“Judgment is Mine”

James 4:1-12

A Sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley

November 11, 2007

University Baptist Church

Minneapolis, MN

 

            I admit having trouble with this sermon.  On the surface, it’s a pretty simple message.  Don’t judge one another.  The only ultimate judge is God.  I can and have preached about this.  But I don’t think you want the same, old same old.  What gets me stuck is thinking about how quick I am to judge another.  How quick we are to judge each other.  That’s the real hard part.

 When we ask, whose Gospel is it anyway?, we have the writings of scripture on the one hand and our worldly ways of judging one another on the other hand. 

We judge all the time.  Maybe the better question is, “when is it okay to judge?”  Or “who has the mind of God?”  We like to think we have the answers.  There’s a security in that.  It’s like we say, “judgment is mine”—even though we know we ought not be like that.  In our anger and in our confusion, we make legitimate judgments:

Why didn’t the voters pass all of the levies this past week?  Why is the war still going on?  Why aren’t there more people in the streets?  Why do elected leaders get away with disobeying laws?  Why does the government get away with initially denying disability claims to everyone who applies and only grants disability benefits on appeal, sometimes years later?  The AARP says people are dying waiting for their benefits to kick in.  Why do we continue to kill people who are killing people to show that killing people is wrong?

              We can and we do judge one another.  But when we do so, do we have all of the information?  A judge in a legal case listens to all of the evidence.  She hears the stories of the witnesses.  He hears from the plaintiff and the defendant.  Then a ruling is made about who is right and who is wrong.  This is all legal, and when it works just right, justice is meted out in a fair way.

            But you know as well as I do that just because there is a trial, doesn’t mean the end result is justice.  What happens when some of the evidence is suppressed?  What happens if the lawyer doesn’t do his or her job?  What happens when a key piece of evidence is left out, like DNA?  What happens when someone lies?  What happens when the counsel is unprepared?  What happens when the media spins or the preacher pontificates?  You know what happens, justice is not done.  People get put away for crimes they did not commit or they get longer sentences than they deserve, especially if they have the wrong complexion for the connection.

            That’s why there is only one ultimate judge.  Only one who sees through everything, every manipulation, every nuance of evidence, every motive and every excuse.  God is the only one who has the right to be the ultimate judge.  Scripture says, that judgment belongs to God alone.  “Glory, glory, Hallelujah.  God’s Truth is marching on.” “God’s Truth”, not “our troops.”

            But we judge all the time.  We see something happening that we don’t like and we can be pretty good judges of what needs to be done.  We can say that we know who is right and who is wrong.  We can even mete out punishments suitable to the crimes.  We can read the news and believe what it says.  We can see the awfulness of the terrorist’s actions.   We can see the awfulness of the response to the terrorism.  We can judge both sides.  But where is the satisfaction in that?  Saying, “judge not” is a way of saying, “let people off the hook.”  So, how do we judge best on this side of heaven?

Let’s see what insight the epistle of James can give us.  James was written to a small, persecuted, exhausted and fragile congregation in Jerusalem.  James, the founder of the church, wrote this letter in order to help the people to keep the faith in a world that told them their faith was foolishness and that their Way was folly.  A good book for us to read when the going gets tough and our loyalties are questionable.  Let me take you through a quick synopsis of the book:

            In the first chapter of his book, James called the people to be doers of the word, not hearers only.  He told them to practice what they preached.  We need to hear those words today, too.  In the second chapter, James told the people that faith without works is dead.  It takes work to be a Christian.  It takes work to not be conformed to this world but transformed by the renewing of our minds.  It takes work to live and love in Christian community.  In the third chapter, James says that it is true wisdom, often antithetical to the ways of the world that will save us.  Not envy and selfish ambition, but purity, peace, gentleness, willingness to yield, being full of mercy and good fruits and without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.  That’s the way of God. 

            But it’s more than all of that.  In the fourth chapter, James says that the way we get along with one another has everything to do with being a Christian.  It’s not simply a relationship between you and God.  It’s a relationship with a community of people, even the whole world.  Christianity is more than a belief system.  It’s a lifestyle choice. 

            James starts out the fourth chapter by asking, “these conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from?”  He then answers his own question by asking another question: “Do they not come from your cravings?…”  “You want something and you don’t have it, so you kill….You covet something and can’t attain it, so you engage in disputes and conflicts…”

            James says that all of the conflicts and disputes come from our cravings, our covetousness and our greed.  In eloquent prose, James opens the fourth chapter of his letter by telling us that we need to look at ourselves and our selfish desires if we want to solve the problems of the world.  We need to be honest with ourselves, and we need to watch ourselves when we lapse into covetousness and greed.  Knowing this tendency to slip into selfishness and self-interest, James tells us what we must do.  If we do not do this, we commit sin.  Hear his ten commandments from James 4:7-10.

