Rollin’ Like
a River
Matthew
25:31-46
Back in seminary Mercer Street separated the main campus from the library. Now when the seminary was founded Mercer Street was just a cow path. Even many decades later it was only a sleepy little street. By the time I attended seminary, Mercer Street was a traffic heavy road where cars routinely sped well above the posted limits. So what did we seminarians call Mercer Street? We called it the street of “the quick of the dead.” Seminary humor. We were, of course, making light of that phrase in the traditional rendition of the Apostles’ Creed which says that Jesus will…”judge the quick and the dead.” The Creed does not mean here, what we meant by quick in crossing Mercer Street. Rather, “quick” for the Creed means “living.” Jesus judges the living and the dead.
Most of us have a caricature of the Last Judgment in our mind’s eye. The caricature may vary from person to person, but for many people we see ourselves standing before St. Peter at the Pearly Gates. Light is emanating all around us. A movie of our lives is flashing before our eyes, much to our embarrassment and horror! For some of us, we worry what the pronouncement of judgment will be. For others, we wonder why the taxi driver gets to live in a big mansion while the preacher gets a little shack. St. Peter jokes come back to mind. Of course, this is a caricature of the last judgment. No such description of judgment day is given in Scripture, at least not one that is literal. Indeed, the Christian’s concern with judgment is almost always overblown and unnecessary. The Creed makes clear, and Scripture makes even clearer, what word we will hear on that day: grace. Jesus Christ, Savior of the nations, was crucified, dead and buried, yet rose again on the third day, and offers to us the forgiveness of sins.
*****
For many, our focus in this part of the Creed is on the truth that Jesus will judge the dead. Yet the Creed’s concern is equally on the truth that Jesus will judge the living. But what does it mean to say that Jesus will judge the living?
To say that God in Jesus Christ judges the living one must understand the relationship in Scripture between God’s judgment and God’s justice. In Scripture, the Lord is a God of justice and God’s judgment is expressed always as a response to God’s justice and the lack of it in human societies. Put another way, God acts in judgment because of injustice. We see God’s heart for justice throughout Scripture.
· In Exodus 3:7-8 God explains to Moses his motivation for rescuing the Israelites: “I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians.”
· Exodus 20:1, the prologue to the Ten Commandments, reinforces the link between God’s judgment upon the Egyptians and God’s desire for justice among his people: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” In other words: because God is a God who brought the Israelites out of the injustice of slavery, therefore they should build their society upon these commandments. And what will it mean to have these commandments as the basis of their society? The commandments are the foundation for a just society.
· The prophet Jeremiah, quoting the Lord, declares against the king of Judah, saying, “’Did not your father have food and drink? He did what was right and just, so all went well with him. He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?’ declares the Lord” (22:15-16). Amazingly, in our modern context where knowing the Lord is so often identified with merely a verbal affirmation, the Lord links knowledge of his name with defending the cause of the poor and needy.
· The prophet Amos declared the word of the Lord, saying, “Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never failing stream” (5:24). Again, this is an extraordinary word and should be understood in terms of its Hebraic context where “righteousness” is not understood as a personal or private moral category but as a communal expression of just living, “right relationships.”
· The prophet Micah famously narrowed the ten commandments down to three: “He has showed you, O mortal, what is good and what the Lord requires of you: to act justly and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God” (6:8). It has been remarked that too often modern Christians reverse the order of priority outlined by Micah!
So what does it mean that God judges the living? To be judged by the Living God means to be judged, at least in part, if not in whole, by our allegiance to – and expression of – God’s justice in our lives.
*****
Yet before we can go too far in saying that God’s judgment is always linked to justice, we must explore Jesus’ powerful parable in Matthew 25:31-48, the so-called Parable of the Last Judgment. Before anything else is said, let us be clear: this is a parable, not a literal description of the last judgment. Yet even as a parable it both affirms and challenges the notion that God’s judgment is expressed always as a response to God’s justice and the lack of it in human societies, for it seems that Jesus’ concern is more toward compassion than justice. To feed the hungry, clothe the naked and visit those sick and in prison, are these not acts of compassion rather than stands for justice? Granted, Jesus challenges his disciples with the notion that our identification with – and compassion for – the sufferings of “the least of these” is an act of righteousness toward Jesus himself. Yet this still begs the question: what is the difference between compassion and justice?
The common answer to this question is to make the distinction between giving a hungry person a fish versus teaching that same person how to fish so that she or he can catch their own supper. The gift of fish is said to be compassion, while teaching the person to fish is said to be justice. However, this dichotomy is too simplistic. While feeding a hungry person a fish dinner is an act of compassion, the call to do justice requires that one asks systemic questions. Justice requires that one ask the systemic educational question: why is it that this community’s educational system is so lacking that the populace does not know how to fish? Justice requires that one ask the systemic economic question: why is it that people who are able to work and willing to work still are not able to afford to buy so basic a necessity as a fishing pole? Justice requires that one ask the systemic environmental question: why is it that when people take their fishing poles down to the river they find it so polluted the fish are all dead? Compassion is a necessary, human compulsion to act to relieve suffering; compassion is at the core of our personhood such that we are not fully human if we lack compassion. Justice, however, is a step beyond compassion and we are not fully Jesus’ disciples if we ignore justice.
