December 15, 2019
/Advent 3
Isaiah 35:1-10
Canticle 15
James 5:7-10
Matthew 11:2-11
The Rev. Bradley Varnell
Advent is an altogether different season for the church. Unlike Easter, or Epiphany, or even Pentecost, Advent is a season that doesn’t focus on a past event in the life of Christ or the Christian community. Instead, it is a season that invites us to look forward. Traditionally, Advent has been a season of looking forward to and preparing for the four last things: heaven, hell, death, and judgement. In Advent, we focus on what is to come in our lives and the lives of the world. Today, I want to talk about my favorite Advent theme: judgement. At Christmas we recall Christ’s first coming in humility and vulnerability as savior, while in Advent we look forward to his second coming in power and glory as judge: the judge of the world, and the judge of you and me.
Every week we, along with Christians from around the world affirm in the Nicene Creed that Jesus Christ will come “to judge the living and the dead.” Judgement is one of the more unsettling articles of Christian faith. It sounds, well, judgmental, exclusionary, aggressive. Do we really want a God who judges?
Generally, we don’t mind judgement – especially if we’re judging others. What I’ve often found is that we don’t mind a God who judges the same people I judge. It’s when the idea of God’s judgement against me comes up that people get uncomfortable. I think it’s uncomfortable primarily because we see how judgement works in our world and we apply that to God. We see how one fault or indiscretion, one bad decision or flippant word can result in the harshest judgement. For many of us, the only kind of judgement we can imagine is aimed at retribution or punishment. And so when we speak of God’s judgement that’s what we have in mind.
Difficult as it may be, I think the judgement of God is one of the great hopes the Christian story offers the world. But it’s also a difficult thing to talk about and imagine. Can judgement really be good news to a world that is filled to the brim with judgement? Of course, the church over the years hasn’t helped – it has often peddled this kind of judging God. A God who sits on high gleefully hurling people into eternal damnation. But I don’t think that’s the nature of God’s judgement we find in Scripture.
Today’s New Testament reading, from the letter of St. James, is a helpful guide to thinking about the judgement of Christ. It’s a brief book – only five chapters long, and it can be easily read in one sitting, in about half an hour or so – and it is filled with talk about judgement. “See, the judge is standing at the doors,” our lesson reminds us. But St. James’ isn’t offering a generic reminder of the coming of God, he’s offering a word of hope. The passage immediately before our lesson today is important in helping us think through St. James’ words and what they might mean for us and our relationship to God’s judgement. St. James writes:
Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your heart in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you.
St. James then continues,
Be patient therefore beloved, until the coming of the Lord…
St. James writes his words to a community that has suffered oppression and injustice. A community of folks who have been wronged. He encourages them to patience…not because silence or passivity are to be lauded in the face of wrongdoing, but because Christ the judge is coming to right the wrongs committed against them. The judgement of Christ isn’t punitive or retributive, it’s rectifying and restoring. God’s judgement enables the people St. James address to be patient, to push through, to endure through their suffering, because at the coming of Christ they will ultimately, finally, and eternally be lifted up.
The coming of the judge is Gospel, it’s good news because in the coming of God’s judgement the goodness and holiness of God encounters our sin and our brokenness, the world’s sin and brokenness, and overcomes them, transforms them. The good news of God’s judgement for the people of St. James’ letter is that at the coming of Christ the imbalance between rich and poor that is being experienced is overcome. The poor will no longer be victims of abuse because the justice of God means the poor will be lifted up, their wounds healed, their wrongs righted.
And the rich…what about the rich? They have “laid up treasure for the last days” and not the imperishable kind. God comes to judge sin and evil, to say “no” to those things that prevent us and our world from experiencing fully the love of God. As God says no to sin and evil, the poor, the victims of sin and evil are lifted up and those who have benefited from sin and evil, those whose lives are successful because others are being victimized – well, they will take a tumble. The judgement of God means, in the words of the Blessed Virgin, that the mighty are cast down from their thrones – but it’s because those thrones are built on the backs of others. The good news of God’s judgement for the rich is, I believe, that they will see the hurt they have caused. The rich are not cast down into hell, they are brought down, as it were, to stand face to face with the people they have harmed, and they will be invited to repent, to seek forgiveness. The grace of God rights wrong – but not without the participation of the wrong doers.
“But see, the judge is standing at the doors.”
God’s judgement is coming for you and for me, for our world and our communities. The judgement may be hard, but it will be good. In our Gospel today Jesus says that “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” These miracles are the result of the judgement of Christ. Jesus says no to all those things that oppressed the people, that kept them on the margins. Jesus said no, so that they might have life fully. Christ will come and say “no” to sin, evil, and brokenness in our world and in us. You and I will stand before Christ, and he will say “no” to all those things that keep us from experiencing the fullness of God’s life. The judgement of Christ will lift some up and cast others down – but whether we’re going up or going down, we will all be transformed, opened up to the life of God, invited to love one-another as God loves us.
The key to the judgement of God is remembering that God’s judgement is for us, not against us. Our God is a God who loves, who cares, and who acts. God’s judgement isn’t the retributive act of a small deity out to point out our flaws. God’s judgement is the act of God to restore, to heal, to make right what is wrong. Advent is a time to remember that one day the ways things are will give way to things were created to be. We wait for the day when, in the words of Isaiah, “everlasting joy shall be upon our heads, we shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” We wait for Jesus. We wait for the day of judgement.
Amen.