God the Merciful and Just Judge – Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
As a court-reporter working at the Broward County Courthouse, I am privileged to witness to many court-hearings. I witness the Judge listen to both sides of an issue through the prosecuting state attorneys and defense attorneys’ presentations. Ultimately, the Judge weighs the evidence, and must judge accordingly. Often times, because the Judge is bound by the law, there is little mercy that can be given to a defendant at sentencing. On the contrary, God is not so bounded. He is not bound by civil laws, nor even his own holy Law that he first gave to Moses and the Israelites to standardize what is holy and good living, and what is sinful and evil.
For the past two weeks we have been reading the gospel of Matthew. The gospel for this Sunday Jesus continues his agricultural parables by talking of the wheats and the weeds. You can imagine the weeds are not desired! This is along the same vein of when he speaks of the sheep and the goats, or the good soil and the bad soil.
Finding the Good News about God’s love for all people is tough to find in these Gospel passages of Matthew. Jesus is speaking more of the Law (viz. what is good and what is bad) rather than Gospel (God’s saving Grace and Mercy through his Son Jesus Christ).
Even as a preacher, I find these passages can create confusion and anxiety among Christians. In our Lutheran Christian, we emphasize rightly that we are saved by faith in Jesus Christ and not by our merits. These passages provide a challenge to that. Jesus after all says the “Son of Man” will judge the world, and that the “evildoers will be thrown in the furnace of fire…while the righteous will shine like the sun.”
We have to read these passages. We have to understand what it means to be “holy,” or what holiness even means. We have to understand why the Psalmist says why the Law of God is beautiful and worthy of praise. The reason why is without the Law we wouldn’t know what is good and what is bad. What is righteousness and what is sinfulness. We wouldn’t know why Jesus died for us. He died to put to death sin’s death sentence over us, and thereby granting us eternal life with him in the life to come.
It’s a beautiful thing that our liturgy places a reading from Romans 8 to couple with our hard Gospel. This reading expands on the gospel reading by saying that God the Father is indeed a righteous judge who will judge sin and evil, but also, he is a welcoming father. Believers are not only part wheat, part weeds, but also adopted children, who await both divine judgment and glorious freedom. All of scripture must be read with the lens of the saving sacrifice and love of Christ on the cross. Christ will throw the weeds of sin into the fire, but those who place their faith in Him even though the weeds of sin strangle them will be saved.
Come to the table, where Christ offers his body and blood in bread and wine. These are the gifts of his grace and forgiveness of sins. Be washed daily in the waters of baptism that will clean the dirt and weeds of sin away. Christ is then there placing his clean white robe of his righteousness on you, that’ll never be stained. Amen.
Pastoral Intern Adam Baroni
