Sermon (proper 11)

I’ve been on jury service for two weeks beginning last Monday and this has been a very appropriate backdrop to this week’s parable about good,evil and judgement.  Twice I have been among 16 jurors chosen to go down to a court, and then amongst the 4 who (by a random process of shuffling cards with our names on) have not been selected  to be on the jury. Twice, to my surprise I have heard what the case is all about and seen the defendant, standing in a glass cage awaiting trial: two very ordinary looking people whom you would pass in the street and not look at twice. Twice I have wondered how the jury will decide who is telling the truth and who is telling lies and twice I have been very relieved indeed not to have been selected. I have become acutely aware that the words ‘guilty’ or ‘innocent’ could ruin someone’s life. So could abstaining.

Today’s parable is about God’s judgement – one day we will all be judged. That which is hidden will be revealed. Guilt and sin will be uncovered – at this judgment hour who will stand? We should all be feeling uncomfortable because none of us are actually good enough to look God in the eye – we are spared by God’s love, by Jesus’ outpouring of himself on the cross on our behalf – we are saved by grace.

Pretending to be holy, better than other people, is a very common game Christians play. Pointing the finger, looking down on people, a readiness to point out the sins of others – these are very common. We Christians are commonly thought to be people who think we’re better than others, who look down our noses at others and behave in a ‘holier than thou’ manner. We are thought to be a club for the self-righteous. And sometimes we are. Even here, in this humble little church, we are capable of driving people away and making people feel they’re not good enough to belong.

In truth, though, this attitude is not confined to the church, or even to religious people. The recent child abuse scandal in Rochdale (and other places) had at its heart a failure to take girls from working class backgrounds seriously. No-one would listen, and a conspiracy of silence flourished. People in power had decided that these girls weren’t worth listening to – were ‘asking for it’ – and so the abuse continued unchecked for years.

In the 19th century, Cesare Lombroso developed a theory about criminal features – the idea that you could tell a criminal by examining their facial features. There’s still a lot on the internet about ‘criminal faces’ – I suspect that the features of criminals are really the faces of people we don’t like or feel unsure of. The point about wheat and tares is that they’re almost indistinguishable – they can’t really be told apart until harvest time. [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=wheat+and+tares&rlz=1CAASUG_enGB712GB712&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiTt7iOp5rVAhUHAsAKHVM1DTUQ_AUICigB&biw=1920&bih=942#q=wheat+and+tares&tbm=isch&tbas=0&imgrc=k7lSYOHZsT6QPM:] No-one really ‘looks like a criminal’ – if we judge someone because of how they look what we’re seeing isn’t a guilty face but the face of someone we’re afraid of, someone who isn’t ‘like me’.

And how ready we are to judge whole nations or ethnic groups of people as if they were all clones – those people who come to exploit our benefits system dishonestly, those people who come here to have babies on the NHS, those people who seek to take away our jobs — as if there are no honest or decent people in these groups. Sometimes it feels as if we don’t even look at people to judge – we’re one worse that Cesare Lombroso – we just hear the word ‘Polish’, ‘Asian’, ‘Lithuanian’ and we’ve made our mind up.

If there’s one thing to learn from Jesus’s ministry it is that we should be prepared to encounter people who are different than ourselves – the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the Samaritan woman at the well, the roman centurion, Zaccheus, people with leprosy – all people who were scorned or feared but who became Jesus’ friends and followers. How dare we judge others so unthinkingly? But how much courage we need to encounter those who are other than ourselves, those whose faces provoke fear in us, those who are different.

So before any of us condemns, point our fingers or shake our heads disapprovingly, let’s stop and think. Do we truly know what is happening when we rush in to judge? Are we really in any position to judge? Are we good enough to throw the first stone? Are we, ourselves, really without sin?

Our civil and legal systems require us to participate in structures of finding guilt or innocence in order that our society may function peaceably and decently. Here we are required to make judgements about others – are they guilty or innocent? I think, necessarily, this is an uncomfortable place for a Christian to be – as I have discovered this week. Pray for me and for all who are called to serve on juries. Pray for all who will be called this week to give a verdict on someone’s guilt or innocence – that they may not do so from fear of someone who is other, or from preconceived ideas about who must be guilty, but in humility and wisdom and in the understanding that none of us are saved except by the love and grace of God. Amen