The Judged Judge

 

It was not what you would call the highlight of my musical career. 

My mouth was dry.  My leg shook uncontrollably.  My cold hands trembled even as they clutched the trumpet.  The three judges–professors in music departments at local colleges, I assume–sat in their folding chairs behind a table across the room.  One slumped back in her chair and chewed a pencil.  Another rested his elbows on the table and peered over the top of his reading glasses.  The third glanced at his watch and sipped his coffee.  They were waiting for me to begin. 

“Start with an E flat scale”, they’d said.  So, I took as deep of a breath as I could manage, and lifted the instrument to my lips.  I began to play.  Or–to put it more accurately–I attempted to play.  But try as I might, my lips refused to vibrate.  My fingers could not find the right valves.  The notes would not come out right. Some sort of sound came out the bell of my trumpet.  But it wasn’t an E flat scale.  I mumbled a quick apology to the judges, shook my head, and tried again.  Still nothing like an E flat scale.  I began a third time, this time charging through the missed notes.  When I finished the scale, I knew my audition was over.

I had prepared for that audition for months (years, actually).  I could do an E flat (and a B flat, and an A flat) in in my sleep.  But for some reason, when the judges were watching, everything fell apart. 

Judgment.  I don’t know any (self aware individual) who is excited by the prospect.  Most people feel a pang of anxiety when they hear the  word because most of us can remember I time when we were judged–and came up short.

  Not smart enough.

  Not fast enough.

  Not thin enough.

  Not rich enough.

  Not good enough.

Rarely is judgment a good experience for us.  All too often, judgment means rejection.  And so I was not surprised at the old saints reaction when I mentioned to her that I would be preaching on the phrase, I believe…he will come to judge the living in the dead.  She winced–as though she’d just grabbed hold of a live wire.  The unspoken question was written across her face.  How do I know that I can withstand judgment?  When I have to “give an account for every careless word spoken” (Matt.12:36), when every concealed thought and act is brought out into the open (Luke 8:17) and everything is laid bare (2 Peter 3:10), how can I possibly believe that I will endure God’s scrutiny?  How can I have any hope?  For her, the proclamation that Jesus will come to judge does not sound like good news.  It sounds like terrifying news.  It probably does to many of us.

And yet, when the writers of the Heidelberg Catechism pondered this phrase (Q&A 52), they insisted that we should anticipate Christ’s coming to judge (as the old translation put it) “with uplifted heads.”  We should be standing on tiptoe, straining our eyes toward the horizon, confidently awaiting his arrival.  Why?  Because the judge we await is “the very one who has already stood trial in my place before God.”  Or as Karl Barth once put it, “Our Judge has been judged.” 

Theologian Daniel Migliore observes that one of the crucial questions we must answer when pondering the meaning of the prhase he will come to judge the living and the dead is who our judge will be (the other is what the purpose of his judgment will be–but more on that Sunday morning).  Too often, write Migliore, we act as if there are two different Christs: the first Christ who came to Bethlehem to show us his love and grace and then a later Christ who will come to judge and show us his wrath and vengeance.  But this is simply not the case.  As the angel reminds the disciples in Acts 1:10, Jesus who ascended to heaven is the same Jesus who will return.  In other words, when Christ returns to judge, he will not have changed identity or purpose.  He will be the same Jesus we came to know two thousand years ago–the Jesus who came in the flesh to die in our place and save us from our sins, the Jesus who endured the just judgment of God for our sin.  He will be our judge.   

In a famous passage at the end of Romans 8, Paul throws out what appears to be a rhetorical question to his readers.  Who is he that condemns?  He asks.  Christ Jesus who died?  More than that, who was raised to life and is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us?    Paul seems to be saying it all with a bit of a smirk and a pa-shaw. Would the Jesus who died for you really condemn you?  Would he suddenly change his mind and decide that he wants nothing to do for you?  I don’t think so!  We may hear the voice of condemnation from our parents, our teachers, our coaches, our spouses, our friends, or from ourselves.  But Paul insists that we will never hear it from Jesus.  Our judge was condemned for us,  he says.  So for us, there is now no condemnation!

