1 Peter 1:17-23

If you invoke as Father the one who judges impartially according to each person’s work, live in fear during the time of your exile. You know that you were ransomed from the futile conduct inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. He was destined before the foundation of the world but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your trust and hope are in God.

Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual affection, love one another deeply from the heart. You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.

Sermon Text

Judgment. What kind of image does that conjure in your brain? Do you see court rooms or hellfire? Maybe you see the snickering of gossipy onlookers or a cruel glance from across a room? Whatever the word makes us imagine, it is a word we cannot escape. We are all of us subject to judgment in a multitude of ways, the only question about the way judgment manifests in our life is which judgments are valid, therefore worth listening to, and which are not, and then worth ignoring.

This cuts in both directions too. We are not just evaluating the judgments we receive to know if they are valid, we have to know if the judgments we make are worthy as well. We are all constantly evaluating the world around us. Arguments, bits of information, people, as well as situations are put up against a rigorous and sometimes automatic set of criteria that then determine what we should do about them. Sometimes the decision is affirmative, sometimes its negative, but it happens without us trying to make it come into being. Without a single ounce of intent, we can pass judgment upon someone or something.

With this in mind, we are faced with a singular contradiction within our life of faith. We are called to be discerning people, we talked a bit about that last week. Yet, in the midst of our discernment, in the midst of our evaluations we are also warned “Do not judge, lest ye be judged.”[1] While part of this could be hand waved away with an argument regarding specificity of language and differences in Greek words for judgment and discernment… I think any such argument will fall flat in light of the practical considerations we face. To live in this world, we must make judgments, but to make a judgment is to ask for an equal measure of judgment to be applied back toward us.

Our scripture opens with a brief meditation on judgment. “If you invoke as Father the one who judges impartially according to each person’s work, live in fear during the time of your exile.” We need to break that apart to really make sense of it. Firstly, “If you invoke as Father,” is referring to our paternal relationship we have with God. The argument Peter makes in this verse is that, by making the claim that God is our Father, we are subject to subsequent truths and expectations. “… the one who judges impartially according to each persons’ work,” tells us the character of the God who we call Father, namely that God is perfect in the judgment God makes, because God is capable of making judgments impartially, only looking upon what a person does or does not do. This implies that God’s judgment being impartial is different than ours. Finally, because we worship an impartial God who is “Father,” to us, then we are to live a quiet and “fearful,” life because of that truth.

With that basic outline examined, we can talk but the two pieces of instruction Peter gives. Firstly, that God is impartial, and therefore our judgments are not. If we can make that acknowledgment, then a lot of life becomes easier. I often criticize the aphorism that somebody “Just tells it like it is,” because such thinking is deceptive. When we “tell it like it is,” what we are doing is telling our version of the truth as though it were absolute. We deceive ourselves into thinking that we are the one sane observer in the world, and ignore that we too are fallible and capable of making bad choices and decisions.

I will speak of my own failing here. When I worked somewhere outside of the Church I had this wonderful thing called, “coworkers.” Coworkers are something I miss in churchwork, but that had their own sets of problems. Once, I made two mistakes of judgment in talking to one of these coworkers. Firstly, that they were trustworthy. Secondly, that they would understand the Spirit of my evaluating a friend of mine. So when she said, “Your friend is real weird around my friend, I think he thinks she is into him.”

To which I said, “He thinks every woman’s in love with him.” I did not mean this as a serious critique of my friend, and I do not think I was wrong either. However, when she inevitably told her friend, and my friend inevitably confronted her about his fear she had feelings for him, her friend told my friend, “You really do think everyone’s in love with you, don’t you.”

This is a silly, dramatic example, but if you think on the way we live our life we make more serious judgments all the time. We assume someone is dangerous because they look mean, but maybe they’re just tired. We assume someone isn’t really in trouble and just after something, so we ignore them when they approach us on the street. We assume that someone who decides or even entertains a decision other than one we would make is either uninformed or wrong… We assume and assume and assume, such that we are unable to make an actual determination about the individual situations in front of us.

