Judgmental Jesus
Luke 13:1-9

March 7, 2010
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.

Most of us can remember the times in school when some teacher gave us a grade that was lower than the grade you thought you deserved. How dare that teacher judge my work to be merely average when I thought it was excellent!

As a parent I can testify that one of the greatest challenges of being a parent is the challenge to summon up enough energy to discipline your children. It’s much easier to overlook inappropriate behavior, to look the other way when your children misbehave, than it is to take the time and the energy to sit down with your child and try to explain, in ways that the child can understand, why the child’s behavior was in appropriate. I suspect that’s one of the reasons why many of our young parents bring their children to church—to let someone else judge their kids’ behavior and apply discipline.

This past week, Lauren asked me to read two bedtime books for Sage and Story but when they started to come out of their bedroom as they tend to do, Lauren asked me if I disciplined them by threatening to take away one of their dollies. I said as “Yeh Yeh, I don’t do those kinds of things!”

Today’s Gospel lesson presents a real challenge for us. The challenge is that the contemporary church has succeeded in sentimentalizing Jesus to the point where we have taken the romantic “gentle Jesus meek and mild” of the 19th century and reworked it into Jesus our good friend, our buddy, our therapist who always affirms and never criticizes, always blesses and never curses.

After renovating and restoring our six sanctuary stained glass windows, I noticed again in a different way the medallion of Jesus as the Good Shepherd in our rose window. We love to relate with Jesus as the good shepherd who leaves the 99 just to look for the one that is lost. We know by heart the Lord is my shepherd in Psalm 23.

But I was wondering when the church in 1980 decided to commission the new windows in front of us, what was the thinking that led to choosing the Good Shepherd over the medallion that portrayed what we think is Heinrich Hofmann’s painting of Jesus and the Young Rich Ruler? Here Jesus is judging the young ruler for his unwillingness to give up his possessions to follow him.

If you remember, we deliberately switched the medallions to keep the Good Shepherd in our sanctuary while we auctioned off the other. As you know, this medallion of Jesus apparently looking at the young ruler is now in our vestibule. Might we subconsciously have wanted a Jesus who is our good friend, our buddy who always affirms and never criticizes, always blesses and never curses. Am I getting too close in judging those who were here 30 years ago?

On an interesting note, Heinrich Hofmann was a German painter of the late 19th and early 20th century. This painting of Jesus and the Young Rich Ruler was done in 1889 and purchased by John D. Rockerfeller, Jr. who was an American Baptist. It now hangs in the Riverside Church in New York City.

Unexplainable Tragedies
Today is the first Sunday in Lent that stretches from last Wednesday that was Ash Wednesday up to Easter for 40 days that corresponds to Jesus’ 40 days sojourn in the wilderness of Judea. Just as Jesus was tested and tried in the desert, so we are invited to a voluntary wilderness in order to better hear God’s voice and focus on our devotion and service. People practice fasting or giving up a kind of food or avoiding a certain activity to simulate how Jesus did not have food to eat when he was in the wilderness.

In today’s text, Jesus is praying in the wilderness for 40 days following his baptism. He’s been purposely abstaining from food and meditating in the wilderness to prepare himself for the three years of ministry and miracles as humanity’s Messiah and Savior that stood before him.

Jesus was tempted in three different ways. In verses 3-4, the devil tempted Jesus to change a stone into bread because Jesus was famished. Imagine if we could have the power to have everything we want while living on earth? All of our physical and bodily needs cared for. All the ice cream we want and not gain one pound!

Jesus was tempted in verse 5-8 to have authority and power over the world. Imagine if we can write all the rules and laws to our favor? We would be accountable to no one. There would be no need for temptations.

And lastly, in verse 9-12, the devil tempted Jesus by having him test God and in turn having the devil supplant the Lord God. Imagine the many excuses and rationalizing that we no longer need to do when we don’t listen to God? We make ourselves the center of the world with no accountability to any one God.

