Judgment and Condemnation

Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
03.22.09; Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lesson: John 3: 14-21

There are few verses in the New Testament more familiar than John 3:16. It’s at the very heart of the evangelical movement. It’s meat and potatoes stuff, or perhaps that’s tofu and potatoes. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

It’s a quick, short, catchy verse. It sums up, for most, the whole purpose of Jesus. It also is a shorthand verse that makes it’s way onto an array of different evangelical products. You can buy John 3:16 caps. You can buy John 3:16 shirts. There are bumperstickers in a whole array of different colors. There’s John 3:16 candy corn. There are these little John 3:16 keyring bells they market to bikers, which tinkle quietly as you motor along. Also for bikers, there are these John 3:16 pant clips to connect your jeans to your riding boots, because God so loved the world that he didn’t want your pants to hike up your legs in an unattractive way as you motor down the road on your Harley.

I’m convinced that a large part of the reason that this passage is so well known...particularly to my generation...is because of a guy known as the Rainbow Man. He was, waaaay back in the 1970s and 1980s, the guy who showed up at pretty much every sporting event he could wearing a huge multicolored afro wig and waving a large, handmade sign. That sign, often written on a simple sheet, said: John 3:16. Christians knew what that meant, and the idea was...outside of Rainbow Man promoting himself...to get people curious as to what John 3:16 actually was.

The man’s name was Rollen Stewart, and he was seriously dedicated to his rather straightforward task. Every year, he’d rack up over 60,000 miles of driving to truck himself across country. Every Sunday, during at least one major televised sporting event, there he’d be, waving his homemade sign.

He became somewhat sort of kind of famous, the nation’s most well known sports fan. He also became a small celebrity in the evangelical Christian community...and then he disappeared. Well, he didn’t so much disappear, as he ended up convinced that he had to tell the world that Jesus was coming back to destroy it soon. It was 1992, and the end-times were about to be fulfilled, and everyone needed to repent or be destroyed in the very near future. As no-one seemed willing to listen to this rather less cheery message, Mr. Stewart took three people hostage at gunpoint, demanding that police give him access to the media so that he could tell the world that destruction was imminent.

After 8 1/2 hours of armed standoff, Mr. Stewart was apprehended by the police. He’s now doing three concurrent life terms at Mule Creek State Prison, near Sacramento. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times given in May of 2008, he shared that he’s unrepentant, convinced that he only botched the timing of his message. He remains absolutely positive that he did the right thing in trying to warn people that the world will soon be destroyed. If he had it to do over again, he would. What could have been a simple message of grace became somehow obscured by an growing obsession with condemnation and destruction.

It’s a strange tension for many Christians, one that can be reinforced if you bother going beyond branding and slogans and actually look at the passage that surrounds that iconic verse. It’s a challenging one.

The saying itself comes in the middle of a conversation that Jesus is having with a curious Pharisee named Nicodemus. Nicodemus truly struggles to understand what Jesus is talking about, as he’s prone to taking things...like being “born again” completely literally. As Jesus tried to explain himself to Nicodemus, the conversation turns to talk of the purpose of the coming of the Son of Man, one of the terms that Jesus uses to describe his relationships with God. What is his purpose? His purpose is defined by God’s love for the world, and God’s desire to give those who know the truth of Christ’s grace eternal life.

That’s the 3:16 part of John...but Jesus may not be finished talking. Or maybe he is. We aren’t sure, actually, where the words of Jesus end in this passage. In large part, that’s because the Greek language in which this Gospel was written doesn’t happen to have anything like quotation marks. You just have to kinda figure out from the context of a sentence when someone is no longer speaking. Many reputable scholars think that Jesus is done in verse 15, and 3:16 through 3:21 come from the voice of the Gospel writer.

Whichever way, the passage goes on, as conveyed by John’s elegantly simple Greek, to describe the purpose of the Son of Man further. Here, we start to get some mention of condemnation and judgement. Verses 17 through 19 talk a great deal about who is and who is not condemned. Coming off of the grace of verse 16, the rest of this passage seems to stand as a stern warning: believe, or be condemned. The transition can seem as intense as the one that was expressed in the life of Rainbow Man. Grace on the one hand...and the threat on the other.

Here, though, it actually does help to have a smattering of Greek, and to be aware that sometimes what is expressed in the Gospel we read may not be exactly what was written by it’s author. English and Greek are related, as English relies on Greek for many of it’s words...but they are not the same.

The word “condemn,” for instance, has a strong negative connotation. You condemn a building when it’s time to knock it down. You condemn a rainbow-afro wearing John 3:16 quoting hostage taker to prison for pulling a pistol on bystanders and the police. Condemnation means a judgment in the negative. Problem is, the word that the most ancient texts of John’s Gospel uses to describe what the Son of Man is doing in verses 17 through 19 doesn’t have that negatively charged meaning. The word is krino, and it just means to judge or to decide. It can just as easily imply a positive outcome as a negative outcome. Where it appears in verse 19, for instance, as the related word krisis, any sense of being a negative value judgment is completely missing. It is simply “judgment,” or, if you’re using the NIV, “verdict.” Verse 19 would read pretty strangely if we translated it as “And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world...” That would as far from John’s point as it’s possible to get, and that point is the depth of God’s love as expressed in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. What we get when we go back to the original language is a much more consistent passage, one that speaks primarily of God’s love and God’s willingness to embrace humankind, and in which condemnation and damnation are not a central part of what Jesus was all about.

There, I think, is a core Gospel challenge for many contemporary Christians. It’s easy for the message of grace to be lost in our desire to be sure of our own savedness. It’s easy for the message of God’s Kingdom to be lost as we dither endlessly over who gets to go to their 10,000 square foot mansion in heaven and who gets Left Behind. It’s easy for us to take this message of reconciling love as just another thing to argue about or to use as a club against those who don’t believe as we do.

