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Pastor's Reflection
Fear and Judgment
When I was a kid in my (not Episcopal) church, we were taught to fear God, meaning to be afraid of what would happen to us if we ever wavered in our faith. We were taught that our friends might be sent to hell if we didn’t invite them to church--if we didn’t save them from God’s judgment. The trouble with that worldview became apparent to me as I realized I was taking responsibility for their salvation, making myself a savior out of fear. To find my way back to sound theological ground, I had to recognize Jesus’s role as savior--through love, not fear--and what fear and judgment really mean.
Tomorrow we’ll hear Psalm 19, one of the best (if we’re allowed to rank the psalms). It says, “The fear of the Lord is clean and endures forever; the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold…”
The Psalmist gives us a very different picture of the fear of the Lord, indicating that maybe God’s judgment is not something to dread, avoid, and seek shelter from. Perhaps the judgment of God is something to dream of, anticipate, and seek out. However, the story of Jesus in our Gospel reading tomorrow will seem to challenge that. It’s hard to picture Jesus as loving or his judgment has peaceful when he’s whipping and flipping. But maybe those tables needed to be flipped, and maybe that whip was only to shoo the animals back outside. And maybe if we can sit a little longer with these themes of fear and judgment, we can see why someone might desire them more than gold or sweets.
As you prepare for our time of worship tomorrow, can you think about the judgments you’ve been carrying around? What debts do you owe? What debts do others owe you? What’s in the ledger book in your heart? My prayer is that you will find the courage to let Jesus scatter those pages and bring your eyes up from the accounting to see the gates of God’s love.
Grace and peace,
Rev. Tom+
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