Week 26 Sunday
Week 26 Sunday
Is the Church to Take the Role of Judge?
Matthew 23:4; John 12:31-32; Romans 14:10-11; James 2:12-13; Revelation 2:23
We must look at one more half-truth. There are those who would tell us that the function of the church is to stand aloof from all these movements of social reconstruction, to commit to none of them, but to be the constant judge of all. I have the feeling that this counsel is an escape mentality.
Isn’t this getting out of the problem by assuming the role of a judge, instead of being in it as a participant, suffering along with it, and thus saving it from within? If we assume the role of judge in the struggle ahead of us, would we not turn out the perfect Pharisee instead of the perfect Christian? Did not Jesus reject all the methods of trying to save the world by standing outside the process? Did he not accept the way of standing within it, making its sorrows, its problems, its sins his very own, the cross thus becoming inevitable?
In the early days of the Salvation Army in Britain, a young female worker was brought before a judge to be tried for the sin of seeking the lost in these scandalous ways. The judge deliberately left the judgment seat and stood alongside her as the proceedings went on. He identified himself with her and would be tried along with her. In doing so, he revealed the Christian attitude: “God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17 CEB).
Jesus rejects the role of judge. But a strange thing happens. Through this very identification he becomes the Judge. The Christian church today can become the judge of movements of social reconstruction only to the degree that it is in them and suffers vicariously. Then the church gains a moral authority which makes it a judge. Not otherwise. To take the attitude of an aloof judge is to assume an unchristian attitude.
O Christ, you judge us from a cross. Help us to gain our moral authority over the world from the same place of our own suffering for people. Amen.
Week 26 Monday
Visited and Redeemed
Luke 1:78; 7:16; Philippians 2:5-8; Hebrews 2:9-18
We saw yesterday that the only way of redemption is for the Christian to get into these movements and save from within. It will not do to assume the role of judge and leave it at that. As this is fundamental to the whole Christian attitude, we must look at it more steadily. Zechariah said a penetrating thing in Luke 1:68, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people.” Note the phrase “visited and redeemed.” He probably had little notion of how amazing in its sweep that redemption was, and how deep the visitation.
In the redeeming of the world, God might have issued orders from heaven or might have been incarnate as a Teacher, an Example; or God might have done just what God did, namely, become One with us, and let everything that falls on us fall on the divine self—plus. This was visitation.
The church must follow in God’s steps at this point. It dare not merely issue condemnations of the social order from its sheltered sanctuaries; it dare not be a detached spectator of the world going through its struggles after a new order; it dare not merely take the role of teacher. It must visit, and that visitation must mean in its case what it meant in God’s: a visitation that means identification.
This identification must not be a generality; it must be specific enough to cause it to suffer. As Wade Crawford Barclay has said, “The question is whether the church can become specific enough to save itself.” Jesus’ visitation was specific; ours must be too. It must be sufficiently specific to gain a specific cross. Dealing in pious generalities is usually evasion of issues. We must find the places where the real issues are being joined and take sides.
If we refuse the visitation, we shall renounce the redemption. We cannot have one without the other.
O Christ, we pray you to save us from the spirit that would save ourselves by various subterfuges. For we know if we save ourselves, we shall not save others. Give us courage to be specific. Amen.
Week 26 Tuesday
The Blending of Two Emphases
Matthew 18:6, 10, 14; 21:12-16; Hebrews 11:40
We have now come in our quest to the place where we can see the necessity of blending the individual and social emphases into a living whole. Jesus did just that. Of him it was said:
A bruised reed shall he not break,
and smoking flax shall he not quench,
till he send forth judgment unto victory,
And in his name shall the Gentiles trust. (Matt. 12:20-21 KJV)
Here we find this blend: a tenderness toward individuals, a refusal to break the bruised reed or quench the smoking flax, and a demand for social justice. For “judgment” was not a deciding of legal points, but a giving of a fair, equal opportunity to all—the words social justice express it.
First, there was a tenderness toward individuals, the reeds that have been bruised by the storms of nature or by the trampling feet of people. The gospel comes as an infinite tenderness to those who are hurt by the awful powers of unconscious nature, or by the conscious inhumanities of person to person, or bruised by their own follies and sins. Tenderness is also extended to those who are “smoking flax”; to those in whom life and hope are very dim, in whom the fires are about to go out, the gospel comes as an inspiration, hope, life. We must never fail the stricken individual by withholding this message of tender healing and life-healing hope, for this is a badly stricken world.
But just because we are so interested in individuals, we must pass on to that “judgment” that would end social injustices through which many lives are being bruised, and many made to burn dimly. Just because we are passionately interested in individuals, we must be passionately interested in social justice. You are really not interested in either in the fullest sense unless you are interested in both. For neither can be fully effective without the other.
O Christ, to whom these two worlds of individual and social were one, help us to cease our divisions at this point and to make them one. Amen.
Week 26 Wednesday
The Meaning of Judgment
Psalm 82:2-4; Proverbs 22:27; Isaiah 1:17; 59:14-15; Luke 11:42
The blending we saw yesterday was that of tenderness toward the individual and stern demand for social justice—the bruised reed was not to be broken, and judgment was to be sent forth to victory. These two are integral parts of the work of Christ, so the account says. If so, then we must look more steadily at the meaning of judgment. It has a history. It came down through the Hebrew tradition, where the individual and the social emphases were one. The Jewish people, in their corporate life, were to express the will of God. The idea of religion being a private affair between the soul and God is unthinkable to the Old Testament prophets. The nation—as a nation—were the chosen people of God, and as such were to express the mind of God in their total life. So the word judgment came to express equality, fairness, divine law, and divine love operating in the sphere of the collective life.