What is Temptation?
In our Luke passage, Jesus was speaking to a crowd of people who were pretty satisfied about themselves. They probably felt affirmed and blessed and had this special connection with Jesus to the point that they wondered if tragedies that have befallen on others may be the result of their sins and failures. Were the tragedies the punishment judged to be the result of their sins?

Evidently, there were two recent tragedies that occurred in Jerusalem. First, some Galileans had been put to death, after which Pilate had mixed their blood with the blood of other sacrificial offerings. There’s no reason given why these people were killed. But the crowd asked Jesus, what had the Galileans done to deserve such tragedy?

Jesus then mentioned that eighteen people perished when the tower of Siloam toppled and crushed these people to death. Again, the crowd asked Jesus, what did these people do to deserve such an awful death as that?

Then, as now, when there is some great tragedy, some great disaster, people talk. “Did you hear about what happened in New York?” “Did you catch the news on what happened last night in Oakland?” “Did you hear about Haiti and now Chile?” One reason why we talk is to try to make sense out of such tragedy, then as now. “Jesus, did you hear about what Pilate did to those Galileans up at the temple? What about those unfortunate 18 people who just happened to be near the Tower of Siloam?”

And while we talk about these tragedies, usually we have a question in the back of our mind: “I wonder what those people did to deserve this.”

In the Gospel of John, the disciples encounter a blind man and asked Jesus, “Who sinned? Do you think his parents sinned or did he sin in order to be born in this condition?”

Under Judgment
Jesus is not drawn into a discussion with his disciples about who sinned or caused these tragedies. There’s no connection between the suffering of people and their failures. Jesus said neither the Galileans nor those who died when the tower fell on them were any worse sinners than others. Suffering is not the result of sin nor is it punishment for sin.

Jesus was uninterested in trying to explain these tragedies. Rather, he throws the whole question back in their laps: “I tell you, unless you repent, you shall also be under judgment. Unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

To help the crowd understand what he was saying, Jesus followed with a parable about an unfruitful fig tree. The owner of the vineyard planted a fig tree three years ago. He came by to see if there were any fruit to pick. So the owner told the gardener to cut down the fig tree since it has had three years to yield fruit with probably good rich soil and water. He said, “Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?” But the gardener told the owner to leave it for one more year. He’ll dig around it to aerate the soil, put down more manure and see what it might do. Only after another year, if the fig tree still doesn’t produce any fruit, then the gardener said to the owner that he would cut it down. What does this parable mean?

In this parable, God is the owner of the vineyard, Jesus is the gardener, and we are the tree. Even when we may not be bearing fruit, the gardener wishes to nurture it and give it another chance to grow fruit. Jesus acts on our behalf to defend us from immediate judgment. We have a one-year reprieve to become productive and fruitful.

The parable message calls us to be faithful disciples that can be demonstrated in the words that we speak, the actions that we do, and the attitudes that we have living according to God’s will. Unless we start living faithfully, our future is short. Judgment is coming. “Unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did,” said Jesus.

Like his cousin, John the Baptizer, Jesus’ words are harsh. John said, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to try to flee from the wrath to come? You better repent, for a day of judgment is coming.”

This is a tough sermon. Jesus is not a sweet, sentimental good shepherd, but rather a fierce prophet of truth, a scathing preacher who preaches judgment today.

On this Third Sunday in Lent, we might like to speak about the suffering of the world like those whom Pilate killed or the 18 people who died from the toppling tower and identify that we are those who suffer unexplainably. We rather prefer to hear about God’s mysterious grace and mercy extending out to those who are suffering as the result of the earthquakes. We like to have a theological discussion on why bad things happen to good people. But Jesus won’t let us. He wants to talk about judgment.