I recently read of an incident in which a reporter asked the wife of Albert Einstein if she understood her husband’s famous formula, E =MC2.  Mrs. Einstein replied that she did not.  Then, after a pause, she added these words: But I know my husband.  And that is enough.  That answer, I believe, is a good start for us as we think about Jesus’ coming to judge.  There are, of course, many questions that remain.  We may not know where the lines will fall.  We may not know the fate of every person we know and love.  But we know our (judged) Judge.  And that should be enough.

As I Was Saying…

Last week, I tried to suggest that the Christian doctrine of sin is rooted in an extremely lofty–rather than extremly low–view of human nature.  Today, I came across this bit in Debra Rienstra’s book that made the point much more clearly:

Maintaining a robust view of sin, paradoxically, is the best thing the world for self-esteem.  If we truly value ourselves, we will not be satisfied with some mild, namby-pamby version of good enough.  The highest standard of goodness is the one that most highly rizes our humanity, most fiercely insists that we were designed to be something so much greater than what we are.  Christianity is picky about sin because of the magnificence of its goal: full reconciliation with God–perfect peace, perfect shalom.  Nothing less can satisfy the longing in our hearts and God’s.

….As long as you think you are good enough right now or could be soon, you limit yoruself at best to a dim shadow of goodness in this life.  Christians believe that even the brightest of these dim shadows is still a shadow, still an address in the neighborhood of sin.  But you could have something infinetely better: an entirely new kind of life, made possible by God’s power.  Sin is the lock on the door to this life; you can’t open the oor unless you recgonize there’s a lock and that you need a key.  This is not a reason to be discouraged but a reason to be glad.  Now you know what kind of problem you’re facing.  (Debra Rienstra, So Much More, pg 58-59.) 

I hope it’s not a sin to say I wish I had written that.

Feeling Fine

 

“Well,” said the woman , “I don’t know what happened.  I felt fine.” 

The eighty-something year old woman was laying in a hospital bed.  Machines beeped, nurses scurried, tubes dripped all around her.  She was there because she’d taken a fall on the sidewalk outside of her home.  Her legs had simply given out under her.  And she was baffled.  After all, she felt fine.

Later that day, the shroud of mystery surrounding the fall was removed.  The doctor came in and rattled off a long list of ailments afflicting the old widow.  I can no longer remember them all, but somewhere on the list was a virus in her bloodstream, pnuemonia, dibitating diabetes, and a pair of kidneys that could hardly function without the help of machines.  She was hardly fine.  No matter how she felt.

Human beings, it would appear, have an incredible ability to adapt.  We can get used to almost anything.  Our bodies can be filled with cripplying diseas and yet we can insist that we are fine.  The standards we set for ourselves can be remarkably low. 

At the center of the Christian message is the good news that Jesus saves.  But sometimes, it’s hard to believe that we are people who are in need of saving.  Me?  Really?  But I feel fine.  I don’t cheat on my wife or look at dirty pictures on the internet.  I never tell lies (or at least, not big ones).  I give money to the church.  I’m a nice guy (most of the time).  Humble too.   Why would somebody like me need a savior? 

 And then I remember my old friend in the hospital.  And I think:  Maybe my standards are a little low, too.  Maybe there is a terrible sickness in my soul–a sicknesess that I’ve grown so accustomed to living with that I no longer notice it is there.  Maybe I’m grading myself on a curve–and the curve is being set by a bunch of people who are also anything but fine. 

In an oft quoted line from Isaiah 64:6, the prophet laments the human condition.  All of our righteous acts are like filthy rags, he says.  Its a rather grim assessment.  But it seems to me that within this statement their is a hope that human beings have the potential to be more than we ever imagined.  If even our best works are like a pile of old shop rags, what might we be like if we were being the people that God made us to be?  In his famous sermon, The Weight of Glory, CS Lewis said that if we were to see each other as God made us to be–living up to the glory of God rather than falling short of it–we would be strongly tempted to worship one another.  We would be so much more than “just fine”!

But of course, right now, we are not.  We are people in need of a savior.  And in Jesus Christ, that is exactly what we get.

