Mercy and Judgment

Sermon for Sunday, March 7, 2010
Third Sunday in Lent
Scripture: Luke 13:1-9

This morning’s passage from the Gospel of Luke is quite an interesting bit of scripture, isn’t it? Here in the 13th chapter, we find a Jesus on his way to Jerusalem, and as Lutheran scholar Kae Evenson puts it, he is “railing against this and that and then telling an odd story about a fig tree.”

The “railing against this and that” is Jesus’ response to a crowd eager to magnify the sins of other people. As we gather from Jesus’ response, there seems to be good motivation for drawing attention toward the sinfulness of persecuted Galileans or laborers of Jerusalem. The crowd’s hope is that in pointing out the sinfulness of “those other people,” the sinfulness of the speakers themselves will be overlooked, forgotten, or merely seen as trifling compared to those really bad sinners down the block.

And this is not the only place in scripture where we encounter an antiquated punishment/reward system based on our relative sinfulness or righteousness – a system that assumes all human blessing is reward for righteousness, and all human suffering is punishment for sins. Old Testament wisdom literature, for instance, and the book of Job in particular, spends a great deal of time addressing the subject of divine reward and punishment, divine mercy and judgment. And here in the 13th chapter of Luke, as in Job, we find a God who challenges these self-righteous attitudes – the judgment we wish on sinners worse than us, and the mercy we reserve only for ourselves. Through the words of Jesus, we are cautioned against being rash to judge the wickedness of others, and we are also cautioned against assuming that, as self-ordained “lesser sinners,” we are free from having to face the judgment that our neighbors must face.

And then, there is the odd story about a fig tree. The owner of the fig tree is ready to chop it down. It hasn’t produced fruit for 3 years, and it’s time to make room for a tree that will. “Cut it down! It’s wasting soil!” screams the owner to his gardener. This fig tree has had enough chances to bear fruit, and it has wasted those chances. But on the tree’s behalf, the gardener pleads for mercy, asking the owner to give this poor little fig tree one more chance to bear fruit. And the owner displays mercy to the tree – gives it yet another chance to bear fruit.

Isn’t it nice to be a tree? Taken on its own, this parable assures us that even when we’re fruitless fig trees, God still gives us more chances than we deserve to grow into the productive trees we’re called to be. But unfortunately, this “odd story about a fig tree” is told in the same meeting, in the same context, and in the same breath as the “railing against this and that.” And it’s intentionally told this way, so that we may understand that if we believe in the mercy of 2nd, 3rd, and 4th chances in our own lives, then we better believe that the same mercy is offered to our neighbors as well – the people we mistakenly label as “worse sinners.” What Jesus does here in Luke 13 is delicately hold a railing against judgment in tension with a parable about mercy, and in doing so he gives us more to think about than we can explore in a simply Sunday morning sermon – on a communion Sunday, no less.

But the juxtaposition of mercy and judgment here reminds us of our propensity to apply God’s judgment to the sins of others, while at the same time applying God’s mercy to our own sins. We turn up our noses in self-righteousness at the sins of others, contemplating how we can throw scripture in their faces to warn them of a wrathful God, lightning bolt in hand, ready to inflict judgment on them at a moment’s notice. And then we continue on our way to church, where we pray, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.” And then we thank God for the grace and mercy that wipes away our sin.

But then one day, we stumble upon Jesus’ words in Luke 13, and he challenges us to look at things from a different perspective. Rather than focusing on the judgment of others, perhaps we should start thinking that we may be judged just as harshly, if not more harshly, than our neighbors. And rather than holding onto mercy as if it’s something that we own, something that we’ve purchased, perhaps it might be a good idea to plead for mercy on behalf of our sinful neighbors as well.
All too often, we paint a picture of a judging God examining others, and a merciful God examining ourselves. But the God of scripture and the God that is present with us this morning is not a one-dimensional God. Our God gives out both judgment and mercy, when God wills, to whomever God wills, and however God wills. And God’s son harmonizes the story of judgment and the story of mercy in this morning’s text, creating one new story: a story that journeys from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, ending with death on a cross leading to an empty grave.

Jesus knows that both judgment and mercy are essential to his story. He knows that to omit either would be to tell a story different than the good news. To speak of judgment without mercy or mercy without judgment would be as empty as celebrating Easter without a preceding Good Friday, or celebrating a Good Friday with no Easter on the horizon. It would be as incomplete as tasting the blood of Christ’s death without also tasting the bread of Christ’s life, or vice versa. For the Christian story is a paradoxical one – one that celebrates both death and life, tastes both bread and cup, and proclaims both judgment and mercy.

But, we must be clear that the judgment of which we speak is God’s judgment, and the mercy which we desire is God’s mercy. No judgment we make on our own sins or the sins of another has any significance, and any mercy we proclaim for ourselves or for others is wasted soil. As Christ calls us to “repent or perish” on this Third Sunday in Lent, we are reminded by his words that God’s judgment is what makes repentance necessary, and God’s grace and mercy is what makes it possible.

This is a story of judgment and mercy, of repentance and forgiveness, of death and life. This is the Gospel story, that paradoxical story in which our God uses death on a cross to bring us new life. Thanks be to God for holding us all accountable with judgment, and for offering the mercy that saves us from getting what each one of us sinners deserves. For we all deserve harsher judgment than we can bear, and we all are given greater mercy than we could ever imagine. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.