It’s just a question of judgment.

Judgment Call

Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
11.23.08; Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lesson: Matthew 25:31-46

I’ve always loved bloopers.

When I was a kid, nothing struck me as funnier than watching someone make a highly entertaining error in judgment. I always thought that as I got older and more jaded I would stop finding America’s Funniest Videos quite as amusing. I’ve got a degree in Religious Studies from Mr. Jefferson’s University. I spent ten years working for the Aspen Institute, which is one of the most muckity muckity organizations in the Western Hemisphere, if it does say so itself. I graduated from theological seminary magna cum laude, and am now a Minister of Word and Sacrament with all of the rights and privileges thereunto bestowed.

But for some reason, watching a video of a guy knocking himself out while showing off with nunchucks still makes me laugh uncontrollably. Got a short video of someone dancing on top of an obviously too-flimsy table at a wedding? It works on me every single time. Show me a YouTube clip of that overeager amateur theater performer who’s great at belting out the mostly-on-key show tunes but not so good at knowing where the edge of the stage is? I’ll giggle till I just about pee. I just can’t help myself. About the giggling part, at least.

I know I shouldn’t. I’m not eight years old any more. I should be better than that, more mature, more dignified. But I’m not, and at the rate I’m going, I don’t think I ever will be. There is something about those essentially harmless errors that is fundamentally delightful. Why is that? I think we like those entertaining mistakes for a couple of reasons.

First, because they represent the unexpected. Human beings take joy in things that don’t turn out quite like we anticipate. If you know exactly how something will turn out, it doesn’t delight you, doesn’t stir you to rejoicing or infectious giggles. It’s what makes a good joke funny. The unanticipated, the wacky, and the absurd are the heart of comedy.

Second, because they show us how flawed we are. If we’re really getting it, we’re not laughing because we’re enjoying the embarrassment or discomfort of others. The Germans call that dark enjoyment shadenfreude, and while that might be a factor for some, it isn’t a factor for me. I’m not laughing because I enjoy the suffering of others. I’m laughing out of sympathy. I’m laughing because I’m feeling it myself. All of us have messed up. All of us have...with the best of intentions...managed to totally mess up on at least a dozen occasions, possibly even over the last week. For all of our efforts to be dignified and in control, we aren’t. We just aren’t...and often it shows. For all of our conviction that we know exactly what we’re doing, more often than not, we’re the one who loses control of those nunchucks or walks too close to the edge of that pool. Our judgment fails us, and unexpected hilarity ensues.

Yet for some reason, the deeply unexpected moment of judgment we hear from Matthew’s Gospel today doesn’t strike us as particularly funny. It isn’t funny at all, actually, even though it is one of the most intensely unanticipated moments in all of Scripture. Throughout the Gospels, in all of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, he speaks a great deal about the Kingdom of God. He tells us what it means to live and act according to that Kingdom. But in how many places does he teach about how the final determination? In how many places does he teach exactly what will happen on that final Day of Judgment?

Just one.

It’s right here, at the end of twenty-fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. Unlike the stories that have come before, which told about the need to prepare for the coming kingdom, this story is not a parable. It is not a story told as a symbol. It is not a story that holds within it a message that you have to think about or puzzle over as you work your way through what it means. Though most of Christ’s storytelling was through parables, here he sets aside that way of teaching and does something completely different. Here, he tells it as it is. Or, rather, as it will be.

It’s a classical image, of the Son of Man on the throne of God, separating out all of the peoples of the world. It’s the big judgment call, the final moment when the lives of all of those who have lived are measured against the only standard that counts, the standard of Christ Jesus Himself, who is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.

That should be a simple process. All the Son of Man needs to do is check whether you’re a member in good standing in the Presbyterian Church (USA). Right? But when all those nervous Methodists and Pentecostals get to the front of the line, we find that the nature of the judgment call being made is...well...surprising to them.

When the Son of Man congratulates the righteous for making the cut, he thanks them for showing him care, for feeding him and clothing him and visiting him when he was sick or imprisoned. And the righteous are...well...surprised. Um...when did I do that? I don’t remember doing that. I remember praying. I remember going to church...um...sometimes. I sorta got through reading the Bible, at least up until those long lists of names put me to sleep. But when did do any of those other things? When did I do any of those things for God?

The answer is a surprise. It’s unexpected. It’s unanticipated. You did those things for me when you did those things for the least of my brothers and sisters. For those who inadvertently made the right call, it’s a moment worth of joy and laughter. For those who didn’t...well...things aren’t so good.

But it’s that first group that really are the ones doing what we don’t expect. If you are a student of human nature, as we all become as the years go by, you quickly come to expect human beings to mess things up. Our basic instinct is to serve ourselves, is to seek our own interest, is to make sure that we come out on top and that the other guy is goin’ down. That’s human nature. It’s what we do.

Our judgment call, time after time, is in favor of ourselves and our buddies. It is in favor of our wealth and our pride and our comfort. It is what stirs wars. It is why human beings turn against each other and tear at each other, why they shout and scream and whisper, why they hate and hurt and lie. Honestly, it isn’t particularly delightful. It is certainly not unexpected.

What is unexpected is when we are surprised by our own grace, when we stumble into goodness, when we inadvertently fumble our own selfishness and surprise ourselves. By the standards of the world, it might seem like bad judgment. By the standards of the world, it’s like a mistake or an error, like the thing that wasn’t part of the plan and wasn’t supposed to happen.

[Where's the conclusion? Well...you had to be there.]