We are not, however, in a world where we can go without some level of judgment. Sometimes people are trying to take advantage of us. Sometimes someone is truly making a bad choice and we might be able to help them avoid it. Sometimes we are in a circumstance where we have to do something and sitting around waffling is not going to get that thing done. Judgment is not something we are forbidden from doing, it is something we are asked to weigh heavily before we act upon. In the context of Matthew 7’s prohibition against judging, Jesus immediately says that we ought to “remove the plank,” from our own eye, before “removing the sawdust,” from our neighbors. That seems to imply that familiarity with getting through a problem does give some grounds for us to help others.

That’s where the next part of the admonition comes in. “live in fear,” does not mean to clutch at our pearls or shake at every little opportunity to worry. It is instead a call for us to take seriously every aspect of our life. If God, the impartial judge, judges us by our actions, and Matthew tells us that we are reciprocally judged based upon how we judge others, then suddenly everything is placed under an umbrella of responsibility. If I choose to make a judgment, and to make that judgment known, I should be confident that it is really made impartially and toward the good of those it will affect. If I am to voice my opinion, to follow through on a course of action, to raise concern… Again, and again, and again we are asked to do these things with a great deal of seriousness.

I think that is why our reading ends with Peter calling on the people to practice “mutual affection,” literally, “love like a family.”[2] The ideal familial love asks for us to look out for each other’s good. It means sticking through hard times and difficult conversations. It suggests investing in one another enough to choose our words carefully when we speak and not being too upset when someone fails to do the same. It also means owning up to wrongdoing. To admitting when the judgments and actions we took were not good, appropriate, or for the good of others. We have to be serious about our words, our thoughts, and especially when the two collide in our judgments.

So, here’s the homework for you to take with you this week. Keep track of your judgments, large and small, write them down if you have to. Then, look back at them. Evaluate, “Now why did I think that? Was it right to think that way? Did I really need to say it after I thought it?” Ask these kinds of questions, interrogate your own decision making, and see if in the space you make through your serious consideration, God gives you a much better sense of mercy, grace, and impartiality. – Amen.

---

[1] Matthew 7:1-3

[2]Philios – “The love of brothers/family.”

John 20:19-31

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors were locked where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

Sermon Text

I am a lifelong skeptic. I do not believe anything easily. Despite this, I have a fascination with the fantastical. Stories of the paranormal and whispers of secret realities always interest me, not so much because I believe any part of them, but because I think it is interesting how we get from the stable ground of reality into the shifting sands of speculation, Whether the topic is UFOs, ghosts, cryptids, or just mysterious internet rabbit holes, I am always ready to learn more about something, especially if that thing lets me understand more of why we believe the things we choose to believe about the world.

Being a skeptic is not a virtue unto itself. In fact, I would say, that many times it leads me to question things that you could just take at face value without issue. Likewise, being a person who questions things, I can sometimes swing around to accepting supposed truth from a trusted source without further investigation. Afterall, if I did my due diligence previously, then I should not need to do it again. Why question what has already been answered? As with anything, the virtue of “prudence,” is found in discerning how much questioning is reasonable and how much goes too far or not far enough.

In our own faith, discernment is a specific term given to describe a spiritual as well as mental ability to evaluate a situation or teaching and determine its validity and character. We are all called to discernment in our lives, but some are gifted with a special degree of sensibility. A story comes to mind of a friend of mine who, while attending a revival, had to leave during the altar call. When asked about it, he said, “I don’t care what he’s saying, but I can tell that man preaching is of the devil!” From anyone else I would question that assertion, but knowing my friend, and his usual response to others, I’m willing to say something was happening that night that he, being a discerning soul, could see that others could not.

The scripture we read today is usually presented in terms of skepticism. Thomas, having been absent for Christ’s appearance to the disciples, doubts them when they tell him that Jesus is raised and that they saw him in the room with them. We are never told why Thomas was absent, but his absence is the root cause of his doubt. While everyone else saw Christ, examined his wounds, learned about the resurrection, Thomas is left to take them at their word. He refuses to accept what they said, unless he sees the truth himself.