Sin and Salvation

The essence of sin is we human beings substituting ourselves for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for us. We…put ourselves where only God deserves to be; God…puts himself where we deserve to be.  (John Stott, The Cross of Christ)

Forget Not

Praise the Lord, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits.
Ps. 103:2

The florescent lights in the nursing home cafeteria buzzed and flickered. Sleigh Ride or Holly Jolly Christmas or some other such jingle played in the background. Dishes clattered as the girl in blue scrubs slid leftover beef stroganoff and crumpled napkins and half eaten dinner rolls and bits of jello-salads into her bin. And my dear old friend, Jon, slumped in his wheel chair, picked at the table cloth, and muttered something I could barely make out. Work to do. Mother is at home. Put that over here.

We were there to offer him the sacrament–the body and blood of our Lord. But we didn’t know how it would go. Before arriving, I had been optimistic. But I was becoming less and less sure by the minute. Jon seemed rather baffled by the three men sitting before him. He couldn’t remember the name of his son–never mind his pastor and his elder. When I tried to explained that we were there to celebrate communion and set a small crystal tray of cubed bread on the table, Jon reached for one and put it into his mouth–as if it were just some leftover morsel from his lunch that he hadn’t gotten to yet.

As Jon nibbled on his bread, I began to think that it was all a silly idea–the old form from the back of the Psalter Hymnal, the little cup of juice, the zig-zagging conversation. What good would it be? How could these things be meaningful for a man who couldn’t even remember that his wife of seventy-some years had been dead for months?

I had my doubts. But even so, I began to read my photocopied notes. And as I did, something changed in Jon.

As I went through the old form–the institution from 1 Corinthians, the explanation of what was being proclaimed and remembered, the prayer for the blessing of the Holy Spirit–Jon became suddenly aware. He interrupted–only occasionally–to offer the reference of the scripture passage, or to request a favorite Psalm (139). When we got to the Lord’s prayer he said every last phrase–clearly. When it came time to say the words–Take, eat, remember and believe–Jon held on to his bread and juice until the appropriate moment. And then offered his thanks. To me, perhaps. But mostly, I believe, to Christ.

After we had swallowed our bread and sipped our juice, I began to read the traditional thanksgiving Psalm–103. It didn’t take long–two verses–before the words caught in my throat and tears threatened to spill down my cheeks. Praise the Lord, says the Psalmist, and forget not all his benefits. When I read those words, I nearly lost it–right there in the nursing home cafeteria. I nearly lost it because I knew that of all the things that Jon has forgotten–the name of his son, the place he attended church for ninety (or more) years, the death of his wife, what year he was living in–Jon has not forgotten Christ and all his benefits. He was able to take, eat, remember, and believe. Dementia has taken so very much from him–but by God’s grace, it hasn’t taken that.

Praise the Lord, oh my soul. Praise the Lord.

The Trouble with Grace

I had been dreading the conversation for days. Weeks.  Months actually.

Someone I know was stuck in a rut. They were clinging to a certain sin (or their sin was clinging to them–I’m not always sure which way it goes). They didn’t want to give it up. They didn’t even want to categorize it as “sin.” And they certainly didn’t want me to put it in that category for them. So I’d been dutifully looking the other way. Pretending not to notice. Pretending it really wasn’t there.

I thought about saying something earlier. But really, who wants to be “that guy”? You know the one. The Christian who is “good” in the worst sense of the word (as Mark Twain said). The preacher whacking people over the head with his ten pound King James Version, whipping out the bullhorn to declare God’s judgement and wrath on those who have violated his commandments. After all, we are supposed to be people who model Christ’s love. People who show the world his grace.

But that, it seems to me, is the rub. We’re supposed to show the world grace. That’s a kingdom value. But does showing the world grace mean that we can no longer talk to the world (or to each other) about sin? Does it mean that the right thing for me to do with my friend would’ve been to look the other way?

That’s a popular idea. People often say things like: “More grace, less judgment”. What they mean is that yes, I should keep my mouth shut. I should accept my friends no matter what. I should show grace, not judgement.

And of course, there is something right and admirable about the impulse. But I have to admit, I think there is something slightly off base about it.

