Jesus and Judging Others

 May 15 2022

Acts 17:16-34

Most of us, at one time or another, have met people who for a lack of a better way of putting it, seem to have life all figured out. You have to give them credit, they at least have given life some thought; some people haven’t even done that. But it is one thing to think you at last have life figured out and quite another then to feel it is somehow your duty to let others know just what life is supposed to be about which seems to be the problem with those who think about life to such a degree. I mean when you are a person who has spent the better part of your life just thinking on life this should mean that you are at least worthy of judging how others live life, wouldn’t you think? Well, that’s the way it seems at least. I remember encountering such judgmental critical people. It was during a period of time after I had quit farming and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up, so I decided to take some college courses at our local Kent campus. The one class I was in that semester was taught by a really great teacher, Dr. Roman, who, even though he obviously was a man of great learning, did not flaunt it. He instead worked hard at getting his students to think which I appreciated. Well, during the semester he announced that there was a special project which if any one was interested they could pursue and get recognition for their work. It was called a Colloquium, where basically all that meant was that one could write a research paper on a subject of interest to them and Kent would make a big deal out of it. Dr. Roman encouraged me to enter it and so I wrote a paper with the unwieldy title, “Understanding Modern Society through the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas”. What I didn’t realize is that we would have to present our papers before the rest of the academia nuts that taught at the college. I don’t remember the specifics of their questions but I do remember their judgmental attitude and I thought to myself that this was not nearly as much fun as I had thought it was going to be.

Maybe this is the same way Paul must have felt when he struck up a conversation with people who thought they had life all figured out. You get the gist of the attitude they held about him when they were overheard saying, “What does this babbler wish to say?” The word, “babbler” here actually means seed-picker which meant that they viewed Paul as one who had picked up bits and pieces of information like a bird had pecked up pieces of birdseed. Paul, they thought, didn’t really have any original thought in his head, did he? All Paul had was just some bits of information that he had found and heard elsewhere, or so they thought. It is easy to feel the condescension, the judgmental attitude floating in the air like a thick cloud. Yet, all was not lost because some at least were intrigued that Paul just might have something new to say. You see, it gets tiring hashing and rehashing what life is all about especially when you have narrowed the field to what you know what life is all about. It was that what Paul spoke about, this is what was strange for these philosophers to hear and they just had to know more about what Paul was driving at.

The new thing, of course, that Paul spoke about was the resurrection. Paul told them about Jesus, a Jewish man from Galilee, who had been crucified and was most assuredly dead, yet three days later he was most assuredly alive. Imagine how shocking such a story must have been to these men who thought they had life all figured out. The most certain thing in the world is that people die and they stay dead; end of story. One could say that their whole understanding of life began with the premise that one is going to be dead. Their’s was the original YOLO (You Only Live Once) understanding of life. The world was obviously built on some foundation of reason so if one lived in a reasonable manner then that is the best that one could hope for. Even so, what they did not have an answer for is that which was unreasonable, the terrible injustices that were done against people. If the world was so reasonable just what reason could one give for the way some people were treated? It must never be forgotten is that the way a segment of men had the time to sit around all day and think about life is that they had enslaved whole nations to take care of the necessities of everyday life.

Life then was then knowing that all that we can perceive is all that there is. To them, the universe is one great unity that all fits together even if we don’t exactly know how. The gods that the pagans believed in were part of the same universe as the people were, each god ruled over some part of the whole universe.  In this way, they could have some assurance that life would go on just as it always had because they all lived within this closed system where people were born, they lived and they died. Welcome, to the circle of life! And everything was going along great right up until this guy Paul came along and started muttering about somebody not staying dead as they were supposed to. You see, these philosophers could be pretentious and judgmental toward others because they were the ones who had life all figured out but what would happen if by some chance, they didn’t really know as much as they thought? What if death was not just the way things were but was instead an enemy which had infected a very good world, an enemy which at last had been defeated?

This is what must have been going through the minds of these great thinkers as Paul began to speak. Paul began by what seems to be a compliment, telling them that he could perceive that they were very religious. Now, what Paul really thought is that they were a people who were extremely idolatrous but here he seems to tone it down a bit. Yet, even so, what he means here by stating that they were religious is that they were a people who had a great fear of the gods. You see, what the gods represented to them were the forces that were beyond their control, those things which frightened them, and gave then a knowing ache in the pit of their stomach. Just as the things that frighten people are many, so too were the gods that were on display in the city of Athens. As Paul observed all of these objects that the people of Athens worshipped he was surprised that he came across an altar which simply had inscribed upon it,”To an unknown god”. Now, there is a lot of speculation about just what this meant but the most plausible explanation is that being that there were so many gods and therefore so many altars, what most likely happened is that over time the altars eventually fell into disrepair so that the name of the god who was to be worshipped there had faded away. Since, no one could remember just which god was supposed to be worshipped there and not wanting to offend said god, they just thought it best to say that this altar was to an unknown god. Paul, though, when he saw this, knew that this was an opportunity for him because he would tell these people of Athens about the one true God who was as yet unknown to them.

It is hard for us to fully comprehend how unusual what Paul spoke of was to these people who thought that what you see is what you get as far as the universe is concerned. No, Paul goes on to tell them, outside and beyond this universe is a God, the only God who existed before the universe itself, the God who made the world and everything in it. Right here, with news of a God who created the very universe in which the people of Athens lived, the very foundations of those who had life all figured out began to crack. This was a God above and beyond the gods that the people feared; in fact, he is the one who created the very forces that their gods came to represent. This God created everything and this meant that he did so because he desired that there be a universe here instead of mere nothingness. To people who were caught up in the idea that the world was reasonable here they hear of a God who had a reason for the universe being here. This God was not like their gods who needed temples in which to live and needed people to serve him because he is the God who gives all humanity life and breath, everything necessary for our existence. So, life is not just some mere force which we have for a time being then which is snuffed out at death but it is rather a gift given to us by this God who created us. Thus it would be reasonable to assume that if life is a gift given to us by God then we who receive this gift ought to, at the very least, be people who respond with gratitude for that which we have been given. 

