(Prov 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23; Ps 125; Jm 2:1-10, 14-17; Mk 7:24-37) J G White

10:30 am, Sunday, September 8, 2024, FBC Amherst

Three weeks ago today I took the picture you see on the cover of today’s bulletin. I happened to be travelling home along the Eastern Shore of NS, and discovered that the annual sand sculpture contest was that very Sunday, on Clam Harbour Beach. With about eight thousand other people, I viewed the diverse sandcastles and sculptures. Each one in the competition was marked with a number.

But of course, along part of the beach was this sign. The organizers and judges of the competition did not want artists expecting to enter all along the whole beach. So, from this spot, there were to be no more sculptures to be judged in the contest. NO Judging Past This Point.

I knew I had to take a picture of that little sign. And I thought about how many uses we could come up with for that sign. ‘No judging past this point.’ A lot of us - if you are like me - need to see that sign every day of our lives. Because we have a tendency to judge lots of things and many people, moment by moment, each day.

Many things are said in the scriptures of our Faith about judgement and judging. Oft quoted is the phrase, judge not, that ye be not judged. (Jesus, in His sermon on the mount ~ Matt 7:1 KJV). There are many moments when we need to judge something as good or bad or whatever. We need to choose, and choose well. But there are limits to what and how and who we judge.

These phrases come up in various sacred texts we heard today. The little book of James, filled with wise dos and don’ts, tells of the favouritism that’s shown to the fine people we’d love to associate with. Folks become ‘judges with evil thoughts,’ it says here.

Looking way back, Proverbs 22 and Psalm 125 both hint at - or illustrate - judgements we make about the rich and the poor, so called, as well as the upright of heart and those of crooked ways.

With the great brains and hearts and lives we have been given, we have the ability to judge, to judge for ourselves many things.

I am just finishing a little novel of historical fiction, called Two Crows Sorrow, by Laura Churchill Duke. It is about a real drama in rural Kings County, and a murder case that is in the historical record. I was interested to discover that the judge of the supreme court who was called upon then, 1904, in Kentville, was Judge Charles Townshend, of Amherst. The novel takes one’s imagination into the life and work of a judge like Townshend, 120 years ago. And the courtroom scenes in the novel are filled with crowds of curious people, all making value judgements about the ones on trial, gossiping, and sometimes calling out for their version of justice!

I am guessing that none of us here has been judge in court of law, but we judge many matters in our lives. To know the limits of our judging job: there’s true wisdom. And loving kindness. So we each learn how and when to put up that sign for ourselves, ‘No Judging Past This Point.” As people of Christian faith, we are disciples of the Master. We learn, step by step and stage by stage, how to make decisions; when to make choices, big and little, that affect others; and when to leave matters in the hands of others, including God.

Speaking of the Master… we have such striking stories about Jesus, today. The first one, in particular, with the local woman calling upon this spiritual traveler to heal her daughter, free her from a spirit. How the Rabbi responds to her can seem quite strange. Jesus rejects her. He rejects her? ‘Let the children be fed first (meaning the Israelites), not the dogs.’ Bible scholars have pondered this for aeons, and come up with many ‘solutions.’ Such as:

‘Dog’ was not actually such a nasty term. (Well, it was!)
Jesus was urgent about His primary mission to Jews.
It was actually inappropriate for the woman to make the request.
This is not an authentic saying of Jesus; not truly historical.
The wealthy Gentiles of Tyre, like this woman, were always adversaries of the poorer Jews of that region.
Jesus simply does change, learn, bend in a new direction.

When it is all said & done, the woman is persistent in her faith that her daughter will be helped, & Jesus respects her.

Is Jesus, here, learning to judge differently? Change his decision, broaden His path and widen the people He will see and serve? The story keeps us wondering - and praying with Him about it all.

We might think about how Jesus, born in Bethlehem, raised in Egypt and Nazareth, had to learn everything as a human child and youth. He learned to eat, learned to talk, learned to walk, learned every skill of a child. How about judging? Was he still learning this at age thirty? How to make decisions; how to respond to others? Perhaps we think it is scandalous that our Christ was not perfect, somehow. But development and discernment need not be finished at the start of His journey, I’d say. We even have God Almighty sometimes ‘repenting’ or changing God’s mind in the First Testament Stories. It is possible for us to have conversations with God that matter, that make a difference: that make things turn out differently.

So, once again, from our Jesus, we can learn to judge, & also not to judge / be judgmental; when to submit to others, humans & God. We do this by trial and error, with our Teacher close at hand. As we walk through life and can become closer disciples of the Master, we can be trusted by God with more: more responsibility, more decisions, more wisdom to choose.

In the end, it comes down to our actions, our lives. As the book of James famously says, So it is with faith: if it is alone and includes no actions, then it is dead. (J 2:17, TEV)

May we be blessed to know when it is time to stop judging (past this point) a do something good.