of Jesus. But we see from the gospel stories, as Jesus began to shape his own ministry, that John found it hard to understand Jesus. For Jesus’ view of judgement was quite different from the way John saw it. While John’s messianic Judge came carrying the powers of death and destruction, in fearful fire, Jesus renounced all such powers; he came as a child, came as a servant; he came as one prepared to give everything away in the cause of love and life; the fire he wielded was the gentle heat of God’s Holy Spirit.
This Jesus refused to call himself a messiah, except once under extreme duress in the kangaroo court which led to his execution. He was keen to avoid being seen as a divine ruler breathing retribution through nostrils of fire; far keener to call himself the Son of Man, the human one. Jesus was less concerned with wreaking judgments on others, more concerned with demonstrating what it means to be fully human. [2]
Note how Jesus taught his followers, ‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged’ [3]. And how, unlike John, Jesus had little to say about the last judgement. Rather, he focussed attention on living well in the here and now, on following the Son of Man in becoming more fully human, in the image of the loving Father.
Note how Jesus came as a child, came as a servant. Now, children and servants do have power to judge others. But not a messianic power. They judge from a position of vulnerability, their judgements are their response to the way that powerful people have dealt with them. And so a child will say, ‘I like my uncle, he always tells me stories that make me smile’. And a servant will say, ‘I can’t respect my employer because when I work extra hours he gives me no extra pay’.
Note how Jesus judges that way, in saying, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me. For just as you did it to one of the least of these my children, you did it to me’. [4]
Jesus judges as a vulnerable one, exposed to the deathly powers of others. Putting himself in the position of those the world destroys, he relinquishes the power to destroy others: the judgement of Jesus is not concerned with death. When his judgement comes, it comes on the other side of death, death which he has overcome, and it carries the power of life in all its fullness. Jesus gives everything away for love and life. He judges in love; the purpose of his judgement is to encourage us to become more fully human by living generously towards the least of the children of the world.
It’s not difficult to see the Judgment of John at work around us today; in our world of eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth militarised politics where we judge a people to be violent so we destroy them with fire. See it closer to home, where we judge other nationalities to be threatening, so we close our doors to them; where we judge the poor to be feckless, the refugees to be opportunistic scroungers, the homeless to be junkies, the neighbours to be nuisances - so we refuse to help them. It’s a hard thing to admit but just like John, vindictive judgmentalism is in our blood.
But so also is mercy, pity, peace and love. [5] Those who embrace Jesus the Son of Man, have no need to fear judgement and so no desire to execute judgement on others. Our life in Jesus is a process of working towards full humanity, of being slowly and graciously formed into the image of the God who made us in love and forms us in forgiveness. ‘There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,’ writes Paul [6]; ‘[You will be] blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ’, he said. [7]. Embracing the life of the Son of Man releases us from the death sentence. No longer motivated by a fear of death, it is a love of life which motivates those who place themselves alongside Jesus.
If Jesus judges us at all then he judges us in love, in self-giving generosity, in the gentle fire of the Holy Spirit. He epitomises mercy, pity, peace and love. His judgement gives us the power to live in the loving, giving, generous power of the Son of Man, the human one. This is the lasting gift we can give to others now and at all times.
Notes
[1] First preached as The judgment of Jesus and the judgment of John in Devon in 2012 and Somerset in 2015.
[2] This sermon is influenced by Anthony C. Thiselton, The Last Things, A New Approach, and by Walter Wink, The Human Being: Jesus and the Enigma of the Son of the Man, like all the works of the late writer, a seminal text.
[3] Matthew 7.1
[4] Matthew 25.34-36
[5] “And all must love the human form, In heathen, Turk, or Jew; Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell There God is dwelling too. ” - we sang the hymn of William Blake’s The Divine Image (to the tune ST ANNE, ‘O God our help in ages past’) prior to this sermon.
[6] Romans 8.1
[7] 1 Corinthians 1.18
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