We come in here wanting to judge him, wanting to come up with a verdict about his way—does it make sense, is it practical, is it relevant to my lifestyle? Is Jesus an adequate answer to the deep questions that life puts before us? And so on. And then Jesus turns the tables and questions us, pronounces a verdict upon us: you must repent, you must let go of your need to booster up your own egos and self-worth and cling only to God.

Judging Out of Love
You don’t hear much about judgment in the church. Christ is our friend, our companion, perhaps our savior, but rarely is Christ our judge. We tend to be our own judges. We tend not to be accountable to any higher standard than our own conscience.

When someone might say to you, “Why did you do what you did?” we are likely to respond, “Who are you to judge me? You can’t possibly understand what I did unless you are me! You don’t know what I have experienced. What authority do you have to correct me?” When we prevent such questions to be answered, we say that we are not accountable to anyone. When we avoid or deny that God is also a judge of our lives, we have diminished God’s reign in the process.

My heart really goes out to single parents, parents who are forced to work two jobs or long hours in order to provide for their children. I am in awe of those parents who still summon up the energy to hold their children accountable, to dare to discipline their children whom they love because they love them. We judge and discipline our children because we love them.

Christians believe that God loves us so much that God refuses to leave us alone. God keeps working with us, keeps attending to us, correcting us, showing us a better way.

When I was taking statistics in college to fulfill my requirements as a psychology major, I did terribly. They were some of the worst grades that I received. But the worst grade wasn’t a letter grade at all. It’s when the professor writes on your paper, “Well, I gave you a C but not happily. You can do better. I was disappointed that you did not put more into this test, and I think you are disappointed too.”

How I wished that teacher had simply failed me. That way I could blame the teacher or turn my anger toward the teacher. But with those comments, I had no one to blame but myself. The toughest words of judgment are words of disappointment, words that are true.

Later on after a number of years have passed, I had to take statistics again when I completed my course for my doctoral work. I was still disappointed in myself. But I was determined to do better than a C. I studied and studied and understood the differences between a mean, a median, and a mode. I got an A for this graduate course. In retrospect, if my college professor did not judge my tests and papers for what they were really like—no more than C work—I probably would not have done as well later on.

Good Works
On this day, we see a judgmental Jesus.

Jesus has set his face to Jerusalem. He is going to suffer and die. And on his way, he puts before us a question: “Will you walk with me? Will you go the way I am going?”

Jesus has said, “If anyone would follow after me, walk with me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow. For whoever will save his life will lose it. And whoever loses his life for my sake, that person will save.”

If we can accept Jesus’ tough words and be held accountable for our lives to be fruitful like a fruitful fig tree, we would see our good works and give glory, not to us, but to the God who enables us to do those good works.

In our Lenten Bible studies, there was this story about Alfred Nobel, the Swedish chemist who helped develop effective explosives for mining and construction. Later, that same technology was used in warfare.

One night Nobel’s brother died in a car accident, but the newspapers got the report mixed up and reported that Alfred Nobel was the one who had died. In his obituary, Nobel was remembered as the world’s dynamite king. The newspaper reported that Nobel had made an incredible fortune by developing explosives for mass destruction.

Nobel read his obituary and was disturbed by the way in which his life had been interpreted to the world. For Nobel, the good news was that he still had time to turn his life around. He set up a series of international awards to be given to people who made positive contributions to humankind. Today we know those awards as the Nobel Prizes, one of which is the Nobel Peace Prize.

In retrospect, it’s appropriate to have the medallion of Jesus as the Good Shepherd in our sanctuary to comfort and care for us who have come to know the Lord. And the medallion of the portrait of Jesus without the young rich ruler hanging in our vestibule always illuminated day and night is an invitation to all who sees this face of Jesus and to put themselves in this picture and say, “Unless I repent, I will perish just as they did.”

The unfruitful fig tree was given only one more year to become productive. Jesus said, “None of the suffering and tragedies that you see are punishment as the results of sin but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” When Jesus is judgmental, he has the right and authority to say that to you and me because Jesus loves us so much that he will not leave us as we are.