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In Exodus, Moses is told that for the good of his health and his community, he must delegate his authority to mediate disputes. Judges are needed so that fairness can be systematised and so that Moses doesn’t spread himself too thinly. The biblical scholar Brevard Childs pointed out that this passage demonstrates how, for the Israelites, ‘the command of God’ makes no distinction between divine revelation and pragmatic wisdom. This is about practical justice and God’s ethical code, as well as strong leadership.
So far so good, but the juxtaposition with the Gospel of Matthew tonight is not only striking, but looks to be outright undermining. A few minutes ago in our service, Moses appointed judges to discern how to live well in community. A few minutes later, we heard Jesus say, ‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.’ It might appear at first to be a perplexing contradiction, but they fit together beautifully. There is a profound difference between the core Christian virtue of justice, bonded together with love, and the judgement of others that creates suffering and division.
Aristotle identified four virtues for a good life in community. These are ‘cardinal’ virtues and they are first and foremost relational things, to be cultivated together. The word ‘cardinal’ is based on the Latin word ‘cardo’, which means ‘hinge’. ‘Prudence,’ As the theologian Andrew Davison explains, ‘is skill in deliberation; justice sets the standard to be sought; temperance strengthens us against distractions from living well; courage steels us to overcome obstacles to doing what is right.’ Christians add St Paul’s theological virtues: faith, hope, and love. So together, we have seven virtues underpinning Christian life, and justice is among them.
In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr preached a sermon in Washington National Cathedral as he fought America’s persistent and sinful racism. He stated,
‘…however dark it is, I can still sing “We Shall Overcome.” We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’
This is a profoundly influential phrase. It did not originate with Martin Luther King, but with a nineteenth-century American Unitarian minister named Theodore Parker.
Over 100 years before Martin Luther King and the movement for racial justice, Parker was among those Christians calling for an end to slavery. He wrote,
‘I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.’
The ‘arc of the moral universe’, then, is a way of phrasing the ultimate difference in scale between the all-seeing God, who is the God of Justice and peace, and the limited ability for any person, no matter how wise or justice-seeking, to direct the circumstances of the world’s patterns. We can’t gaze into the future and be certain of what we’ll find. But we cannot cease to be on the side of justice because we are seeking the Kingdom of God.
In Exodus, Moses is told two things: one, you cannot be all things to all people, no matter how powerful you are. You need help to lead and you must empower and trust people to assist you. Two, to make this community flourish, a system is needed. This Exodus moment is the birth of an institution. It is also then the birth of potential confusion, poor discernment, abuses of power, and the list goes on – as soon as human beings build a structure within which to function communally, there is enormous capacity for good as well as harm, as we know all too well when observing the current political landscape.
And so, Jesus offers us his holy wisdom:
‘Do not judge so that you may not be judged’
‘In everything do to others as you would have them do to you’
These words can too easily become desensitised clichés in our ears. Let’s hear them afresh this evening. Jesus knew his people needed to hear them and learn to treat one another well because the system was so broken. It still is. Forms of judgement can be so utterly distorted and disordered, that there is a need begin again with the most fundamental principles of social cohesion.
On BBC Question Time, it was asked, ‘As the head of the Church of England, should the Archbishop of Canterbury be getting involved in politics?’ On his own Facebook page, the Bishop of Liverpool Paul Bayes ventured a response: ‘Only when politics affects the lives of human beings, or the future of the earth.’
Archbishop Justin was a prominent voice for economic justice and fair taxation at the TUC conference. He railed against unfair taxation policies, against practices of companies like Amazon, and against suffering caused by the gig economy. The Church is now proposing to buy Wonga, the exploitative small loans company with huge interest rates. The interest demands make people who are poor and desperate even more poor and desperate. There is a possibility that if the Church purchases this company, they could cancel the debts of every impoverished person trying and failing to pay back these loans. If their debt were cancelled, they wouldn’t have to choose between an interest payment and feeding their children.
It is right to focus on a just solution and to discern the relationship between politics, justice, and Christian ethics so that those who have so little are in some small way, liberated. This is the Magnificat in action. We just prayed the prayer of the Blessed Virgin Mary together, as we do every day in this church. In it we pray that God will help the oppressed and feed the starving. That is God’s justice. That is what is being sought Christian virtues guide political decisions. We all need reminding of what these virtues are, not merely as abstract concepts or principles, but as a unity of hand and heart working together for mutual benefit. If we love justice, we are responding to God’s presence in our hearts and in our hands.
This is not to be confused with Jesus’ admonition in our Gospel this evening, ‘Judge not lest ye be judged.’ That kind of judgement is about separation. Them and us. Insiders and outsiders. That kind of judgement takes place every time someone acts out of conviction that they are superior to another person or better than them. The person who judges, in this context, believes that they deserve more than the one that they are judging. This is a judgement that arises out of disordered power, selfishness, and abuse. It is the kind of twisted judgement that undermines and denies God’s justice.
Loving justice and seeking it is our shared Christian priority. This is what Jesus does. This is who Jesus is. Acting and thinking in ways that suggest some people are inferior to others creates division, fear, even hatred. This is what Jesus came to overturn. Where there is division, justice brings unity. Where there is fear, justice brings compassion. Where there is hatred, justice is the shape of love. Amen.