#15 Don't judge!

[AI translation] I must honestly confess that until I had to deal with this verse in more depth in preparation for today's sermon, I had no idea how topical an issue Jesus was addressing here. Then, the more I got into this verse, the more its message began to weigh heavily on me. It weighed on me first of all because I now realised that we almost involuntarily express opinions about people when we talk about them, as if Jesus had not said 'do not judge', but as if he had commanded it: Judge! For that is what we do: we judge carelessly, superficially, infallibly, ruthlessly. We judge the living and the dead.For example, we condemn the youth of today, we indignantly and indignantly list their sins. How lazy, hooligan, loose morals, how he looks with his silly-child haircut, his baggy trousers or his tight, short skirt. But in our time... - We condemn the misguided, unfortunate man who has fallen in love with another woman and has failed in his battle against the flaring passion, has fallen to temptation. With stumbling, moral indignation, we pass on the sad news: Have you heard? How could he do such a thing?! We speak with scornful judgment of the man who is above us in rank; we say that he is not fit for the job, that he is not fit for it, and that he is unjust and cruel, and perhaps not even entirely honest. - We condemn him who works below us, fretting at him for his laziness, his clumsiness, even his malicious, scheming nature; we pass judgment on society: corrupt, undisciplined, unjust, not allowing talent to flourish; and even here in the Church we are always judging each other, saying to someone that he is not a believer. They don't relate to God, to the church, as they should. I once heard believers talking indignantly among themselves: how dare XY come to the Lord's Table when it is obvious that he should first repent of his sins! Whoever it is, in whatever context: we are immediately ready with judgment, usually behind his back, of course.
It's not that we don't see the fault in the other person and try to help them (but more on that later). It's just that Jesus warns us so deadly serious: "Judge not!" - in Jesus' word, I beg you: judge no one, no matter how justified that judgment may seem! It is so easy to judge a young man who is still uninformed in the world, or a man who has gone astray, or a fallen daughter, or a nervous boss, or a man who is weak in faith and stumbling in the way of Christ. Men, judge not! What can you know why that wretch has become what he is? Why is he fallen, why is he nervous, why is he vain, why is he envious? What can you know what he has missed, what ails him, what torments him, what he has gone through, what is in his soul? This reflection alone would be reason enough not to judge! What more, Jesus goes on to say, "Judge not, lest ye be judged"! Do you think that you who judge someone does not judge you? Ask the young people how they judge the older generation? Would they say: are you judging us? What have you given us? Hypocrisy, a semblance of hypocrisy. At least we are what we are with honest frankness, but you yourselves are really under a veneer of lying Christian decency. Perhaps that fallen daughter would also pass the judgment back on her whole family and circle of friends and complain that she was not surrounded by an open, honest atmosphere and love that could have protected her from temptation. The unconverted brother would also say that he had long been deterred from Christ by the pride of "believers". He tried to approach, like the prodigal son to the father's house, but before he could meet the Father waiting with open arms, the elder brother, who was always at home, came before him, and looked at him with such an accusing, condemning look that he turned back in fright towards the pig trough. "Judge not, lest ye be judged". Human judgment does not help sin, it increases it. It immediately, almost automatically, triggers counter-judgment. Every word of condemnation is like an echo: it reverberates back at us.
Yes, because behind our condemnation is usually unloving. And moral arrogance. A secret (perhaps unconscious) gloating over the misfortune of the other. The "I" wants to shine brighter against the dark background of the sin judged in others. We diminish the other in order to make ourselves appear greater. In judging, what happens is that I lift myself up and push the other down. Therefore, it does not help the other out of trouble, but downright exasperates and hardens him. It is not the truth that the other sees and feels in him, but superiority, self-righteousness, contempt. "Judge not". People, do not judge, for that will do nothing to help the troubles! Jesus does not say that we should be blind to all human wickedness. Jesus is not sentimental. Nor is he speaking against the courts and the prosecution and the official justice system, for he himself passed terribly harsh judgments on the sins of hypocrites. John the Baptist also pronounced a harsh judgment on Herod, with these words: 'You shall not live with him' (Mt 14,4).
14.14.1. Well, here we are not talking about a softening harshness, but something quite different. It is about never forgetting that we ourselves are all people on the way to the last life. For if we forget that we too will one day appear before the judgment seat of God, and instead imagine that we ourselves are sitting in that judgment seat, then the voice of self-righteousness will be heard in our judgment. Then we will forget the beam in our own eyes, and the one being judged will immediately understand that we are not entitled to this high throne, that we are not justified if we speak down to him from here. He feels no solidarity. This is the judgment that Jesus forbids. That no one should sit in the judgment seat of God, before which he himself must one day appear: both the accuser and the accused.
