Judgment as Consolation
Proper 25(30)
Judgment. We work hard to steer away from it. We don’t want to be judged. Neither do we want to be viewed as judgmental. We disagree on how judgment should be dispensed and who should receive it. We want those “other people” to be judged. We are inclined to draw a line in the sand to separate the guilty and the innocent. Judgment signals the end. It means that a judge has considered all the facts and rendered a decision. And depending on which side you’re on, you are either gleeful or gloomy.
The opposite of judgment is impunity, without punishment. Like many of you, I have been haunted by the images and stories coming out of Chicago in the past few weeks. Impunity is on full display – barbaric violence and calculated abductions perpetrated against community members. And Gaza. Although we may be hopeful about the negotiated ceasefire, it doesn’t erase the impunity of the last two years. The deliberate genocide of more than 67,000 Palestinians and the maiming of countless others, as most of the world stood silent.
Fleming Rutledge challenges the Church’s aversion to judgment:
When a culture of impunity is present, so that one can do whatever comes to hand with no fear whatsoever of consequences, human beings become bestial toward one another…Imagine a world without judgments. That’s impunity. Is that what we want?...[W]e are unable to live with the thought of the judgment of God because we don’t want to allow it into our tidy concept of God as loving, forgiving, and accepting. Do we want a world without the wrath of God? A culture of impunity is nothing less than hell. 1
“Judgment” comes from the same root word as “justice” and “righteousness.” Even so, this week’s Old Testament reading disrupts and provokes. We expect and want to believe that God is ever patient, merciful and abiding in steadfast love. And He is. Yet, Jeremiah presents a God who also judges all of creation.
Walter Brueggemann writes:
[A]ncient speaking and hearing keeps pushing into our present. What it “meant” has incredible power to “mean” now. The text does not need to be applied to our situation. Rather our situation needs to be submitted to the text for a fresh discernment. It is our situation, not the text, that requires a new interpretation. (emphasis added) 2
We are invited to listen in on the dialogue between Jeremiah and God, as the prophet pleads for mercy for his corrupt and idolatrous community. How does God’s Living Word of judgment and justice interpret our present evil and these turbulent times? How can we collectively discern the Way forward with Jesus?
It’s 6th century BCE, 500 years before Jesus. God’s people in the northern kingdom of Israel have been conquered by Babylon, the regional superpower. They were abducted from their homes and deported to Babylon, an unknown, foreign land. For years, Jeremiah has been admonishing his people in the southern kingdom to live in covenant relationship with their Creator. He warned that they too will be captured and exiled to a foreign land because Yahweh will judge their corrupt, idolatrous ways. Yet, the people persisted in putting their trust in the powers, gods and idols of their own making. So God sends a drought to punish the people.
God’s people are on the edge, in crisis. The drought is all encompassing. There is no water and vegetation has shriveled up. Desolation. Famine is looming. All creatures – humanity and animals – are mourning. None are spared – nobility and slaves; landowners and laborers; young and old.
Jeremiah acknowledges the sins of his people and boldly petitions that God “do something.” To act like how God is expected to act. Yet, God responds with a scathing rejection in verses 11 to 18 (which are notably skipped over by those who arranged the lectionary readings). God tells Jeremiah to stop praying for his people. God rejects their liturgies and spiritual practices. He condemns their acquiescence to false prophets who offer “a religion of easy assurances” or namely, impunity. In the chilling words of the Lord concerning these false prophets, “They are prophesying to you a lying vision, worthless divination and the deceit of their own minds.” Instead of heeding to Jeremiah’s pleas for mercy, Yahweh forecasts more destruction and punishment to come: bodies strewn in the field, widespread starvation, whole families destroyed without anyone to bury them, wailing.
Jeremiah cries, “We look for peace, but find no good; for a time of healing, but there is terror instead.” The prophet again confesses his people’s wickedness, with his final appeal to the sovereignty of Yahweh, “We set our hope on you, for it is you who do all this.” Our reading doesn’t provide a neat and tidy closure. Instead, we are confronted with God’s apparent silence, an exit from His conversation with Jeremiah. God does not answer Jeremiah. Brueggemann writes, “[T]here are limits beyond which Yahweh will not be pushed.” 3
This sacred, Living Word of God feels prickly and unsettling. I’m not sure what to do with the wrath of God directed against all of creation, including those who are seemingly innocent. A God who says no more intercessory prayers. A God who tells His people, “I don’t know you.” A God who punishes all for the iniquities of some. I have a hard time wrapping my head around this form of justice.
Jeremiah also offers us a picture of the Holy One who expects more from His covenant people. God’s justice is cosmically wild. He will not tolerate impunity and judges evil. Judgment is God’s response to our relentless pleas for justice. Can this be a word of consolation for us? We can’t get to mercy without passing through judgment. Our salvation comes through judgment. Perhaps this looks like confessing together each week what we have done and what we have left undone, what we have said and left unsaid. Moreover, the Kingdom of God is ushered in through judgment. Restoration and wholeness – the new world order that we are straining to envision – comes through God judging all of us and all that is wrong and evil in our world. God judges hate, vengeance and unforgiveness. God reigns by declaring justice against all idolatry of power and wealth, dehumanization and death.
The conversation between Jeremiah and God addresses not individuals but the whole. We will be judged and saved as a community. Perhaps our collective response matters more than, or at least as much as, our individual responses. So we can’t hide behind our personal preferences, our individual choices and actions. The Church’s collective outcry, as well as the Church’s collective silence against injustice, is heard by the Creator of the universe. Like Jeremiah, we are invited to boldly acknowledge and name evil and to cry out for God’s mercy, with our voices and our bodies. But it is God who judges and saves. How do we, as God’s people, submit ourselves and our current climate of impunity and unrestrained evil to God’s Holy, Living Word of judgment and justice?
1 Fleming Rutledge, Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ (2018), 175.
2 Walter Brueggemann, A Commentary on Jeremiah, Exile & Homecoming (1998), 18-19.
3 Brueggemann, 138.
Photo Credit: Jezael Magoza