The Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany
February 18, 2007
12:45PM Meditation
Luke 6:27-38
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
When I was at Yale it was not uncommon for me to be told by a certain group of my fellow students that I am ‘judgmental’. The implication was that I had committed a sin by expressing the truth that some actions are simply wrong and others are right. I relished the irony that as they assigned to me the label ‘judgmental’ they were being judgmental about me. I did not point this irony out to them. Rather, I would indicate that there is a difference between judging someone’s actions and judging someone’s soul.
I bring up the politically correct confines of Yale University because today’s Gospel includes one of the most misinterpreted verses in the whole Bible. Jesus says, “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned” (Luke 6:3). The way that this is understood today is a far cry from what Jesus meant when these words were first uttered. Yet many people with hardly an ounce of religious faith have no problem quoting these words as they attempt to justify their immorality or the immorality of others. In quoting these verses these aspiring biblical scholars mean for us to infer that if we insist what they are doing is wrong we are the ones who are going to hell, or if they don’t believe in hell, we are the ones who deserve condemnation by society. That is, the worst sin we could possibly commit, they imply, is for us to say that the choices a person is making are wrong.
Besides the most obvious objection to this line of reasoning – that to judge my judgmentalism is to be judgmental – there are two problems with insisting that we cannot judge people to be wrong. The first objection, of course, is that the judgments we profess are not our judgments. To be a Catholic Christian is to be a person under authority. From you and me all the way to the Holy Father, none of us is able to refer to ourselves as the ultimate authority. We refer instead to Jesus, to his Vicars on earth, to the Magesterium – but we do not set ourselves up as people who have determined what is right and what is wrong. We can investigate why people are right and why people are wrong, but we leave to Jesus and the Church he founded to tell us what is right and what is wrong. When we tell others that they are wrong we must have behind us the teaching authority of the Church, and when we have this authority behind us we are not being judgmental but pointing to Him who is the source of all that is good.
One needs only to look at the first part of today’s Gospel to see how many judgments Jesus made about what is right and what is wrong. We are to bless those who curse us, pray for those who abuse us, love our enemies and do good to those who hate us. I could go on and on about all the things that Jesus said are right and what he said is wrong. But suffice it to say that he made many judgments, and if we are to be his faithful followers, his faithful disciples, we must aspire to the moral life to which Jesus himself calls us.
The second problem with the misinterpretation of the judging passage from today’s Gospel is that it doesn’t refer to judging a person’s actions at all. Rather it refers to judging a person’s soul, judging a person’s essence. The entire direction of today’s Gospel points to the reality that we are made in the image of God. To be human is to have a destiny beyond this world. Jesus tells us we will be sons of the Most High. Over and over again, Jesus makes reference to the great reward we will receive if we are faithful to his word. The reward we seek, the destiny to which we are called is not only of this world. Surely there can be temporal rewards for being faithful, but often there are not. Often, as last week’s Gospel makes clear, there are persecutions to endure, suffering in Jesus’ name, after the manner he himself suffered. Thus, we know that we must look forward to more than we can expect from a fallen world.
Therefore, we understand that the judgments we uphold are those of Jesus and his Church, not our own. What we are forbidden to judge is a person’s eternal fate. It is not to us to judge whether a person is in heaven or hell, whether a person deserves to be condemned eternally or not. If we hope to escape the judgment to come we must avoid assertions about this person or that being in heaven or hell. What we can rely on, what we can assert, is that, as Jesus reminds us today, our heavenly Father is merciful. He is kind to both the ungrateful and the selfish. He has forgiven even those our neighbors refuse to forgive. We can rely on a reasonable and holy hope, confident that our Lord desires that we turn from our wickedness and live.
There is one exception to this hard and fast rule. Those that the Church has canonized we can be assured are in heaven. The Church, Christ’s Church, does not make saints. She merely announces to the world what is the judgment of her Head, Jesus Christ. Hence, the saints are not at all an exception to the command not to judge, but another manifestation of the Church’s obligation to communicate to the world the truth about the Kingdom of God.
So the next time the subject of being judgmental comes up, just smile and give thanks for the Church. How fortunate we are that the burden of judgment is not ours. Like everything else Jesus has taken it upon himself. Our job is to share this Good News.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.