Paul continues with his startling speech by stating that all of the nations of the earth, all the various people that Rome and Greece before her had conquered, all of these people had their beginning in one man, Adam. We must hold on to the implications that this origin story has for us as we go further into the story that Paul is telling us but for now we can know that it is this God who sets the course of history and it is this God who marks the borders of the dwelling places of all humanity. God sets people within time and space for one purpose that they should seek after God. Why would they seek after God? They seek after God because they realize that they lived in a world which was created, created by a God and therefore if this God created this world with them in it, then he was a God who desired for them to be here. And since they were created and thus given life then they must be grateful for the life they have been given, but who then is the one who deserves their offering of thankfulness? This is where the search for God begins. Paul goes on to say that God has always hoped that the people he created might feel their way toward him and find him. The gratitude we feel toward the God who created us is to flourish and become a love of God to desire the one who desired that we be here with him, and so result in a relationship with the living God. 

Paul diverts from what has been up to this point a genuine retelling of the ancient Jewish story. He takes an excerpt from a Greek poem by the poet Epimenides, which states “In him we live and move and have our being”, and he says here, even though the poet may not have even been aware of it, here is spoken a truth about the one true living God. It is God in whom we find life, in him we do move and he knows who we were truly created to be. And from another writer, Aratus, Paul plucks a line from one of his poems which states, “For we are indeed his offspring”, and Paul says, don’t you see, this is the very truth about the God who created you and gave you life. We are God’s offspring and if this is the truth about who we are then we have to change our minds about how we think about divine beings. No more can we hold fast to the idea that something that begins in the imagination of a person’s minds and is then formed and shaped out of gold or silver can ever be something that would be worthy of our attention. No, Paul moving towards his dramatic end continues, now is the time to be done with such foolishness. Now, the times of pleading ignorance about God are over. Now, God insists that people repent. The word, “repent”, here literally means to think differently now that they have heard the message Paul is presenting before them. Their thoughts about the world they live in had to be drastically changed now that they had heard of a God who exists beyond our universe, indeed the God who existed before everything else, the very God who spoke it into being and gave all who inhabit this universe the gift of life. The reason that Paul insists that now, the very present moment, this is the time when all past thinking must be done away with, is that this same God has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man he has appointed. So, now, we move from our relationship with the God who has created us to our relationship with each other which seems logical because if we know that God has created us out of a desire for us to exist then it would seem only right that every person exists because of God’s desire that they are alive. Just as God has given us each of us life he has done so for every person on the planet. So, no longer can we in any shape or thought believe that we are in any way better than anyone else but we must concede that we cannot hold fast to some idea that we can separate ourselves from the rest of humanity. As Jesus himself taught, all of the writings about God and his relationship with his people come down to this, “Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.’ This is a definition of righteousness that all people can understand. This is the standard of righteousness by which we will all be judged. This is the very righteousness of Jesus for as Paul goes on to tell us this is the very reason that he has been raised from the dead. Even though Paul does not here speak of how Jesus died, it is implied that Jesus even unto death exhibited this very righteousness, doing to others, offering them forgiveness as he hung upon a cross gasping for air, because this is what he had desired that others would have done to him. There upon the cross the Judge of us all took upon himself the judgment we all deserve, being judged in our place, to give us not what we deserve but instead to give us what all of us desire which is mercy. Jesus was raised from the dead, justified in his claims as being the very Son of God, worthy to rule and judge all of us because he is the one whose way is the way of mercy, the giving to the other not what they deserve but rather to give them what they desire. Thus as God desired for each person to exist and have life so too we must be people who desire that others exist and live, for this is the way of mercy.

Now what may not be apparent by listening to Paul’s speech to the people of Athens is that, I believe he has taken the judgmental attitude of his listeners to task in a very subtle way. You see, it is the risen and righteous Jesus who is the one who is our judge therefore before the face of Jesus our judge, none of us have a leg to stand on to judge one another. As Paul teaches us in the fourteenth chapter of Romans, “Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own Lord that he stands or falls and he will be upheld because the Lord is able to make him stand”.  And further, Paul continues, “None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die we die to the Lord. So that, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living. Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. So, then each of us must give an account of himself to God.Therefore, let us not pass judgment on one another any longer…” You see, those who judge others will find themselves under the judgment of God because they are living not by the way of mercy which they themselves desire so therefore they are unrighteous. When people judge others they simply are treating others in a manner which they themselves would not want to be treated. This means then, there is no need for any follower of Jesus to pass judgment on another person. This is what we see in the life of Paul. Never once does he take these obviously idolatrous people to task, never once does he state what the outcome of such behavior will be. No, what Paul does instead of judging them is to instead tell them of a God who desired them to exist, a God who graciously gave them life, a God who took the judgment they deserved upon himself so that they might know that the way of life is the way of mercy. Paul spoke to them of Jesus, the one raised from the dead who is his Lord and their Lord, the one we will all have to stand before some day. There the righteousness of everyone of us will be judged by whether we believe in Jesus, in his way of life, the way of mercy, and not judgment. As Paul has told us, God in his mercy has given us this time to change the way we think, to judge for ourselves whether life is about mercy or judgment. May we judge wisely. Amen.