“Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” (Lk. 12:14).
In our Gospel today, Our Lord Jesus Christ has an interesting reaction to the person asking him to resolve a disputed inheritance. He doesn’t want to do it: after all, who made Jesus a judge? He warns the crowd about greed, and then tells a story about a rich man who stores up treasures for himself and not for God. Maybe the one who wants Jesus to decide this is being greedy? All well and good, but not really an explanation of why Jesus resists the role of judge.
Let’s think about judgment for a moment. Judgment rests on making a distinction between one thing and another. In moral judgment we distinguish between right and wrong, and on this distinction quite a lot hangs. In everyday life we makes judgments all the time, about where to go and what to do, necessarily this and not that, that may not carry the same weight but are still important. In all prudence, we make judgments about others, their capacities and their motivations. Judgment is stitched into the world as we know it.
It’s easy to miss Jesus’ ambivalence. “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” (Lk. 12:14). His first response is to disclaim a role as judge. Is judgment really what is called for here? Do you really need a judge? We can connect his ambivalence with what Jesus has to say about judgment in the Gospel of Matthew, “Judge not, that ye be not judged” (Matt. 7:1): a programmatic statement that goes beyond the particulars of our reading. Again, a warning about judgment: a plea to refrain from judging. “For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get” (Matt. 7:2).
It would be too simple if we left things here: that Jesus is against judgment, full stop. We might think that Jesus is the original non-judgmental person; a kind of Lebowski dude before his time: after all, as he says in our Gospel, who made him a judge! But that is too simple indeed, as we see in the Gospel of Matthew, in the parable of the sheep and goats, where the Son of Man judges the nations, distinguishing and dividing the righteous from the unrighteous: an act of judgment if there ever was one (Matt. 25: 32)! Jesus tells the apostles that they will judge the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt. 19:28; Lk. 22:30). It seems that Jesus is pretty serious about judgment.
Still, as Jesus says in our reading, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” (Lk. 12:14), coupled with the solemn warning, “Judge not, that ye be not judged” (Matt. 7:1). One way of diagnosing our current social and political state is that we are beset by judgment, overcome by an excess of radical judgment. We’re given to a relentless distinguishing and division of people into friends and enemies, insiders and outsiders, those who are right and those who are fundamentally wrong. If you don’t believe me, just check out social media. Our propensity for these unforgiving binaries is endemic to social discourse, and the “go to” reflex response of the more reptilian portion of our brain.
No wonder Jesus tells us to give up judging! No wonder he doesn’t want to get sucked into being a judge! As the Gospel of Matthew suggests, judgment is just as likely to eat the judge alive than it is to resolve anything. “For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get” (Matt. 7:2). Again, one way of analyzing our excruciating social and political situation, from both ends of the spectrum, is that our willingness to weaponize judgement has come back to bite us, in just the way Jesus talks about in Matthew.
Oliver O’Donovan suggests, in his book The Ways of Judgment, that action is the answer to this riddle of judgment and non-judgment. As Jesus says at the end of this chapter in Luke’s Gospel, a portion that we won’t read in our lectionary but which we don’t want to leave out, “And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?” (Lk. 12:57). In other words, as Jesus returns to the original question, the problem is not with judgment itself, but rather with the substitution of judgment for action. What is needed is faithful action, what is needed is obedience to the will of God.
Our zone is flooded with judgments that lead nowhere, a breeding ground for hostility and discontent. Jesus says, Why don’t you judge for yourselves? O’Donovan suggests that refraining from judgment is not about being non-judgmental, a prescription for “anything goes,” but instead a case of relying on the judgment of God. We will only be able to dispense with judgment as we turn to obedience, to hearing the call of God and responding to his claim upon our lives. “Judge not, that ye be not judged” (Matt. 7:1)! Jesus is teeing this up in our Gospel today, calling us to give up judging others and to judge for ourselves: to move ahead and take action now.
