November 23rd ~ Competing and judging lead us astray. Grace, hope, and Kindness lead us to the Reign of Christ

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Jeremiah 23:1-6

Psalm 46

Colossians 1:11-20

Luke 23:33-43

Sermon by Pastor Joel

From the first day we go to school and pretty much every day after, we get told by society that we need to be better than everyone else. What are grades but a way of grouping us into As, Bs, and Cs? At one of the schools my kids went to, students used to get together and write their grades on the boards at lunch to see who was best – and by extension the worst. It goes on from there: we compete to be on teams, we compete to win our partners, we compete for promotions, we compete for the biggest house, the shiniest car, and so on.

No wonder that the action that comes with all this competing is Judgement. After all, how can we know if we are better, if we don’t judge? As society has gone from being more cooperative over human history and less individualistic, we have gotten much better at judging and less skilful at empathizing – empathy being another word for making space for others to be heard and seen. Because again, if another person is seen, does that not make us invisible?

This tends to go two ways: we think everyone is better than we are, or we think we are better than everyone else. Psychologists call this “illusory superiority,” and it has been found over and over again. Ask drivers if they are better than other drivers, and something like 80 percent will say yes. Ask people if they are smarter than most people, and almost everyone will say yes. Ask even therapists if they are better than their peers, and the same things happens. Of course, to paraphrase a famous line: if everyone is above average, then nobody is average. Or is above average then average? All this is to say, how we rank ourselves – whether too high or too low – is, for a lot of reasons, simply not true. It makes you wonder why we even waste time with it, instead of just living our life to the best of our ability.

On this Reign of Christ Sunday, with Advent approaching, we get a gospel much closer to Easter, although quite clearly to Good Friday. It feels off. Why remind of us of this moment so near to Jesus’s death on a day when he is celebrated for his leadership? Why make us think of those two criminals hanging on the cross with Jesus – who we’d rather skip past even on Good Friday? This is why: this exchange on the cross is a moment worthy of a leader to admire. And the thieves are a reminder for us, delivered roughly at the halfway mark back to Good Friday: better to hold your judgement than spew it around.

Let’s take a look at those criminals for a minute. We don’t know anything about them. The first criminal apparently derides Jesus – aren’t you the Messiah? Can’t you save us? The second criminal shushes him: we are getting what we deserve; Jesus is innocent. Which one would you be? Which one do you not want to be? I think we all know.

But why do we assume anything about these two men with Jesus? We know nothing about them. We don’t even know, except for one opinion expressed by an unreliable narrator, if they are truly guilty. We don’t know the context of why they are here and others are not. We don’t know the story of their lives that led them to this place. We do, however, know that the justice system is corrupt, that the leaders of Jerusalem are weak or power-hungry and that innocent people end up on the cross – we are looking right at one. We should be careful about judging: those are very human people, angry and scared and pleading, hanging on the cross with the Son of God. So set that aside: feel sadness for the plight of these two men, who were not saved long before this, and who can bear no more judgment.

What does Jesus do? He says only one all important sentence: “Truly I tell you, you will be with me in paradise.” According to our gospel, he doesn’t say anything to the angry and frightened man begging to be saved. Or if he does, we do not hear it. Jesus has been offered that test before – in a desert – and refused.

But how has Jesus responded in the past to cries to be saved by flawed, imperfect people, even when those cries are delivered poorly? How often did Jesus coach the disciples through their own bad behaviour? It’s true that the man who asks to be remembered by Jesus is more eloquent, more deferential, and don’t we all wish to be him in that situation? He gets the answer: Truly, I tell you, today, you will be with me in paradise.”

The gospel always reads as if Jesus was speaking only to one man on the cross. But I wonder? The disciple Thomas also tested Jesus and was not abandoned. Peter denied Jesus entirely, and was still blessed with his presence. In his moment of pain and suffering, Jesus takes time to speak and offer hope to the others hanging with him – he sets his own pain aside to focus on another. This is the noble act of a loving leader. That is the behaviour to emulate.

For me it all comes back to this: nobody’s perfect. We do selfish things, careless thing, even intentionally negative things all the time, and justify them to ourselves. We make demands of people to fix our own mistakes; indeed, don’t we often make the same demand of God? At other times, awareness seeps in, and we are wise enough to see our flaws, to seek forgiveness, to make amends, and take those to God as well. We are both that flawed human on the cross demanding to be saved, and the flawed human on the cross asking politely. If Jesus was the kind of leader who responded only when people were nice to him or flattering – well that, as we can see very clearly in the world today, is a very different kind of leadership. Certainly not the kind of leadership Jesus spent his life teaching – where leaders act for the sake of others, and not for their own egos.

This is where competing and judging lead us astray. Even standing at the cross, we’re deciding who fits in and who doesn’t, who gets in and who’s left out, who’s better, who’s worse – certainly worse than us. And we are missing the whole point: in his more terrible moment, Jesus still thinks of someone else. It’s only a few verses later in the Good Friday story that he will do it again, begging for our forgiveness. Instead of judgement, he offers grace and hope and kindness. Imagine if we did the same.

Amen