It’s
been an interesting week for those of us who were participating in our youth
mission week.
We’ve gotten stung by yellow jackets and mosquitos, gotten paint
under our nails, gotten blisters wielding unfamiliar tools, and gotten aches in
muscles we don’t ordinarily use.
We’ve
also gotten the tremendous satisfaction of completing tasks that could be done,
the realization that we couldn’t do everything we wished we could have done,
and the knowledge that we could accomplish things we didn’t know we were
capable of.
This
is a lesson that our young people learned, but it was also a lesson many of us
adults who helped out learned, or needed a refresher course on.
There
was another lesson in the midst of it all. On Thursday, a somewhat frustrating
day because the rain washed out our the outdoor projects, we talked about the
little voices in our heads, those little doubts and fears, those words of “why
am I doing this?,” the wonderings about why these people just couldn’t do this
work themselves…in other words, we talked about how common it is for us to
judge ourselves and to judge others.
It
was an interesting conversation juxtaposed against a remarkable comment by Pope
Francis, who when asked about the Catholic Church’s position on gays and
lesbians, said “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good
will, who am I to judge?”
Who
am I to judge? The phrase sent shock waves through the religious world,
because, as one news commentator said “Isn’t he supposed to be in the judging
business? He is the pope, after all…”
But
Francis, while not turning away from traditional church doctrine about
homosexual acts, said he wasn’t in the judging business when it came to
faithful followers of Christ whose attraction was to people of the same gender.
He seemed to be saying “Their faithfulness is infinitely more important than
their sexual orientation. I’m more interested in having them know how beloved
they are in God’s eyes than in judging them.”
In
fact, the pope was saying precisely what Jesus is saying in today’s gospel
story. “Who am I to judge?” Jesus was responding to a request from a man to
settle a family dispute. The man wanted to use Jesus as a club to beat over the
head of the man’s brother, so he could get a share of the inheritance. He
wanted Jesus to be his expert witness, the ultimate rabbi deciding a legal
matter, as was the norm in those days. The
people of Israel were used to having rabbis or learned teachers serve as judges
for all kinds of disputes, and rabbis were used to serving that function. But Jesus
knew in an instant what this was about – greed over money, pure and simple –
and so he refused to get caught in the middle of it. He refused to sit in the
judgment seat. He said, “Who am I to judge this matter?” He didn’t want to have
anything to do with a petty argument over money. “Who am I to judge?”
It’s
an important question, one we might all ask on a regular basis, because the
world encourages us to judge. It says that it’s a good thing to see who works
the hardest, who earns the most, who inherits the larger share, who has the
most power. We call those people winners and we are encouraged to applaud those
people and things that we deem good, in our judgment. It also says that we
should look down on those who are not like the winners. We should think poorly
of the losers in the world.
But
what does Jesus say for us to do? Don’t judge, at least not by the world’s
standards. Most certainly don’t judge based upon money or power or ethnicity or
religion or race. Jesus says that’s worrying about the wrong things. Jesus says
to put aside the world’s standards, which have no value in God’s eyes, and to
take off the judge’s robe, for which we have been given no authority, and
simply see those who truly need help, and give it. Don’t judge.
This week, one of the prime lessons we all learned as we did our work was “who
am I to judge?” In the course of our week at work, we talked to the homeowners
we were serving. Their stories were a reminder that for too many of us, we are
one paycheck or one medical problem or one major car repair away from being in
their shoes, needing some help. And in developing relationships with them, we
learned that we no longer felt any need to be in the judging business. We hung
up our judges’ robes when we picked up our hammers and paintbrushes. We stopped
judging when we saw these homeowners as our neighbors rather than as “needy
people.”
After
all, who are we to judge? Would we want to be measured against the world’s
skewed standards? Or would we prefer to simply be loved and appreciated for who
we are, as beloved children of God?
Pope
Francis was right. Jesus was right. Who am I to judge? Would I want to be
judged in that way? No. I am not God. It’s above my pay grade, as it should be.
But
who am I to help? Absolutely perfect. Who am I to offer a hand without
judgment? Absolutely beloved for it.
Amen.
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