1.                  Submit yourself to God

2.                  Resist the Devil and the Devil will flee from you.

3.                  Draw near to God and God will draw near to you.

4.                  Cleanse your hands

5.                  Purify your hearts

6.                  Lament

7.                  Mourn

8.                  Weep

9.                  Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to dejection

10.              Humble yourselves before God and God will exalt you.

We need to be honest with others and we must be honest with ourselves.   We need to remember who is in charge.  We need to examine our motives and check our biases.  We know what to do, but if we fail to do it, we commit sin.

Having said all of that, let me share a story with you that has been on my mind and heart this past week.  At a small college in central Ohio that I attended, there was an incident of racism that has sent to community into turmoil.  A singing group sent out posters for the Halloween concert.  On one of these were the words, “Come hang with us.”  And the graphic was a noose.  The person who made this flyer was someone who was relatively new to the United States and did not have a clear sense of the connotations of such a graphic.  But it set off a firestorm of controversy and pain.  The pain had been lingering under the surface of the community for some time and this incident made it explode onto the surface.  In place of the Halloween concert, the singing group and the individual responsible for the flyer apologized to the community and opened the microphone for comments and testimonies of people affected by racism.  No songs were sung.  Instead, voice was given to the formerly voiceless.  And as people spoke and their voices were heard, then other instances of bias revealed themselves, not only agains the African American community and international students, but also bias against the LGBT communities. 

On Wednesday, the President cancelled classes and called the 2200 members of the community to the field house for more discussion.  It was supposed to last an hour or two.  After nine hours, there was still a long line of speakers.  The people told their stories and aired their grievances.  There was a note slipped under the door of an African American student in the midst of this week of campus discussions telling him to stop making such a fuss.  The graphic on this one was a swastika. 

Classes were cancelled again the next day and more and more people began talking about this elephant that had been in the center of the room.  People started talking about white privilege.  People started talking about male privilege.  People started talking about white male privilege.  People started talking about compulsory hetoerosexism.  It was and continues to be a volatile time.  This pressure cooker that had been heating up and had cooked for years finally got a chance to let off some of its steam.  There were plenty of white folks who were quick to say, “Stop taking it so hard”  “It’s just a little flyer.”  “This is all blown out of proportion.”  “It’s not such a big deal.”  They were saying, “stop judging me.  I’m not the problem.”  When you’re in a position of white privilege, you can say that.  You can say it’s not my problem, but it really is.  We don’t want controversy.  We want to continue with the illusion that everything is fine.  We would rather not be bothered by such an inconvenient set of truths. 

So what sits there underneath simmers and can be insidious unless we are able to find in community, a way to relieve that pressure, to find a way to be honest, to find a way to be healing.  I believe that university is doing a good thing in canceling classes and showing a method of making it possible for all to be heard.  People that I know who are still students there say that they have learned more in these past two weeks than they had learned in a lifetime. 

People gave each other space to hear the stories of pain and difficulty.  They learned things about each other.  They learned about racism, sexism, homoprejudice and the temptation for straight white men to cry “peace, peace,” when there is no peace.

We were given two ears, two eyes and one mouth for a reason.  Listen before we judge.  Hear the cries of the oppressed.  See what might be seething underneath the surface.  Hear the viewpoints of those who challenge you.  Prayerfully humble yourselves.  And remember that God wants the greatest good for all people. 

            The Rev. Allan Boesak, South African pastor and anti-apartheid leader once said, “We will go before God to be judged, and God will ask us, “Where are your wounds?”  And we will say, “We have no wounds.”  And God will ask, “Was nothing worth fighting for?”

            Plenty of us have wounds.  Some of them are physical, but most of them are on a different level.  There are beatings many of us have taken, demons we have confronted as we have sought to live faithful lives in this world.  Some words can slay us.  Some of us have feared for our careers, the respect of our families, even our very lives and we carry those wounds.  Still others have fought for the rights of others and have the scars that those have brought as we rock the boat.  We will all go before the ultimate Judge one day and we will account for our scars or our lack thereof. 

            But God is the only one who is the ultimate judge.  God is the only one with all of the evidence.  If we go before God with our integrity in tact, then we will receive the reward from God, says Scripture.  This certainly helps us when we go up against the flawed judgmentalism of others.

Think of the times and places where you are tempted toward or the victim of judgmentalism.  Judgment is mine, says God. 

The fact is that we all have choices.  Using our choices wisely, fairly and faithfully is a central challenge of the Christian life.  We need God’s help to live lives of integrity.  For judgment, ultimate judgment is God’s and God’s alone, not mine.