Love’s Judgment by Rev. Leah Goodwin

Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God. (John 3:17-21)

____________________________________________________________

Have any of you seen one of these “Wash Away Your Sins” towelettes? They’re part of a whole line of “Wash Away Your Sins” cleaning products. The best part about it is that it really is a handy towelette. I had it in my purse for a while, but I never got around to using it—I was kind of afraid of what would happen if I did.

I’ll read you the package: “Save yourself! Save others! Antibacterial formula kills sin on contact. Handy! Reliable! Heavenly scented! Infused with Easter lily scent! Rights your sins with a single swipe.”

There’s often a little darkness in humor—and this towelette package is funny because the claims it makes are, at least as far as I know, not possible. Sin is a sickness, but it’s not bacterial. Wrongs can’t be “righted with a single swipe.”

This issue of sin weighs particularly heavily on us this late March Lenten morning. Not least of these reasons is a peculiar paradox of this day in the church year. This Sunday is the fourth Sunday in the forty day season of Lent. It is the Sunday known as “Laetare Sunday,” or the Sunday of Rejoicing. Even the medieval Christian world knew that a bit of a break is a good thing, especially when a person is contemplating his or her sin, and in the fourteenth century or so Rejoicing Sunday was added to the Lenten seasonal lineup.

But, of course, even rejoicing is informed by the spirit of the season. So it is that we come to our readings for this morning, which are notable for both heights of ecstasy and depths of grief. I call your attention to our Gospel reading for this morning. This passage begins in the middle of things, halfway through a conversation that Jesus is having, in the middle of the night, with a man named Nicodemus who has come searching for the secret to eternal life. Our reading begins as Jesus (or John, we’re not sure which) muses on the nature of Christ’s mission:

“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him….”

Truly, cause for rejoicing!

But then comes the scary part:

“Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.”

“Those who do not believe are condemned (judged) already.” It is so simple, so tempting, to think, “Pfft. Too bad for them. They condemned themselves—free will and all that. God wants to save us – but we do, after all, have the freedom to choose hell.” And then we feel a bit freer to give a big ol’ Bronx cheer to people or groups or political parties, or even ourselves—whomever we feel doesn’t measure up.

It is so easy to understand Jesus’ message in this passage from the Gospel of John as one that separates the saved from the damned, insiders from outsiders, the faithful from the unfaithful—in other words, the members of the Jesus club from the nonmembers. Some may read this passage and feel pretty sure that they’re on the club roster.

And some may encounter this passage and believe quite the opposite – that, in fact, they are the unredeemable one, the one whose soul is too broken ever to be saved, or too dead ever to be brought back to life.

Well, I don’t buy it. I don’t buy it for a number of reasons, a number of which are separate sermons in themselves.

But mostly I don’t buy it because of what the gospel itself says, which I believe outweighs any condemnatory impulses we may bring to bear on the text:  “For God so loved the world…”  The Word speaks most powerfully in that one little phrase, “the world.”

The writer of John’s gospel uses the Greek word kosmos for what we translate in this famous quote as “the world.” The word kosmos is familiar to us—we use it to mean the vast universe, the whole of creation – but in New Testament Greek kosmos has a particular connotation that sort of gets lost in translation. Kosmos means not just the creation, but damaged creation, broken creation, fallen creation—the universe or world or person that has turned away from its creator, from God.

So when the writer of John’s gospel tells us that “God so loved the world,” he’s saying that God loved—still loves—the broken world. God loves a world that, quite often, did not and does not love him back. As Edward Marquardt puts it, “the world is generally hostile to God, hates God, resists God, does not have time for God, does not believe in God. And God loves the world.” God ceaselessly strives, as Swedenborg tells us, to bring us into mutual union with him.

