Fr Alex Swain
Beloved in Christ,
Anger, particularly justifiable anger (or what we think is justifiable), often leads to poor judgement.
Today’s Gospel, where Jesus is judged and condemned and spit upon by those accusing him, demonstrates the horrors of mistaken judgement. In anger and judgement, creation killed its creator. The Incarnate Word, the Son of God, was doomed to die by angry people in judgement.
We may feel mighty and lofty when someone gets their just deserts.
But the reading from 2 Chronicles reminds us that “there is no one who does not sin” (2 Chron. 6:36). So, we ought to approach our judgements with a degree of timidity. We are, after all, imperfect.
The Epistle of St. James has a lot to say about right action, right behavior, right discipline, and a lot of it revolves around humility.
James has always been one of my favorite Epistles. I think because I was raised in the non-denominational tradition where the common theological drumbeat was that we merely had to believe, that our personal actions didn’t really matter. It never quite struck me as enough.
And yes, it is true, there is nothing we can do for our salvation. It is a pure gift by God, through Christ.
And yet God demands we strive towards a life of faith, a life filled with acts of mercy, a life filled with living like Jesus.
And for Jesus, mercy triumphs over judgement, as James says. We recall Christ forgiving those on the cross. We recall God in the Old Testament who withholds judgement, seeking that all should repent and believe, until the time comes.
James emphasizes, again and again, the fundamental connection between faith and action, faith and behavior, faith and how we act.
We cannot carry our crosses, we cannot love God and love neighbor as ourselves, if we live as our ego-driven culture wants us to live.
We must let go. For mercy to triumph over judgement, a humbling of the self must happen, as Christ humbled Himself, in incarnation and death. If mercy is to triumph over judgement, we must, as St. John the Baptizer says, become less, so that Christ may become more (John 3:30).
If we learn how to permit mercy to triumph over judgement, by the grace of God, I believe the we, our nation, and our world can be transformed.
Amen.
Yours in Christ,
—Fr Alex