Jesus says: "For in the same way you judge, you will be judged, and in the same way you will be measured, and in the same measure you will be measured" (Mt 7,2) Imagine: who could stand if someone were to measure him with the same unmerciful measure with which he used to measure another person? But these words were spoken by our Savior, the One who came to us not in the name of judgment but in the name of forgiveness of sins, who out of infinite love for us gave His blood for us. And then this word of His may be translated: 'As you yourselves have been judged, so judge, and as you yourselves have been measured, so measure! What Jesus is saying is that we ourselves, you and I, have simply escaped condemnation, we are pardoned sinners! We have simply been acquitted at the price of Jesus' condemnation. And if this is so, then Jesus' words, "with what measure you are measured, with what measure you will be measured", are a terribly dangerous threat to us. For it means that if you judge others without mercy - even though Jesus has forgiven you - you are simply excluding yourselves from God's forgiving grace. Then you are shifting from the basis of forgiveness back to the basis of reckoning, and so you become victims of your own position. If, in spite of God's grace, you still want judgment, here, you can have it. But if judgment comes to you afterwards, do not say, "Oh, I did not mean that, I only wanted to enforce judgment on the other person!
How can that mercy, that forgiving love, which you deny to the other man, be valid to you? You can determine for yourself the ground on which you want to stand: the ground of judgment or the ground of mercy. Which one you choose depends on which one you practice towards your fellow human being. For as you relate to your fellow-man, so will God relate to you: either as a Judge of judgment, before whom you will have no excuse, or as a Saviour, to whom you will cry, "Have mercy on me!
Jesus does not mean (let us not misunderstand) that if anyone sees a speck in the eyes of his brother, he should not notice it, he should not care, he should leave it in him. No! On the contrary, it is one's duty to help the other to see his faults, to tell him openly and honestly. But he must do this not from the height of the judgment-seat of God, but standing with him before the judgment-seat of God, in full solidarity with the other in common judgment and pardon. In the knowledge that the forgiveness of sins which I enjoy through Christ also applies to the other, because Jesus died for him. Standing thus together before a merciful God, I, who have already experienced how the beam in my eye has been taken out by God's forgiving love, and the other, whose eyes I have seen the speck in, are both under God's forgiving grace, and so, only so, can I draw near to that other's speck. Only in this way can I say to him: Come, I will help you take that speck out of your eye! Come, don't be afraid, I already know what it means, what a painful operation it is, to touch the most sensitive part. God did the same to me. Yes, only those who have experienced forgiveness can bring healing powers and help into the world.
Once, in a company, there was a talk about someone. Someone who had committed a truly wicked deed. Everyone was outraged. One member of the company said in great fervour: I'll tell him what a wicked man he is, because he did this and that. I said quietly: 'Do you love that man so much that you can tell him? Because if you love him so much, you can tell him to his face how mean he is. Yes, you can only take a speck out of someone else's eye with very tender love and very gentle hands. It must never be forgotten, meanwhile, that that splinter, or even that beam, means that some "foreign body" has entered that unfortunate person's most sensitive organ. And if you can't tell the difference between an eye and a foreign body, don't touch it. Observe Jesus: when he was confronted with the most abominable fornicator or tax collector, he always knew that this was not the man who had actually been taken out of the hand of God, but that something foreign to his being had been put in, which must be removed from him, which must be freed from him, so that he might be himself again. For Him, even the vilest of evildoers was a child of God, whose moral depravity was caused by something foreign in him, some thorn. Therefore, all his healing was done by removing the thorn.
When a sick or sinful person had Jesus' gaze on him, he had already begun to be healed. For something very special had happened in this respect, in his gaze: he felt that Jesus saw the real man in him, that he was not a victim of the optical illusion to which we are always a victim - that the other man, the sinner, was only a large splinter, on which it was hardly possible to recognise any human eye - but that He always saw the eye first, the child of God, wounded by a splinter. And as soon as the tax collectors and the possessed and the harlots saw that Jesus saw us, saw our true nature, saw that we were children of God, saw that God loved us, saw that he was sorry for us, they were healed. Because no one had ever seen them like that, never looked at them.
The one who has had the beam removed from his eyes by Jesus sees differently with his eyes, he sees a different side of things than before. Not just the speck in the other's eye, but the eye of the other, which God created to reflect his own image and likeness. Not only does he see in that young man the purgatorial state of his youth, but he sees in him the wretched child. Not only the intrigue of the boss, or the laziness of the employee, but the overworked man. Not only the fall of the daughter, the deception of the man, but also the precious value of the one for whom God paid with the precious blood of Jesus, and who is not yet aware of his own unheard-of value. And then he will approach the other, not as a moral inspector, a high-mounted moralizer, but as a Good Samaritan, to help the other, where he himself is always being freed from his own beam: Under the cross of Jesus, into the field of God's forgiving grace.
So let us not judge, but help. Let us help with the uplifting power of God's forgiving love!
Amen.
Date: 28 February 1965.