Reflection on the Word for the Sunday of October 16, 2022
God’s Justice is Just Luke 18:1-8
Jesus said, "In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, 'Grant me justice against my opponent.' For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, 'Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.'" And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. (...)”
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There is a historical trembling of the Judgment Day of the Judge. Self-assigned non-biblical prophets kept yelling about the final doomsday, practically in every generations, that the world ends or at least the end was / is immanent.
However, there happened already a couple of Judgment Days, by that we can mean that the ruling was given by Heaven, and the sentence was executed by the Universe.
Other than that we have to also face our personal judgment day, in the hour when we have to leave this world and our physical existence behind.
In all religious streams, that respect the Hebrew Scriptures, there is a great expectation, that the Messiah will be coming, soon or not quite soon, but for sure. There are some predictions that when it should happen. According to the old tradition, in every single generation, there are at least one person, or maybe even more candidates, who could be eligible to be filled up completely with the Holy Spirit in order to change the world for the better.
The expectations are high in our generations as well, however one major point has to be made regarding the high expectations. Not long ago, one faithful and observing man from the old tradition asked a famous Rabbi of these days, hailing from B'na Barak, that dear Rabbi, are You able to tell us, when the Messiah will appear among us?
The Rabbi answered, what if I tell you, that within three months.
The faithful and observing man from the old tradition by hearing that, began to sob.
“Why are you crying”? asked the rabbi. He answered, that I am not ready for that, it is too close, I have a lot of unfinished businesses, moral, spiritual and material as well, I am not ready, not ready, not ready.
The Rabbi said, that I said only what IF within three month. However, we all know that before the Messiah comes, prophet Elijah will come to announce not only the time of the appearance of the Messiah, but he will testify who is it.
Until that happens, why are your bothered, when the Messiah will come or rather still tarrying. God forbid, that you can die way sooner than that, and you have to appear before the Almighty God to give account of your everything. You should rather worry about your appearance before the Almighty God, than speculating on the earthly arrival time or being late time of the Messiah.
That is completely true, that our days and hours are strictly numbered on Earth, and when the last minute arrives we have to know that everything here must be left behind. Like waiting for the Messiah can be a nice hobby, but when we live, the arrival or the tarrying of the Messiah is irrelevant, because the true Judge will judge us according to our own deeds.
The first biblical Judgment Day happened, according to the Book of Genesis, when the first humans became banned from the Garden of Eden. They disobeyed God, which is the very category of sinning. With sin came the death penalty, the banning humanity from immortality. As the Apostle Paul wrote, that " For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
The sinning first couple tried to hide themselves from the sight of God out of fear caused by mistrust and disbelief. Thus, their exile from the Garden of Eden was self-inflicted, and the divine decree was a just one.
The second global level judgment day was the Great Deluge. It is easy to think that God became annoyed, moreover angry with the human race, regretting to have created them, and because of the divine wrath the oceans moved over the continents.
However, there is an other side of this primordial coin. The old tradition says, that humans sank to that level of immorality, that beside all the wars, the all over slavery, all the idolatry and human sacrifices, they also ate each other, becoming cannibals literally.
They should have seen the Great Punishment coming, because it is clearly written in the book of Genesis, that the Earth became cursed as a consequence of the human sins. We used to think that we are able to rule over nature, but it is just a ridiculous claim from any generation on Earth.
It is visible, that when we do not behave environment friendly, then the environment will become very hostile toward life. We just take granted that nature was created for us. It is not quite so, because we are hired caretakers in the Garden and not the owners of the Garden.
Thus, the deluge was invoked by the unthinkable cruelty of the human race. According to the Book, Heaven even forewarned the population that doomsday was coming. Nobody listened, accept Noah. Heaven provided even the means to avoid annihilation. They could have built thousands of Arks, but they did not.
Their punishment was thusly self-inflicted, their sentence was just, if horrible, as well. But on Heaven's side God made a rescue plan for humanity, despite of their darkened hearts. Sins pushed bad fate into movement, and only God's mercy allowed humanity to reboot and restart.
The next biblical judgment day event with great significance was the destruction of Sodoma and Gomorrah by fire-stones falling from the sky. The great significance of that is that the unthinkable wickedness of the residents of these cities called for punishment.
However Abraham, whose nephew, Lot, had to be rescued from Sodoma, bargained with God for the life of the innocents in the two cities. God was willing to spare all the residents in both cities for the sake of ten righteous persons there, if found. But not one was found. The self-inflicted punishment, as their self-invoked sentence was just, albeit harsh.
The other well-known Bible story when on behalf of God prophet Jonah declared the end of Niniveh. It is well depicted, that the repenting sinners were spared from the fate of Sodoma and Gomorrah, because their at-that-time-repenting actions resulted in a sentence of momentary acquitment.
Although the Bible says that " God saw their repentance, that they turned from their evil way. God repented of the evil which he said he would do to them, and he didn't do it." Niniveh was spared despite the doomsday declaration of Prophet Jonah.
Nonetheless, God did not change his mind, for their own deeds invoked the non-changing consequences. When they did evil, the evil backfired and brought evil consequences. When they repented, they harvested the healing consequences of their repentance, according to the unchanging Law of God.
As it is written in the letter of Apostle James that “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Be subject therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.”
May the Spirit of the Lord help us to draw near to God, who is the True Judge, Amen.