The problem is that when we put grace and judgment at odds with one another, we’ve confused grace and tolerance. Like grace, tolerance accepts everybody–regardless of what they’ve done or left undone. But unlike grace, tolerance refuses to deal with sin head on. Tolerance deals with sin by renaming it–by calling it something other than sin. Tolerance looks the other way, always minds it’s own business, lets every person do as s/he sees fit. Tolerance makes no judgements about right or wrong.

It’s an attractive approach. But it’s not grace.

In order to show grace (and not mere tolerance) you have to make a judgment that something is wrong. You have to acknowledge that a person (maybe even you!) needs to be forgiven, needs mercy, needs unmerited love and acceptance. That’s the trouble with grace. When you talk about grace, you also have to talk about sin.

 

 

 Here’s what Neil Plantinga says on the subject:

“For the Christian Church … to ignore, euphemize, or otherwise mute the lethal reality of the sin is to cut the nerve of the gospel. For the sober truth is that without full disclosure on sin, the gospel of grace becomes impertinent, unnecessary, and finally uninteresting.” (Plantinga, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, p. 199)

So what does that have to do with my friend?

Well, after a lot of hand wringing, pacing around my office, and–yes–prayer, I decided I had to have that difficult conversation. I decided I needed to tell him that–from what I understood of God’s word and will for his life–what he was doing was sin. I had to make a judgment. But I also I had to do it in a way that was not judgmental. I had to do it in a way that was full of the fragrance of Christ. A way that showed him unconditional love, mercy, acceptance of Jesus Christ despite what he was doing wrong.

I wish it was easy–like tolerance. But it wasn’t. Sadly, there’s no handbook for these things. No neat and tidy procedure that ensures we’ll get it right. Like most people, I had to work things out within the messy context of relationship. And like most people, I stumbled and fumbled. Like most people, I didn’t get it all right. But I tried. By the grace of God, I tried.

“My Pleasure”

“Nothing presses the noses of the faithful up against the windows of their faith like death.”

Thomas Lynch

We had another funeral on Monday morning. We came together as a community, sang songs, prayed, heard God’s word, and, afterwards, shared stories over ham buns and jello in the church basement.

Twenty-four hours later, the family huddled under a green tent pitched in the middle of a vast cemetery. They sat on their folding chairs, the casket holding their mother and grandmother setting before them–unavoidable–waiting to be lowered into the ground. And again we prayed, we heard God’s word, and afterwards shared stories as the family read the names off the surrounding grave stones and remembered those who had already gone to be “with the Lord.”

I’ve been to a few funerals by now (probably participated in twenty or so in my combined two and a half years in two different churches). I hope it doesn’t sound cold to say that this was all pretty standard stuff. I don’t say anything new or ground shaking; I didn’t come up with anything the family hadn’t heard before or said in some way to one another (in one form or another). It was one of those affairs of which Garrison Keillor’s Pastor Inkfus commented, “The preacher said said the things that preachers always say on such occasion, but the things that need to be said anyway.”*

All the same, one of the children came up to me after it all, shook my hand, and thanked me. It was a pleasure, he said. He was very kind. But his comment caused me to fumble for a reply. The pleasure was all mine or Glad I could do it seemed like the natural response to such a statement. But that felt rather “off” for reasons that should be obvious to anyone. It just sounds cruel to say that doing some Saint’s funeral was a pleasure.

But the truth is it was. It was a pleasure spending time with the family–being invited into such an intimate moment in their life. But more than that, it was a pleasure because I got to do such a wonderful thing. I got to stand next to a casket that hovered over a grave–just waiting to fill it–and tell the old old story about another grave that remained empty. I got to say words like “hope” and “peace” and “comfort” and, above all “resurrection“.

I say those sorts of things every time. And I get shivers–every time.

Before I started leading funerals, I would’ve assumed that they would be times of spiritual struggle and doubt for me. I assumed that the dark shroud that hangs over us during times of death would make it impossible to see much of God at all. It’s true that I’ve been to a few funerals that have been like that (of children, for instance) and suspect that may be the case for others in attendance. But as a pastor, I find that some of the most nourishing times for me have been at funerals and by gravesides. For some reason, the Spirit seems to be more tangibly present at these affairs. And perhaps more to the point, it is when death presses my nose up against the window of my faith that I see with greatest clarity my risen Lord on the other side. In those moments I am convinced–right down to my toenails–that I have not put my trust in him in vain. And that is always a pleasure!