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We now run head long into the dilemma of many modern churches: what, then, shall we do? Justice requires advocacy on behalf of the poor, but advocacy requires unanimity, at least to a certain extent, within the faith community. The U.S. Council of Roman Catholic bishops are able to make social policy on behalf of their denomination because their church is hierarchical and its church culture is tolerant of – some would say even dependent on – such top down pronouncements. However, the bishops are an exception. In most churches such top down pronouncements are met with a mixture of apathy and anger, belittlement and scorn. Most modern church goers intuitively understand that today’s ethical issues are exceptionally complex mixtures of economic, social, medical, technological and political issues and no single pastor has the ability to speak adequately for a large number of parishioners; to attempt to do so is demagoguery. What, then, shall we do?
Many in the church today argue for a strict separation of religion and politics: “Don’t preach politics, pastor!” they say, often with an implied threat to withhold money and support. However, such a separation is naïve at best, and that such thinking is widespread among modern church members shows how captive the church has become to the culture and how shallow its theology. As a pastor steeped in the Reformed tradition of John Calvin, I vigorously reject such impositions upon my preaching and teaching responsibility. Jesus was not considered a threat by Jewish and Roman leadership because his teaching was without social consequence. We would never say to the youth minister: “Teach the kids the Bible but make sure you don’t address any issues with which they will be confronted by the youth culture.” No! Rather, we expect our youth ministers to address issues of sexuality, substance abuse and peer relationships with the youth; to do otherwise will get a youth minister fired. In a similar way, pastors are obligated to address issues of abortion, immigration, homosexuality and war in their preaching and teaching ministries. The question is not whether such teaching is appropriate; the question is how can one address these issues in a “fair and balanced” way?
What is needed is for Christians of all political persuasions to bring their faith to the great discussions of the day. So often this is difficult, even for the regular church attendee, for as a culture we are most fluent in the languages of political discourse and psychological conversation. Most Americans speak both these languages; all Americans speak at least one of them. Our debates in Sunday School classes or around lunch tables either echo the talking heads on CNN, Fox or PBS or they articulate the concepts of Freud and Jung with practiced ease. When the Christian faith is brought into the great discussions of our day it is often merely a caricature of the faith: either Christianity as personal morality on the right or Christianity as political ideology on the left. Where is the full-bodied, incarnational, Biblical faith that challenges the assumptions of both the political left and the political right? Certainly authors exist that bring their rousing faith to the roundtable – Tony Campolo and Stanley Haurwas from “the right,” and Jim Wallis and the late William Sloane-Coffin from “the left” come to mind – but the absence of such discourse from most pulpits and pews stifles the church’s ability to live out its call to justice.
*****
I went to see Superman the other day. I was struck by one scene in particular. There is a scene in which one of the characters explains Superman’s motivation by saying, “Yeah, yeah, truth and justice and all that….” I thought to myself, “They got it wrong! They left out ‘…the American way!’” The American Way. Perhaps the movie left out this traditional saying because movie’s today are global enterprises; perhaps the reason concerned domestic politics. Whatever the reason, I was offended, and sad.
When I was a boy, I was taught that America was to be different. We are a nation founded upon big ideas and ideals. “We the people…” Three centuries ago that was a radical idea. “In order to form a more perfect union…” In any century that is a radical idea. But where are the transformational ideas today? The Republicans’ big idea is “less taxes!” That is nothing more than a bribe to the rich. The Democrats’ big idea is “more entitlements!” That is nothing more than a bribe to the poor. Our national discourse has more to do with pandering for political votes than engaging in a discussion about how to form a more perfect union. Why are things this way? How did we descend to such depths of moral and intellectual depravity?
Perhaps the answer is found in our sources. Who is it that most of us hear? Paul says that “faith comes by hearing, and hearing the Word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). By whom is our faith being fed? Rush Limbaugh? Oprah Winfrey? Where are the lightning strikes of Jesus? Where are the thunder calls of Jeremiah? How can we hope to reclaim the ideals of our nation if we do not allow the God of justice to shape, form and transform our ideas into ideals worth proclaiming? The very best moments of our nation are moments when leaders immersed in Biblical faith spoke to our hearts and minds: Lincoln’s second inaugural address, or King’s “I Have a Dream” speech come to mind. The God who judges the living is the God who calls us to justice. Will we heed that call? Can we heed that call? Not if we allow ourselves to be fed by Rush rather than Jesus. Not if our big ideas are formed by Oprah rather than Jeremiah. Hear the word of the Lord, my friends: “Let justice roll on like a river….”
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