The Judge

Exodus 14
19Then the angel of God who was going before the host of Israel moved and went behind them, and the pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them, 20coming between the host of Egypt and the host of Israel. And there was the cloud and the darkness. And it lit up the night[a] without one coming near the other all night.
21Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the LORD drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. 22And the people of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry ground, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left. 23The Egyptians pursued and went in after them into the midst of the sea, all Pharaoh's horses, his chariots, and his horsemen. 24And in the morning watch the LORD in the pillar of fire and of cloud looked down on the Egyptian forces and threw the Egyptian forces into a panic, 25clogging[b] their chariot wheels so that they drove heavily. And the Egyptians said, "Let us flee from before Israel, for the LORD fights for them against the Egyptians."
26Then the LORD said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand over the sea, that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen." 27So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its normal course when the morning appeared. And as the Egyptians fled into it, the LORD threw[c] the Egyptians into the midst of the sea. 28The waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen; of all the host of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea, not one of them remained. 29But the people of Israel walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left.
30Thus the LORD saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. 31Israel saw the great power that the LORD used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the LORD, and they believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses.

Romans 14
1As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. 2One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. 3Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. 4Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master[a] that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.
5One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 6The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. 7For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. 8If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. 9For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.
10Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; 11for it is written,

"As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me,
and every tongue shall confess[b] to God."
12So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.