Another personal story comes to mind. My Grandfather, in his final months of life, was on a lot of drugs to manage pain some of his worse cancer symptoms. One day, my family came home to him talking about the pure white chicken that had perched outside his window. All of us refused to believe there was actually a chicken in the middle of Martinsburg and wrote it off as his pain meds causing vivid hallucinations. Yet, one by one, we saw that chicken outside. Though we never learned where it was from, we learned that it was a real bird perched outside our house. Until we saw it, though, none of us were willing to take our other family members at their word regarding that bird.

Thomas is not asking something unreasonable by saying that he will not believe Christ is risen and walking around unless he sees him do so. He is asking only for what the other disciples were given. “If you all really did see him, then I want to see him too. More than that, I want to investigate those wounds and prove you aren’t just painting some guy who looks like Jesus to look like he’s been hurt. Thomas eventually gets his wish, he sees Jesus and Jesus offers his side and his hands to Thomas… Yet, when given the chance to investigate further, Thomas refuses. He has been given the gift of Christ visiting him once again, and that is more than enough for him to believe.

The lesson that we should take from the story of Thomas is not that we should believe something without evidence. “Blessed are those who believe without seeing,” is a blessing of all Christians after Christ’s ascension, not a reprimand for folks who need an extra push to believe in Christ. The real lesson is that, when Thomas needed something more to move from unbelief to belief, Christ was willing to provide that for Thomas, so that he could believe. Jesus offered Thomas his hands and side, and if Thomas needed to examine them, Jesus would have let him, because Christ is much more interested in us believing, than the means by which we come to believe.

I had a group of young people in one of my churches. One of them said, “I struggle to have faith in God right now, because I look at the people of God and how they treat each other and people not like them, and I cannot imagine having faith in something that makes people like that.” So I followed that up with a question. “Ignoring the people you know are doing the wrong thing… Who is the godliest person you know?” Immediately they named a sweet, kind, prayerful lady in the church. “If you cannot believe God for God’s sake,” I told her, “Then believe God for her sake. If you can believe God is good because the Godliest person you know is good, then that is a bridge at least to getting you to faith for its own sake.”

I am a skeptic, as I have said before, and if you want to know how a skeptic keeps their faith and is able to be a minister, the answer is, “With great difficulty!” I need more help than some others to keep my faith going. That’s why I take intentional time to be in prayer, to celebrate the sacraments as often as I can, and to engage with the work of God in the world. I need those extra trappings to keep my faith fed. Other people can simply sit down and say, “I believe in God because of who God is.” God bless them for it. Most of us, above this, fall somewhere on a spectrum of how easily belief comes to us. All are valid, so long as we acknowledge and pursue what we need to believe.

I like to leave you all with a practical note, so I’m going to give you some questions to ask yourself this week. Take time to notice, maybe even write down, the times this week you feel close to God and the times you feel far from God. What triggers those feelings? Once you know which things make you feel closer to God, ask yourself what you can do to more intentionally and frequently engage with those things. Finally, for those things that make you feel far from God, if they are things you cannot avoid entirely, then ask how you can wrap them in one of the practices that does make you feel close to God.

Here’s an example of this kind of examen. I feel close to God when I am in prayer, even if it is just praying “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” Repeatedly. Therefore, to feel close to God I should take intentional time to pray – sneaking down to the sanctuary throughout the week to be alone and pray as well as praying as part of my nighttime routine. I feel farthest from God when I am caught up in busywork – the third load of laundry for the day or the second run of the dishwasher. Dishes need done and laundry needs folded, so what would it look like if, as I did both of those, I layered prayer into my work. Every time I take something out of the basket, “Lord Jesus Christ son of God…” Every time I finish folding it, “Have mercy one me a sinner…” In this way, I may strengthen my faith, even just a little.

Belief is the state of trust we have in God because God’s goodness and power has been proved to us. It is not a static sensation or reality. It needs fed, nurtured, and sometimes coerced into being. Sometimes we will be on fire for God, sometimes it will feel like we need a lot of help to even utter an “Amen.” The good news is that, when we doubt or are unsure, God offers us what we need to believe. If we are willing to ask… If we are willing to try… Amen