I don’t know about you, but I find images of God as a judge rather troubling. I suppose it is because I have a vision from watching too much TV of a Judge as a fierce figure, telling off barristers for not doing things properly, and then pronouncing a severe sentence on those who have been convicted. You can see and hear me give this Homily on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik4185o3Fhs
Indeed, I think too many people give up believing in God precisely because they have been misled into thinking that images of God as a super and rather fierce old man up above the clouds are meant to be taken literally. We all know that God is an invisible power present throughout the Universe, and that we use various images just as Jesus did, to illustrate different truths about God, not to say what God really is, which is beyond any words or images.
Anyway, although I don’t like the “Judge” image, I realise that today we must tackle it, because it appears in our first two Readings, as well as being hinted at in the Gospel. Preachers who ignore the Bible Readings, if there are things in it we don’t like, and just pick a bit we do like, are not doing our job properly. So I challenged myself as I prayed about it, and realised that it must mean looking in a different way at my view of what a judge is like. I was stuck for a while on how to change my thinking about this, but then I suddenly remembered the two occasions in my life when I’ve actually seen a real judge at work; and I think that telling you about these two occasions might help all of us.
It all started when a young man and his wife had their baby baptised, and as a very devout Christian, the father decided he wanted to be received into the Church that had baptised his baby. Marco (not his real name) was from Colombia and I spent quite a lot of time getting to know him pretty well, as I worked through with him what he needed to do in order to be received. Then suddenly, I heard that he had been arrested. I knew that he was trying to set up a school to teach English here in the UK to people from South America, but I didn’t expect that standing at Heathrow Airport Arrivals with a Notice greeting people from Colombia he didn’t know, would get him accused with them of being part of a drug smuggling gang.
I was shocked, because I knew Marco to be a very moral young man, and I just couldn’t believe that he would ever get involved in anything like this ; so when his distraught young wife asked me to be a character witness, I agreed. So, I found myself in West London in a Court for the first time in my life. As I stood there giving my testimony, I realised that the Judge wasn’t the slightest bit interested in what I was saying. It was awful. He clearly believed the Customs Official, despite the lack of actual evidence. In other words, unlike the ideal Judge presented to us in our 1st Reading, (Eccles 35:15-21) the Judge I saw instructing the Jury, so that Marco was given a long prison sentence, was influenced beyond reason by the person, the witness, he thought was important – the customs official.
It was 18 months later that I was in Court again. Marco had been in prison all that time, whilst his sad wife, supported by her loving family wept and prayed for him. The Court of Appeal in London is a very impressive place – a grand Victorian building with a Central Hall as big and magnificent as a Cathedral! The Judge with his two assistant Judges was up high and far away, just like some people think of God, and I wasn’t all that hopeful. Yet it didn’t take all that long. They heard the evidence, and after a short withdrawal to discuss the case, they came back into the Court, and the Judge declared that there was “No case to answer”, in other; words that Marco should never have been prosecuted, let alone found guilty. The jubilation of that family, the tears of joy that I joined in, were just wonderful. Here, to quote our 2nd Reading (2 Tim 4:6-8,16-18) was a “Righteous judge.” And here was the moment, the Day when Marco was given by that judge what might be called “The crown of righteousness.”
Now remembering the joy that Judge brought to so many, has really helped me with this idea of God as a judge. No, a judge need not be someone who pronounces some awful sentence from on high. A righteous judge will often be quite the opposite, the one who passes a sentence that puts right a wrong. In other words, the righteous judge, to use technical theological language, will often be the redeemer, the liberator, the one who brings freedom and vindication to the fearful and oppressed, like Marco. Taking that thought to the Gospel, we can see how the posh Pharisee tries to impress God with all he has done. The corrupt judge would have been taken in by such things; but the righteous judge isn’t swayed in this way. Instead, he is prepared not to judge things by outward appearances, not to judge things by the ways of the world. In those days the world hated and despised all tax-collectors and looked up to the honourable Pharisees, but the true judge can see a deeper reality, can look into the heart; and so it is the tax-collector who goes home as the Gospel says: “At rights with God.”
Every image of God that we are given in the Bible can help us get a better understanding about what God is like, provided we use the image correctly, and overcome, as I needed to do, a negative take on such things. Even the greatest image of all, the one that Jesus taught us most often, that God is a father can be misunderstood by those who do not have a loving father, but one who threatened or even abused them. We must always be sensitive to the fact that an image we take for granted, one that helps us, can for some people give a completely different impression of what God is like. I was talking to a devout old lady the other day because she had read some literature that gave her the impression that when she died, she was going to face endless suffering in Purgatory. Oh no, I said, furious with this literature for frightening her, Purgatory is a place of hope and joy, a place where God perfects us so that we can see him as he is, face to face. And when we see him face to face, no images will be needed anymore.
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