When I was in college, a favorite pastime of my friends and I was to challenge each other in coming up with the very best jabs for one another. One such time, my roommate made a comment to another friend, and before I could stop myself, I said, “That’s not funny.” Now not in a reprimand mind you, but instead in the voice of total authority. My roommate turned to me and questioned, “What are you, the Judge of Funny?” Thus for many months afterward I was dubbed “the Judge of Funny,” and if any joke was uttered in my presence my friends would stop and say, “wait wait, don’t anybody laugh--we’d better clear this with Chris first.” It was a friendly poke at my expense and good natured. But it was revealing. It showed a side of myself I can still feel poking out every once in a while even now. I’m the judge.
I don’t know if it was because of my being the first born, or some deep sense of justice my mother passed on to me, but my whole life, I have struggled not to pass judgment, or at the very least not express my feelings on it.
In another example, I will relate a story my Dad is often fond of recalling. Dad is and was a teacher of gifted students in the county where we grew up. I was in several of his classes, but one of the first, when I was in fifth grade, was an elementary physics class. Our first project in our first class was a group challenge. Two groups pitted against each other in a race to balance a broom on the top of a chair. We were given no further instruction or hints and were given creative reign to solve the problem as best we saw fit. I had the benefit of learning about an object’s “balance point” earlier in life with dad in some random summer afternoon, and recalling that saw that this was much the same exercise. After listening to some of my other peers solutions, which were not working, I finally lost all patience, snatched the broom out of a girl’s hand, laid it on top of the chair, balanced it perfectly, and shouted at her, “All you have to do is find the balance point.” Well, she burst into tears, and Dad immediately called me into the hallway. Not to detail my punishment, but suffice to say neither my brother nor I ever found favoritism in dad’s classes. But I had judged this girl and found her wanting and doled out her retribution. Dad always said she never recovered and is probably living in some commune in Wyoming trying to find inner peace.
It can be hard not to judge people. My defense to my Dad in the hallway was something to effect of, “but they were WRONG!” It seemed unfair that I should suffer for getting it right.
We are lucky to have the opportunity in the lectionary to take a look at the teachings of Paul to the Romans. In this letter, he takes care to outline instructions for everyday life; instructions that lead to wholeness of not only the faith community but of the individual. He is righting not only for the Jewish believer converted out of the idea that Jesus is the prophesied Messiah, but also to the group of gentiles that reside there. To them, Jesus is a completely new and radical way of thinking. They are taking the leap not from Hope in Prophecy to Prophecy Fulfillment, but the leap from a myriad of gods and goddesses to the belief in One true Creator and the path to Life through a man who was that Deity’s Son--Love Incarnate on Earth. Of course, Paul is also dealing with two very distinctive groups of people who are having trouble getting along.
Poor Paul. He’s trying to bring them eternal, everlasting spiritual truth, and they are arguing over dietary nuances.
For the Jews their way of life is truly changing in the light of Jesus’ teachings. Through Paul’s interpretation through the word and the Spirit he sees, and rightfully so, that Jesus as messiah is for the whole world, not just the Jews. He is the fulfillment not only of prophecy, but with the greater promise spoken first to Adam and to every living human on the planet. This is, I love you. I want us to be together.
The Jews of Rome are dealing with judgment.
For so long they have been accustomed to being God’s chosen people. His only chosen. He chose them to inhabit Israel, above the others who were already living there. He chose them to carry his promise, above all others who dwelt in the Fertile Crescent. He chose them to come out of Egypt, above all the other nations that had been made slaves by that empire. And now, suddenly, the Day of Glory has come… but it has come for all people and all nations. Talk about your big let downs.
Suddenly, God doesn’t have favorites. He has redeemed all by the blood. Paul sites several things in the passage. One of the first is his question to the Christians of Rome—Has GOD not owned all those who profess belief in Him and IN Christ? Then who are we, to disown them? To do so, to pass that judgment on people, is to USURP the place of God. He warns too against the feelings between the strong and the weak. Again, we have divisions in the early church, not only between Gentile and Jew, but between those who are strong and secure in the faith and those who are new and weak. Judgment can come out in so many ways. Condescension is one of the most often used tools of Judgment.
But it is hard not to judge.
I can feel for the Jews. After millennia of belong the teachers pet in every way, they suddenly have to give that up. They are just like everyone else. And even if they attain a solid faith—what is their reward? Sameness. There is NO HIERARCHY in the Kingdom of Heaven. In the Methodist church I grew up in, they have conference Bishops who are elected by the ministerial body and rule over the general sessions. I was amazed at one General Assembly in which the bishop came down from the dais and washed the feet of my friends and I who were attending. My pastor who was with us, saw me and said simply, “We are all believers, struggling to come closer to God.” The words of the Disciples to Christ rang out, “No teacher, surely you will not wash our feet.” It is only our Human Perception that creates the feudal system of believers.
Paul reminds the Jews especially of God’s words from Isaiah, a book they more than likely knew very well. Chapter 45:23 says “EVERY knee will bow before me…”He says to them in this letter. Just before that in Isaiah 45: 22, God speaks of “the Ends of the Earth” turning towards Him to be saved. Paul reminds them that even in the prophecy God addresses every nation when it comes to salvation.
I feel like I will short you if I don’t interject here the line I drew from this text to our Old Testament reading.
In re-reading this passage, I was reminded of a wonderfully epic theater experience that I was treated to in the movie “The Prince of Egypt.” You can sometimes do in a cartoon what your budget will not allow you to do in live action. Moses, upon God’s command stretches out his hand and the water ROLL BACK in an awesome display. Dolphins and fish can bee seen silhouetted in the water as the nation walks by them. In scripture, however, we must imagine something more than that even. Not only did the waters roll back, but a powerful wind came and DRIED the land that was the bottom of the sea. In addition, look at the chronology of the miracle. Moses with God’s power allows SOME of the water to come back on and destroy the Egyptian chariots. While the nation is still in the trough with them. Yet they continue, unfettered. At the end of the verse we are blessed by the understatement, “Israel saw the great power of the Lord… so they were in awe of Him and believed.”
This is what it takes to be the judge. This kind of might, this kind of mind boggling power. Do you have what it takes to fulfill the role of God as judge? I surely do not.
So then. We are called and commanded to not pass judgment on our brothers and sisters in Christ, who are all people. We can use the verse from Isaiah as a mantra if we must: “Every knee will bow, every tongue confesses.”
What then is the action verb to go along with this omission in behavior? Paul goes on in Romans immediately after this verse with a resolution: “Make up your mind not to be a stumbling block.” This is active opposite of not judging. He asks us in this to not place anything in the path of those who are trying to come to the Lord. To resolute ourselves to not create an obstacle course to the loving arms of God. But there is more to it…
Recently, Clyde Albright was letting me in on a little piece of farm lore concerning cows. If cows are looking down and there is anything in their way, they will stop. Be it a body, a car, or a twig they are immovable. So then I’ll paint you a scenario, a parable, with that in mind. It’s a bitter winter and the cattle need to spend the night in the barn. The father entrusts his son and his daughter to put them there. Now, they put out fresh hay, open the doors, and see the cows within sight of the barn coming toward it. The next morning the cows are all dead. Bringing the two children out to dead animals the farmer shows them a branch that was in their path to the barn. Being cows, they had stopped and frozen to death. The boy is indignant and says, “But father, we didn’t put that branch there!” And on the way to the woodshed the father replies, “But neither did you remove it.”
Paul’s real objective in all this is to build a more perfect Christian community. Not being a stumbling block is not only to not become a detriment to someone else’s spiritual life, but also in the obverse to do everything in our power to better it. In verse 19 of the same chapter Paul charges the church to make EVERY effort to do what is mutually up building of one another.
I’ve heard repent means to make an about face from a sin or wrongdoing and face God or His loving will. The repentant opposite then of Judgment is this mutual up building that Paul is talking about.
Like I said tough; it’s hard not to judge. We must all be ever vigilant to turn away from those self righteous temptations and instead reach lovingly out to those weaker in the faith and bring one another into a place of mutual up building. It’s this that makes the Church and our faith strong. It’s this that allows the church to grow in love and rightness toward God.