Grace to you and
peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen
John the Baptist
was a firebrand of a preacher.
And by that I
mean that he was passionate, calling for a radical change in the hearts of all
who heard him.
And he came with
a word of judgment, or more specifically, a warning about the judgment that was
to come.
The most amazing
thing about John the Baptist is that though he preached a radical message,
calling the people to repentance, he was popular. People came out to hear him.
“You brood of
vipers!” John proclaimed, “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”
The irony of that
statement was that it was John himself that was giving the warning.
Judgment.
God will judge
his people.
Those words
incite a fear and trembling within us.
“Now is the day
of judgment!” is not a sentence that produces a warm fuzzy feeling within us.
We do not like
preachers who preach a word of judgment, even if they are right.
For me, that was
never so clear as when the issue of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright came up within
the 2008 presidential election.
You no doubt
remember that he was Barack Obama’s pastor, and his preaching stoked a
controversy during the campaign. So much
so that Obama ended up having to resign his church membership.
The most
controversial of Wright’s words were:
“And the United States of America
government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descent fairly, she
failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of
Japanese descent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps.
When it came to treating her citizens of African descent fairly, America
failed. She put them in chains, the government put them on slave quarters, put
them on auction blocks, put them in cotton field, put them in inferior schools,
put them in substandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them
in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law,
kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education and locked them into
positions of hopelessness and helplessness. The government gives them the
drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to
sing "God Bless America". No, no, no, not God Bless America. God damn
America — that's in the Bible — for killing innocent people. God damn America,
for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America, as long as she
tries to act like she is God, and she is supreme. The United States government
has failed the vast majority of her citizens of African descent.”
Now this is the
thing.
The Indian
reservations are a fact.
The Japanese
internment camps were a fact.
And the plight of
the Black people in this country, from the days of slavery till now is a fact.
These are not the
brightest parts of our history.
Prejudice has impacted us in negative ways.
But we don’t like
people speaking a word of judgment, even though we acknowledge that these
things happened. And we certainly didn’t
like the way Pastor Wright spoke that word of judgement.
“No, no, no, not God Bless America. God damn
America — that's in the Bible — for killing innocent people.”
We didn’t want to
hear such a word of judgment then.
We still don’t
like those words.
But this is the
thing.
Prophets have
never been popular when they spoke of God’s judgment of his people—which is why
John the Baptist is so unique. Even King
Herod enjoyed listening to John.
Sometimes
prophets are appealing to us, especially if we view their words as pertaining
to others.
President Trump
campaigned on the basis of what could be called a ‘prophetic’ message:
“Make America
Great Again”.
Implicit in those
words is the criticism, the judgment, that it isn’t doing so well right
now. And so he called for things like ‘draining
the swamp’ of Washington, a call for political reform, and getting rid of the
politicians he sees as the problem in Washington.
Trump’s message
is a call for a radical change, but I’d suggest that few who embrace that
message hear it as an admonition to change themselves. The focus is on other things and other people
that are the problem.
To a certain
extent, the reaction to Jeremiah Wright’s message, and to Trump’s message is
the same. Both of those messages ring
true to a group of people, though not the same people, but neither group that
embraces those messages see themselves as being the problem.
Who are the
prophets in our midst today, who’s message rings true, and who will indeed
inspire us to repentance?
In the Apostle’s
Creed, week after week, we confess our faith in Christ Jesus as we recite the
words:
“On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and will come again to judge the living and the dead.”
he ascended into heaven,
is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and will come again to judge the living and the dead.”
The final
judgment will be Jesus’ judgment.
That is the good
news in John’s exhortation: That one
greater than he is coming, and it is he, Jesus that will judge the world in
righteousness.
The judgment will
not be Jeremiah Wright’s.
The judgment will
not be Donald Trump’s.
It will be Jesus,
the child born in Bethlehem, God’s only son, who speaks that word of judgment.
Should we fear
that child?
Or wait in
anticipation for his judgment of our world and our lives to be spoken?
When Jesus judges
the world, is that day to be dreaded or hoped for?
Is judgment a
good thing? Or a bad thing?
Well, the answer
to that question lies in who is doing the judging.
The dictionary
tells us that “judgment” means two related things:
1.
the ability to make decisions or to make good
decisions, or the act of developing an opinion, esp. after careful thought.
2.
A judgment is a decision.
Does someone exhibit “good judgment” or “poor judgment”?
And when someone
renders a judgment concerning us, our lives, and the world in which we live,
will that judgment, that decision, be favorable or unfavorable. Will we be vindicated? Or condemned?
John’s message
was that “I baptize you with water; but
one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong
of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His
winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the
wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
It is a message
that we will all experience both vindication and judgment.
Of all the images
of the judgment in scripture, this is the one I embrace most whole heartedly,
the separation of the chaff from the wheat.
You see the world
is not divided between those that are wheat, and those that are chaff.
Chaff is the
outer layer that surrounds each kernel of wheat.
As wheat is
harvested, the chaff is separated so that you are left with just the kernel of wheat.
The judgment that
John speaks of, the judgment that Jesus will render, is a judgment that will
purify each of us by separating the child of God within each of us, from the
sinfulness that has so often been part of our lives. The chaff, which is our sinfulness will be
destroyed, but we will not. We will be
gathered into the granary.
“I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son,
our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and will come again to judge the living and the dead.”
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and will come again to judge the living and the dead.”
“Born of the
Virgin Mary, to judge the living and the dead.”
Should we fear
that judgment, or wait for it with hopeful anticipation?
The truth lies
somewhere in between.
We fear the
judgment that is to come, but rejoice in the judgments that have been made
which have set us free.
It’s like the judgments made by our doctors.
We fear finding
out what is wrong, but rejoice when on the basis of that judgment we have been
healed.
I dreaded hearing
the word of my cardiologist that I had a mitral valve failure, but now rejoice
that I have had the surgery done to repair that valve.
I dreaded hearing
the words of my doctor that I was an alcoholic, but rejoice in the fact that
now I’m enjoying a life of sobriety.
We don’t like to
find out what is wrong, but without that knowledge we will never be made right.
And that is the
judgment of Jesus.
It’s not to
condemn us, but to cure us.
“But the angel said to them, "Do not be
afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to
you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah,
the Lord.”
In order to save
us from our sins, Jesus must first render a judgment about our sins.
We won’t like it,
at first.
But when we have
been made whole, we will look back at it as the greatest thing that ever
happened to us.
As we gather at
the manger, and celebrate again the birth of Christ, know this: that he came to
save us, and that in that saving there is both judgment and healing. Both.
There will not be
one without the other.
Judgment without
healing is cruel punishment.
But healing is
not possible without judgment.
But both the
judgment and the healing are the work of Christ, who loves us. Amen
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