Isaiah proclaims judgment on the leaders of Israel, and Paul writes about the punishment of eternal destruction which some will suffer when the Lord comes in glory. Do I really have to go there, I asked myself as I studied to-day’s readings? If I believe, as I do, in a God whose name is Love, what am I to say about judgment? In times past we would have been surrounded in church by scenes of doom, and if they were not scary enough, the pulpit would have been used pretty regularly to cause us to tremble at the prospect of God’s judgment. To- day we reject the mechanisms of guilt and fear which were used to frighten people into repentance, and we are right to do so. We have become uncomfortable with the idea that God might condemn anyone to a hell which looks like a medieval torture chamber, but as we have distanced ourselves from those gruesome illustrations, so we have distanced ourselves from the very idea of judgment to the point where we simply don’t think about it any more. We dress our children up in pointy hats for Halloween. We smile at the dragons and the torments of hell when we find them in hideous paintings, faded murals or weathered stone carvings. We relish the drama and excitement of a tempestuous Dies Irae. But we no longer put ourselves in the picture. We are all much more comfortable with a Saviour who spots us like Zacchaeus among the sycamore leaves and calls out to us sinners as we are – that to-day he must come to be our guest, than with the God who comes to be our judge, finding us like Adam and Eve hiding our guilt and shame among the trees of the garden.
So we prefer not to think about judgment. And yet, we cannot altogether ignore it. Sunday by Sunday as we recite the creed we declare that he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead’, and at this season of the year, the lectionary regularly directs our attention to passages of scripture which point to a Day of Judgment. If we could choose between a God of Love and a God of Judgment, that would be a no brainer’. But if we don’t have that choice, how are we to reconcile our trust in a God of Love with our recognition of a God who will come in glory to judge the living and the dead?
The concept of a judgment which should be both just and merciful lies deeply embedded in the earliest strata of our scriptures. Already, when Abraham pleads with God to spare the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah if there are even a few good people to be found there, he says: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just? (Gen. 18.25) By the time we come to the prophet Isaiah in the 8th century BC, we find the concept of a more general act of judgment, a Day of the Lord when the wicked will be swept away and God’s faithful people vindicated (Is. 24-26). As we saw in this morning’s reading even the most meticulous observance of religious rituals will be no protection on that day unless it is accompanied by obedience to God’s law, expressed in acts of justice and mercy. Later still, by the time of the prophet Daniel in the 2nd century before Christ, there was an expectation that the role of judge would be delegated in part at least to the Messianic prince who would establish the new kingdom, and the scope of the judgment itself was broadened out to embrace the concept of resurrection, when many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt’ (Dan. 12.2).
This is the cultural background against which the New Testament was written. It sets the scene for many of Jesus’ parables about banquets and wedding-feasts, about the stewardship of resources, about the separation of sheep and goats. After Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, and in the light of his identification with the Messiah, the Old Testament prophecies concerning the Day of the Lord are seen as pointing to the day when Christ will return in glory to judge the living and the dead (eg Acts 17.31). The early church seems to have believed that this would happen quite soon, and Paul seems to have shared this expectation in his first letter to the Thessalonians (1 Thess 4.13-18). By the time the second letter was written, probably not by Paul himself, the Church is still expecting Christ to return as judge, but the second coming is no longer so imminent, and so it has remained. John takes a rather different view, suggesting that we are judged in this life by our response to Jesus’ life and death. In John 3.19 Jesus says: this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.’ In the last week of his life, as the crisis approaches, he declares: Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out (John 12.31).
2000 years on and still counting, what are we to make of such widely differing perceptions? Perhaps the divergence is more apparent than real. As we go through life, all of us have to make choices between the light and the darkness. Each one may not seem as dramatic and clear-cut as that, but our little steps, our little choices are cumulative in their effect. And there is one critical choice that we all have to make is between relying on Jesus or attempting to rely on something or somebody else. And that is a clear-cut choice. It’s like falling in love; you may take some time to make up your mind, but in the end you have to commit yourself without any ifs and buts. If you cannot or will not do that, you are actually saying no. Moreover, the time for little incremental choices, or for cautious wait-and-see choices may at any time be suddenly cut short, either individually by death, or collectively by the breaking in of the great crisis at the end of time. Besides, whether we choose darkness for ourselves here and now, as John would have it, or are judged at the last to have chosen the darkness as Paul might put it, the outcome is the same. In Paul’s words we risk finding ourselves separated from the life- giving presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might (2 Thess 1.9. No terrifying dragons. No everlasting fires. But what a desolate, lifeless, loveless prospect.
We believe that thou shalt come to be our judge. We don’t know how, and we don’t know when, but we do know that the scriptures urge us constantly to take seriously the prospect of judgment, and to be ready at any time. Alan Goodison, whose predecessor in Dublin had been murdered by the IRA, knew what it meant to live with the knowledge that his life might be cut short at any time, but of course the same applies to all of us, even if we may judge the probability of sudden death to be less than he did at that time. His advice was to be ready at any moment to clasp the hand that Jesus stretches out to us we may not have time to do any more than that.
Zacchaeus, by his own account as well as his reputation among his neighbours, has been choosing the darkness for many years, but something has stirred in him a sufficient longing for the light for him to want to see Jesus. So he comes out of curiosity to see what is going on, as perhaps some of you may have come this morning, and Jesus who doesn’t want anyone to condemn themselves to the darkness, Jesus whose love reaches out to all his children, looks up into the branches and says, Come on down, Zacchaeus; and Zacchaeus comes down in a great hurry to take him home. He has chosen the light after all, and it soon shows in what he decides to do with the wealth he has amassed. Then Jesus says to him, Today salvation has come to this house For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.’ Judgment there must be, sooner or later, but the most important thing I know is that God is love. And I know that in Jesus he has done everything in his loving power to save me. Love does not compel. I remain free to say no, or perhaps to be too busy and preoccupied with what seems more urgent in my life to say either yes or no. But the offer is there, backed by the truest love the world has ever known. Salvation rescue – is the preferred outcome for all God’s children, however far they may have strayed into the shadows. To-day there is still time; tomorrow, who knows? Jesus says, Hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house to-day (Luke 19.5).