*This is a paraphrase. If any Keillor devotees out there know the exact line (from sometime this spring) I’d love to have it.

Hmmmmm.

I’m not an ER fan (I think I’ve only seen one episode). Should I be?
Discuss.

Definitions: Some Thoughts on Forgiveness

One of the bright spots that has emerged through the darkness of Sunday’s tragic shootings has been the declarations of forgiveness from the family and friends of the victims. Christians have taken notice and, quite significantly, so has the press.* As more than one person has said to me, we ought to be grateful for the positive example of people living out their faith in a forgiving God.

Others, however, have not been quite so sure. In a recent conversation, someone had the courage to suggest what many of us may have thought–that perhaps it was too soon to offer forgiveness, that maybe doing so trivialized what was, by all accounts, a very terrible wrong, or that doing so may have rushed a grief process in which anger would have played an important role.

These are all legitimate concerns–but I think they may stem from a misunderstanding of forgiveness. So a few thoughts today on what forgiveness does–and does not–involve.**

• Forgiveness is not a one time event. The individuals affected by Sunday’s shootings declared their forgiveness almost immediately. However, it will take time for them to grow into this declaration. As I mentioned in a sermon on this topic last month, they will have to forgive–to make moves against their anger–again, and again, and again (seventy times seven!). I suspect that for some of these people (perhaps all of them) it will take years for forgiveness to be complete. As Smedes says, “Forgiving is a journey; the deeper the wound, the longer the journey.”
• Forgiveness does not mean condoning or excusing a wrong. In fact, forgiveness means the opposite. To forgive someone of a wrong, you must acknowledge that there is actually a wrong to be forgiving. To forgive, you must assign blame. When we forgive, we are not saying that the intolerable has suddenly become tolerable. Rather, we are saying that the only way we can deal with an intolerable wrong is through the miracle of forgiveness.
• Forgiveness does not mean minimizing a wrong. Saying “I forgive you” is not the same thing as saying, “That’s okay–it was no big deal.” If it’s not a big deal, it doesn’t need to be forgiven. As Lewis Smedes has written somewhere, “We need to sort out our hurts and learn the difference between those that call for the miracle of forgiveness and those that can be borne with a sense of humor. If we lump all our hurts together and prescribe forgiveness for all of them, we turn the art of forgiving into something cheap and commonplace. Like good wine, forgiving must be preserved for the right occasion.”
• Forgiveness is not the same thing as reconciliation. Reconciliation may be seen as the ultimate (though not always attainable) goal of forgiveness. However, forgiveness is only one step in achieving this goal. For full reconciliation to occur, the person who committed the wrong must also make a move–must “repent” in the biblical sense of the word (express both sorrow AND a commitment to change). If the person who committed the wrong has not changed, it would be unwise–even foolish–to enter back into relationship with them. In short, it takes one person to forgive but two to achieve full reconciliation.
• Forgiveness does not mean there are no consequences. God (and good parents, I think) may forgive the sins of His children but deem it important for them to live with the consequences of their poor choices. Sometimes when we forgive people, it is also necessary that they live with painful consequences. This can be an important a way of protecting ourselves from future hurts.
• Forgiveness does not mean forgetting: Forgiveness has more to do with the way we remember than with removing our memories. When we forgive, we learn to remember without anger or a desire for revenge. Furthermore, in a sin filled world, remembering the wrong we’ve forgiven can be important because of the need to protect ourselves from future hurts.
• Forgiveness is not something we only do for other people: Scripture makes clear that forgiveness is one of the ways we show Christ-like love for other people. However, it’s also a way we love ourselves. When we refuse to forgive, we are held captive by our own anger and bitterness–it eats away at us and threatens to consume us. As Smedes writes: “When we forgive, we set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner we set free is us.”

*It says something about the nature of forgiveness that it is considered newsworthy event.

 **Many of these come from Lewis Smedes’ excellent book, The Art of Forgiving.