“The grand purpose, or the purpose of all elements of creation, is an eternal union of the Creator with the created universe. This does not happen unless there are subjects in which the Creator’s divinity can be as it is in itself, at home, so to speak—subjects in which it can dwell and abide. For these subjects to be his dwellings and homes they must be receptive of his love and wisdom apparently of their own accord, subjects who will with apparent autonomy raise themselves toward the Creator and unite themselves with him. In the absence of this reciprocity, there is no union…Through this union, the Lord is present in every work he has created.” (Divine Love and Wisdom §170)

This notion that all of creation exists so that it might be a home for God begins to illuminate what the Gospel reading is saying to us—that the “judgment” of which Jesus speaks, the “condemnation” that we bring upon ourselves, is not God’s finger pointing certain dreadful people to the door marked “Hell.” Rather, it is the spiritual kick in the pants that occurs whenever the light of divine truth comes into contact with the dark, broken, dead parts of ourselves, and of this world.

Rev. Sarah Buteux put it this way:

“The only person I have a right to judge is myself. And even this right should not be taken as an opportunity for self flagellation, or self-degradation, but rather as an opportunity for repentance, and a chance to be conscious of my need for humility and compassion toward myself and others. What is needed is a recognition that I am not perfect, but the Lord loves me anyway, and is willing to forgive what is wrong in me because he is so deeply committed to all that is right.”

This is the point: that the only true judgment is love’s judgment. The only judgment that really transforms us, that truly makes us new, is the one that we experience when we, in our brokenness, come into contact with the clear and unflinching light of divine love.

The purpose of love’s judgment is NOT to hand down a sentence, “saved” or “condemned,” “heaven” or “hell.” The point of love’s judgment is NOT retributive, locking the prison door and throwing away the key. Judgment for the sake of some idea of cosmic retributive justice, judgment that points the finger and tells each of us just how sinful we are and what it is we deserve, is ultimately not God’s purpose.

Love judges us, sifts us out, on every level—each one of within ourselves, as a congregation, as a nation, as a culture, as an epoch, as a world—so that we might find our wheat separated from our chaff.

Love judges us so that we might become whole, which is, after all, really what it means to be “saved.” Love judges us, reveals the parts of our souls that are “dead through trespasses and sins,” dead because they follow the course of this world.

Love judges us in order to heal us. And sometimes God’s cleansing love is astringent, feels harsh, to our precious uncleanness—no delicately scented handy-wipe towelette here.

Jesus Christ, my friends, is the substance of love’s judgment. He is, in his every aspect, the unflinching light of God’s truth, the unceasing and unrelenting embrace of God’s love.

Love judges us in Christ’s coming. For each one of us, and for us as a world, is the coming of the Word of God, God’s divine truth, into our individual and collective lives. It is in the brightness of this light that we can begin taking stock of ourselves, and of our kosmos, our pitifully broken, divinely beloved world. There is no hiding from God’s light—no hiding our darkness, and no hiding our beauty as God’s creation, either.

Love judges us in Christ’s death on the cross, in the truths that we recognize but reject—those things that we know, somewhere deep within ourselves, to be good and real, but push away. Those ideas or parts of ourselves or people that are so perversely satisfying to ignore or to hurt, precisely because they are true.

And love judges us in Christ’s resurrection—in taking what is dead and making it alive, in taking what kills and giving it healing power (remember that bronze serpent from our Old Testament reading this morning?)—in taking grief and turning it into Good News, into gospel.   Love judges us by striving with us and within us, by taking what is lost in us and making it found, by taking this broken world and our broken hearts and making it—and us—whole and new.

Divine love comes to us in all its truth, in the form we know to be our Lord Jesus Christ, and reveals to us the parts of our being that are “dead in sin,” the parts of our souls that are not really who we are, the parts of us that “follow the course of this world” and not God’s creation, that are not what God created us to be.

As a part of the church year, Lent is a time for taking stock. It is an introspective, meditative, and (yes) somber time of spiritual birth and death, a time to prepare ourselves for the great joy of Easter. So it is appropriate, as I close this morning, to turn to a work from Lent’s sister season of Advent. This is from T.S. Eliot, who speaks as one of the Wise Men, the Magi.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death?…

I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here…

I should be glad of another death. (T.S. Eliot, “The Journey of the Magi”)

“This,” says Jesus, “is the judgment…that the light came into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”

But this judgment, this shock of realization, this shock of shame that comes when God’s wholeness comes to heal our brokenness, is not the end of the story. Because, as John’s Gospel tells us also, “the light came into the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

Amen.