Jesus took this same attitude. He expected the nation to embody the kingdom. When they refused, he said, “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruits of it” (Matt. 21:43). Note, it was to “a nation.” His final appeal was to Jerusalem, representing the nation, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! . . . How often would I have gathered your children together” to embody this divine will, “and you would not” (23:37). Jesus also demanded of the cities of Capernaum and Bethsaida (11:21-23) a corporate repentance because he had expected a corporate obedience. We forget that note in the gospel, and because we forget it, the world is corporately adrift, without guidance.
We have allowed this note of the corporate expression of the will of God to largely drop out of Christianity, to its own impoverishment, and to the worse than impoverishment of the corporate life. We must rediscover it, or allow humanity to perish through internal discord.
O Christ, who came to send forth judgment to victory, help us to catch anew that note and fearlessly apply it to our total living. If we do not, we perish. Amen.
Week 26 Thursday
The Wisdom of the Just
Psalm 72:2; Isaiah 1:27; Amos 5:24
We saw that the deepest need was to set judgment, or social justice, into human affairs. This passage concerning John the Baptist emphasizes the same: “He will . . . turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared” (Luke 1:17). Note “a people” prepared; a nation was to stand ready to do the will of God. And how were they to be prepared? By two things: (1) turning the hearts of the fathers to the children; in other words, by making the generation now in power cease from its own selfishness and think in terms of the betterment of the rising generation; this to be done by (2) embodying “the wisdom of the just.”
Note that phrase, “the wisdom of the just.” It is a truism to say that what the poor and the dispossessed need is not charity but justice, but it needs to be said again and again. We have seen the unwisdom of injustice. We have built a society in which those in control have intercepted the gain brought by science and technology and have kept them from passing on to the people. The result? Economic disaster to everybody. The unwisdom of the unjust. Each nation tries to grab all the raw materials and advantages it can for itself, regardless of what happens to others. The result? International anarchy, fear, and war! The unwisdom of the unjust. Talk about the kingdom of God not being practical and workable? Let those who have not made a mess of things by injustice bring that criticism! This generation is disqualified.
A basic, thoroughgoing justice for everybody would be social wisdom. If we will not listen to this word from the sacred Book, then we must listen to it spoken by the fiery tongues of a world in flames. For God speaks! And the wisdom of the just is God’s message.
O Christ, we pray you to save us from our own follies, and help us to be lovingly just in the whole of our relationships. And help us to begin now. Amen.
Week 26 Friday
Judgment unto Victory
Habakkuk 2:4-14; Matthew 15:13; Luke 10:18; Colossians 2:15 (Weymouth)
Yesterday we saw that God speaks, and God’s word is that we should learn the wisdom of the just. But we are afraid of it for two reasons: it will cause loss to us, and it won’t work. I do not say that it will cost nothing to be just. You will have to have the selfish self knocked out before you can become fundamentally just and willing to give everybody an equal opportunity. It will mean a real renunciation—a community of sharing.
In the parable of the workers, the master said to those who grumbled at his equality—where the last hired got as much as the first—“Friend, I am doing you no wrong” (Matt. 20:13). He spoke to a common fear. We are afraid that equal justice will do us a wrong. To this privileged, unsocial self it will. But a new, just, community self will be born, and to that person it can be said, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong; in fact, I am doing you a supreme good.”
But we are afraid it won’t work. The verse concerning Jesus says that he will “send forth judgment unto victory” (Matt. 12:20 KJV). Will he? Can he do it? He is doing it! Today he is breaking down this unjust and therefore decaying social order. His hammer is smiting it. It is crumbling to dust at our feet. Its injustices are breaking it down. It is the hour of judgment—judgment in the sense of condemnation—in order that the hour of judgment in the sense of social justice might come. The condemnation falls on us that the construction might begin through us. He is sending forth judgment unto victory! The Eternal God will not fail in the redemptive purpose and that redemptive purpose includes the total life.
O Christ, we thank you that this whole redemptive process is “unto victory.” It shall not fail by the way. In the end there shall be one word upon our lips: “Victory”! Help us to take up that word now and make it our own. Amen.
Week 26 Saturday
Our One Hope
Isaiah 50:5-10; 54:2-4, 10, 14, 17; John 6:68
This age needs a renewing of hope. Cynicism and despair have bitten deep into our souls. And this is serious, for God says, according to English poet Francis Thompson, “I shall forgive thee all/save thy despair.” Despair closes the gates against the redemptive purposes of God. But where shall we find a renewal of our hope?
The passage we have been studying says, “in his name will the Gentiles hope” (Matt. 12:21). The hope lies in him who will not break the bruised reed, and will send forth judgment unto victory. In other words, the hope lies in One who blends in his message to humankind a tender redemptiveness to the individual and a stern demand for social justice. These two together will be unto victory. This is our hope.
One without the other will not be unto victory. Our hope does not lie in changed individuals alone, for that may leave untouched the social problems. As A. Herbert Gray says: “Conversion has often meant going through a process of personal readjustment which has left the men and women concerned still dominated in mind by the received ideas about money, and war, and the claims of the dispossessed.” The content of social justice must be put into conversion. Nor will social reconstruction without individual conversion be unto victory.
I have just been attending to a very sick man suffering from appendicitis, who in his agony begs me to send him back to his village where it is warmer and all will be well. But a change of climate will not cure a suppurating appendix! It needs an operation. A change of the social climate will leave untouched many of our inward maladjustments that would persist in any climate. We need a personal spiritual operation.
No, our hope lies neither in one nor in the other, but in both. In Christ and his kingdom they are one, so in him is our hope.
O Christ, whether we take the road of personal need or the road of a social reconstruction, they both lead us to your feet. We are there, for you are the one hope of our stricken world, and of us. Amen.