“Without excuse, and without mercy”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Wednesday, June 15, 2022
Romans 1:28 – 2:11 (Forward, p. 48) CEV p. 1173
The apostle Paul has just enumerated a most ‘amazing’ and thoroughly nasty and depraved list of sins. Even if Professor Longenecker is correct in alleging that it represents a stock inventory of what the Jews accuse the Gentiles of perpetrating, it is still pretty awful. The Gentiles, or whoever these sinners ‘happen’ to be, are a pretty despicable lot. But then Paul pulls a fast one. He then says, ‘but such as this were some of you.’ He has constructed a ‘set up’, a trap, a mirror, in which he expects his audience to see something of themselves and their own behaviour. And he does so by way of warning, warning them to change, to ‘clean up their act.’
Furthermore, along with this warning, he states two other things. Firstly, he tells them that they are without excuse. They know better—or, at very least, they should. They have been grounded in the faith and they know what is expected of them as Christians. But this isn’t all: they are also without mercy. Knowing what they do, they will most certainly be held accountable. It doesn’t matter what their outward credentials happen to be, Jew, Gentile, Christian, whatever. What matters is how they behave, and unfortunately, this has come up lacking.
Gladly, fortunately, this is not the end of the story. They can turn, they can repent, they can change. Redemption and forgiveness are available no matter what, no matter what they have done or ‘where’ they have been in terms of their behaviour. There is always room for a fresh start. And, thanks be to God, it is the same with us. No matter what has transpired in the past, today is a new day and we can start over, start afresh armed with God’s love and mercy and forgiveness. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Forward notes: “Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things” (chapter 2, verse 1).
“I may have thought of myself as a pretty non-judgmental person at one time, but the COVID-19 pandemic unleashed a wave of judgment in my life. I judged people wearing masks incorrectly at the grocery store. I judged people eating in restaurants. I judged churches that put too little effort into online worship and those that put in too much. I judged people who kept wiping down surfaces constantly even after the science showed surfaces were a low risk for transmission. And I know for a fact people were judging me, too.
“Thanks be to God that this is the teaching of the church: judge not. Easier said than done, but the cycle of recriminations is exhausting and emotionally draining. God desires that we choose a different way.”
MOVING FORWARD: “What judgments do you need to put away? Ask God for help!”
A concluding note: I’m afraid that our author has entirely missed the point of what Paul is saying in today’s passage. He is not ruling out passing judgment on others per se—which is something that we all do day by day and often in very unconscious and unknown ways. Rather, he is telling his readers not to pass judgment on others when they are guilty of doing the very same things. In effect, he is saying that they should be taking a good look at their own lives, inspecting them, and then passing judgment on the warts and flaws found there. So, in a sense, he is reiterating what Jesus said in one of His parables: he is saying that they first need to remove the hanking big blank out of their own eyes, rather than worrying about the miniscule, rather insignificant speck in someone else’s eyes.