12 Oct, Wednesday of Week 28

Rom 2:11ff. “By judging others you convict yourself.” All are under the same set of criteria, the Jew first, and then the gentile.

Lk 11:42ff. Woe to Pharisees and lawyers who insist on impossible legal details yet neglect to share with others in the justice and love of God.

Liberty, not Licence

The Scriptures insist on freedom and the primacy of love, but also warn us against the excess of libertinism and individualism. Jesus’ teaching on this is carefully nuanced. While contrasting the way that the Pharisees paid their tithes, while neglecting justice and the love of God, Jesus concludes that the latter are more important, but immediately adds, “without omitting the other.” He did not mount any campaign against the Jewish or Mosaic law. In fact, he observed it carefully and always had a sensible reason for departing from it. When he permits a freer way of acting, he is generally defending his disciples, e.g., plucking and rubbing grain on the Sabbath (Matthew 12:1).

As we meditate more deeply, we first note the danger of stressing external details and in judging others accordingly. The more that we multiply rules and regulations, the more we take control of other people’s lives. With control over other people’s lives comes a propensity to judge them. At the same time we ourselves are in ever greater danger of imagining ourselves to be holy because we are exact in externals. Our insistence on externals makes it all too easy to be judgmental.

Jesus did not deny the validity of rules and regulations, in this case, the requirement to pay tithes. So we should not be in the habit of neglecting these things. Yet he stresed the more important need for justice and the love of God. It is good for us to question our motives in obeying rules and in seeking to be proper and correct in external details. Some consider the appearance of a home more essential than the happy life within the home. We may look good just because that is expected of us. But if we are in the habit of passing judgment on family, community and people at large, we have probably lost touch with the more central values of love.

in today’s text from Romans we meet several important sentences which throw new light on the question of judging others. Paul writes, “With God there is no favouritism.” This reminds us of the different scale of values and the important cultural diversity between Jew and Greek. It is so easy, at least at first, for a person from one culture or background, to judge severely a person from a different background. There are absolute truths, of course, but on the scale of values these truths will take different colorations within different cultures.

Furthermore, each person has the capability of living a good life, whether Jew or Greek. We are asked to look for this goodness in others before we drag them before our hastily convoked court of law. Jesus, moreover, adds another bit of important advice. Before we begin to judge others harshly, we are asked first to “lift a finger to lighten” their burden. Perhaps then we would be in such admiration of their goodness and patience, that negative attitudes would be choked off.

First Reading: Romans 2:1-11

Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things. You say, “We know that God’s judgment on those who do such things is in accordance with truth.” Do you imagine, whoever you are, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. For he will repay according to each one’s deeds: to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honour and immortality, he will give eternal life; while for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but wickedness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be anguish and distress for everone who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honour and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality.

Gospel: Luke 11:42-46

“But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and herb of all kinds, and neglect justice and the love of God; it is these you ought to have practiced, without neglecting the others. Woe to you Pharisees! For you love to have the seat of honour in the synagogues and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces. Woe to you! For you are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without realizing it.”

One of the lawyers answered him, “Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us too.” And he said, “Woe also to you lawyers! For you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not lift a finger to ease them.