Telling the Truth with Mercy not Judgment
A Sermon by Revd Will Morris
Today’s Gospel reading seems, almost eerily, like a text specifically written for our troubled world. A text about outward virtue and inward corruption. A text that shows it’s not what’s on the outside and goes in that is sinful; but what’s inside us that comes out.
It’s a text that speaks about hypocrites in power: false smiles hiding malevolent intentions. About leaders, virtuous on the outside, immoral on the inside. Upholding the established order, but fomenting division. About leaders who judge people based on externalities: their gender, their sexuality, their poverty, their skin colour, speaking a different language, coming from a different country, above all having a different religion. About leaders who hold themselves out as the virtuous opposites of those they attack and demonize, often claiming in the process a Christian heritage, or worse that they are defending Christianity. But, who in actuality, are not motivated not by virtue, but by all those things that come from within us and defile: ambition for power, for adulation, for money, for fame, for popularity. Who are motivated by anger, hatred, malice, bigotry, tribalism.
Whether we are talking about those leaders who peddle stories about a golden age ruined by the incomers, by “the others”, the outsiders, while focused themselves only on accumulating personal power. Or whether we are talking about those who speak the language of freedom and justice while perpetuating the most deadly and abhorrent bigotry of the past two millennia: antisemitism. Or whether we are talking about high-ranking clerics who extol and require of their flocks strict adherence to God’s inviolable rules, while they themselves employ their own positions of trust to pressure and abuse, mentally and sexually. Or whether we are talking about high-ranking male executives who speak the language of gender equality, but use their power and dominance to sexually abuse women. Whichever of these it is, this reading, Jesus’ words, seem directly, and in the present tense, addressed to all of them. External virtue; internal corruption. If anybody ever doubted that we humans are fallen, sinful, imperfect – you pick your adjective – just look around at some of those who purport to be our leaders. As Jesus says in today’s reading, quoting from the Prophet Isaiah: “This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”
So, end of sermon? Well, not quite. Because without subtracting a word from what I’ve just said, nevertheless, I also need to say more: three things more, in fact, which link together. First, we must be very aware that there is always danger to the one who judges, as well as the one whom they judge. Second, pastorally, as Christians, we need to look below the surface at what motivates those who act in this way. And, finally, we need to acknowledge that these characteristics exist within each of us as well – as they do in all human beings – and we need to understand that ignoring them, or trying to bury them, can make those feelings more toxic, rather than neutralizing them.
So, first the danger to us of judging others. There is nothing more comforting, indeed more delicious, than knowing that we are in the right, and someone else is in the wrong. And this feeling is supercharged when we know – we know! – that God is on our side. There are, however, at least two problems with this. The first is we could be wrong. Our judgments are often superficial, based on little knowledge. Sometimes this superficiality is encouraged by those who seek to manipulate our tendency to rush to judgment. Sometimes it is caused by our own desire to take shortcuts, effectively laziness. I shudder when I think of some of the conclusions I have jumped to, judgments of others I have made, which have withered as the facts emerge. Erroneous judgments with little cost to me, but sometimes huge cost to the person on whom that judgment fell. Judgment needs to be tempered with humility.
But still more importantly, judgment needs to be tempered with mercy. Even when something truly wrong has occurred, that sense of outrage and that sense of righteousness that motivate us to want to try to right that wrong, can quickly harden within us to become something less beneficial, less attractive. Righteousness can become self-righteousness; outrage can become blind anger; and the need to distinguish ourselves from those peddling divisive tribalism can harden into a tribalism of our own. In short, judging others will almost always damage us. But the corrective for that is not to ignore the infraction, but to respond to it with mercy, rather than with judgment. Because in acknowledging what has happened, but responding to it with mercy, we replace a desire to rebuke and condemn with a desire to heal and to renew. Judging and condemning can close us down and make us smaller; mercy opens us back up again. To repeat, that’s not to say we should ignore what is going on, or that we should be afraid to name it. But trying to meet fire with fire will only end up burning us. Jesus makes clear time and again that we should help the victims of injustice, and in our lives we should model what is true, and good, and kind. But he died on the cross to save us from our sins, to reconcile us with God and our neighbor. Judgment does not reconcile; mercy does.
Second, I mentioned our obligation as Christians to get below the surface. And this is, obviously, linked to showing mercy that we’ve just looked at. But, however vile the things another person says, or does, we have an obligation to try help that person, too. This again is in no way to condone, and it’s not to excuse. But to go back to my metaphor, if you fight fire with fire, all that happens is that still more burns. Anger begets only more anger; violence only more violence. If we are to break that cycle, we need to find the causes, not further to aggravate them. What causes the other person’s anger, their distrust, ambition, the need to denigrate others, the need define themselves against the other tribe. What causes the racism, or the sexual exploitation, or the violence? If we can find that out, we may be able to help them, as well as stop them from hurting others.
It may sound naïve, but I believe the Jesus’ purpose in telling us to go the extra mile, turn the other cheek, to also give our shirt when someone takes our coat, is not just to show by example that our faith shapes our lives differently to others – although that’s part of it. And it’s not just to try to break that vicious and oppositional cycle of an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth – although that’s part of it, too. But I really believe it’s because God wants us to create a space and an opportunity where, thrown off their guard, there is a moment of possibility where we might be able to establish a human connection, a relationship, which enables us to get inside that person, and help God heal whatever it is that drives them. The God who told us to do these things, died on a cross precisely to bring that reconciliation, and to lift the burden of sin from all people. From all people, not just from “good” people, because it is sin, full stop, that perverts the world, that destroys communities, that prevents us from reconciling with each other, and prevents us from reconciling with God. If we can step back from our outrage, our desire to judge, for a moment, that may happen.
And finally, what about these characteristics inside us? The fact that they are there – although I can only truly speak for myself, where they very definitely swirl around – is something that should make us even more wary of judging and condemning. Because hypocrisy is not a one way street. But more importantly than that, this also has an important bearing on the second point I’ve just talked about, because these feelings and emotions that have become toxic in others, can easily become toxic within us, too. If we don’t try to deal with those emotions, ashamed of them though we may be, and try instead to bottle them up, or to discipline our unruly minds by adherence to strict rules, those feelings fester and grow into something still more virulent. And they will, eventually, force themselves out in different ways – often focused by us onto others, because we can’t bear to admit them to ourselves. Hating ourselves, we try to tear others down, to build ourselves up; or taking the qualities we loathe in ourselves, we try to attribute them to others.
So what’s the answer to this, for me, for you? The answer is to be open, honest, and expose the things that trouble us to the light; to bring them into the open and deal with them rather than let them poison us and our relationships. And how to do that? Honesty with ourselves, and with others about our own deficiencies is important. In many cases therapy may also be important. But for me, as a Christian, what really helps is the knowledge that I can lay all this out before the God who has already died that I may be forgiven. When God become incarnate in Jesus he was both fully human and fully divine. Although he had no sin himself, he experienced the full range of human emotions: joy and sorrow, pleasure and grief, fulfilment and frustration. And as he hung on the cross, he experienced that ultimate human loneliness that comes from total abandonment: “My God, my God,” he cries out “why have you forsaken me?” There is nothing about who we are or what we experience that our God does not understand; nothing he hasn’t seen before; nothing he won’t forgive; nothing he can’t heal – so long as we are open with him, so long as we let nothing get between us and him.
There is much to despair of in this world, but there is still more to be hopeful about. We are not born hypocrites; and what is within us does not have to defile. We should speak clearly about what we see, but is by then by showing mercy, rather than sitting in judgment, that we can make a difference. A difference than brings not more hurt, but rather healing to this troubled world.
Amen
