Measure for Measure: A Sermon for Trinity IV
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord my Strength and my Redeemer. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Your sermon this morning, Measure for Measure, is the same as the title of a Shakespeare play that is itself taken from the verse in Luke 6:38 which we heard in today’s Gospel lesson: “For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again,” and its parallel verses in Matthew 7:2 and Mark 4:24. In Shakespeare’s play, the Duke feels that his permissiveness has allowed his people to slip into lewdness, and so he puts in charge his deputy, Angelo, who is tasked with the responsibility of cleaning up Vienna. While brothels have been running rampant, Angelo decides that he will have a man named Claudio put to death for impregnating his beloved and betrothed Juliet instead of simply ordering them to be married. His advisor Escalus suggests that the death penalty might be harsh, especially considering that worse forms of promiscuity are afoot in Vienna. Convinced that the law must be absolute for it to mean anything, Angelo tells Escalus, “We must not make a scarecrow of the law,/Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,/And let it keep one shape till custom make it/Their perch and not their terror.” Now, outside of the extreme application of it, he has a point, doesn’t he? As Christians, we cannot deny the truth that the custom of the world has caused us to be less bothered by sin than how Scripture paints it. God destroyed the world in a flood because of sin. He appointed a place in Hellfire for the fallen angels because of their sin. If we didn’t have the grace of Christ, we would be headed there too. Things which we joke and laugh about and are entertained by in much of our media are things which directly contradict the word of God. But what are we to do? Like Angelo, suggest the death penalty for every sin? Should we execute people who covet? Should we imprison people for working on the Sabbath? Or should we say that it’s all relative, that it’s no big deal if we ignore God’s law?
We are faced with two dangers, like in the Odyssey, the Scylla of Legalism and the Charybdis of Antinomianism. Scylla was a many-headed monster which consumed members of Odysseus’ crew, and legalists are those who demand a perfect fulfillment of the Law to a point which denies the role of the grace found in the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ and gobbles people up for their every mistake. Scylla as a monster is in human terms Angelo’s style of leadership. Just as Angelo would destroy Claudio for his sin rather than see him repent and restored, Legalists accurately see the absolute nature of God’s holiness and use that absolute holiness as a justification for crushing people under the weight of their own self-righteousness. Charybdis, on the other hand, was a sea monster that would swallow up any who approached her into her watery mouth, a swirling vortex of chaos, which is where we see those going who would deny the moral force of God’s Law. The Duke in Measure for Measure had unleashed this monster by failing to restrain the permissiveness of his people before it got so out of control he had to sic the monstrous Angelo on them. If legalism is the heresy that salvation is obtained by being righteous through our own effort, thus subtracting from the salvation obtainable only by the grace of Christ, antinomianism is the heresy that since we are saved by grace, we can live however we want and ignore the law of God. This heresy is what we hear when people misuse the verse from the Gospel lesson where Christ says, “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged.” John 3:16 used to be the most quoted verse of the Bible, but now this verse is, and the way it is used is to say: Do not discern right from wrong, do not see that there is such a thing as virtue and vice or a distinction between righteous living and unrighteous living. But that interpretation of “judge not lest you yourself be judged” undermines the force of John 3:16, which requires that we see that we need a Savior. Such an interpretation also undermines the force of the statement immediately preceding it, which is Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful. Mercy is meaningless if there is not justice first, and then when that just standard is transgressed, one can be merciful towards the transgressor. The seriousness of the crime must be real for the release from the penalty to have any meaning.
If we find ourselves in a constantly critical mode of others, odds are good that we are running the risk of Angelo, forgetting that we ourselves need mercy as we measure others as falling short without realizing that we do too. “Judge not lest you yourself be judged” means that if you are merciless towards the root sin in the other person, you invite merciless judgment on yourself. People use “judge not” to get themselves off the hook for their sins being acknowledged, but the verse is actually meant to make us feel convicted for how we let ourselves off the hook but put others on it. That’s what hypocrisy really means. Returning to Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, shortly after pronouncing his extreme penalty for Claudio, Angelo is then approached by Claudio’s sister Isabella, who is about to enter a monastic community as a nun. Angelo finds her passionate plea for mercy so impressive that he decides to tell her that if she will be his and give herself to him, then he will let her brother off the hook. Oh, the hypocrisy is rank. Here he is, bringing down the hammer on others for their wayward desires, and he then abuses his power to feed his own lust. Let me tell you something. If you and I are upset by imperfections in our fellow Christians, the first prayer we should pray is for God to show us whether our souls are beset by that same imperfection. Because if you bring an unyielding and unforgiving measurement to a sin in another person that is also within you, this Gospel lesson warns us that the same unyielding and unforgiving measurement will be applied to us. I am not saying that we cannot notice or critique imperfections or even transgressions done by fellow members of Christ’s church – in fact, Scripture mandates that we do, as we’ll see in a moment – but I am saying that we cannot lose sight of the fact that we participate in the same fallen human condition which allowed those individuals to fall into sin. If there comes a point where you must confront your brother or sister in Christ for a transgression, you can only do so if you have first asked the Father to confront you with the version of that same transgression within you and asked for forgiveness and freedom from the snare of that temptation. Self-righteousness is more dangerous when it is based in an accurate recognition that God’s standards have been transgressed, because that is when we are most tempted to forget that it is Christ’s blood which was specifically shed for the sin we see in our fellow Christians. Our first impulse should not be to deal out condemnation but to recognize that without Christ we too groan and travail under the same bondage of corruption we see.
This applies to church life as well. Maybe you see someone here living a certain way, doing something a certain way, which you think isn’t right. I am not here to tell you, in the worldly sense, to judge not and pretend nothing is wrong. Matthew 18:15-17 tells us to do this: 15 Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. 16 But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. 17 And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican. I can think of several situations I have witnessed where a conscientious Christian followed this teaching by Christ and was seen as judgmental for doing so by other Christians. But according to Christ, if you see something amiss, you should pay attention to it. You can’t have mercy like your heavenly Father by ignoring a problem you genuinely see. “Judge not” does not mean turn a blind eye to the problem. Rather, it is warning against a problem we might refer to as spiritual vent pecking. When a flock of poultry, such as chickens, gets too crowded causing their natural hierarchy to become confused, when their nutrition is poor, and when their living quarters are too hot and uncomfortable, they become aggressive towards one of their members if it has a flaw. If they see just a little blood or some little imperfection, in one of the chickens, the whole flock will gang up and peck that chicken to death. Sometimes, as it fights in self defense, it will leave wounds in the other chickens, and then after killing that chicken, the flock will likewise turn and kill the newly wounded chickens who themselves help to kill the first one. It is a dangerous cycle of violence that must be stopped. Just as overbearing hierarchy and chaotic living conditions can lead to vent pecking in chickens, both legalism and antinomianism can lead to spiritual vent pecking, legalism because it makes us too eager to critique and antinomianism because it allows too many problems to build up over time.
If you see a spiritual flaw in your brother or sister in Christ, instead of pecking at it, notice that you have your own version of that flaw too, and in love offer your beloved Christian aid in working through it together. If that doesn’t work, bring in another wise person in the church. If necessary, rely upon the hierarchy of the church – clergy and vestry – to help relieve tension. If even that fails, Scripture does present excommunication as a last resort. Hopefully it won’t get to that point though. Instead of spiritually vent pecking, we can cool down the temperature by realizing that our collective flaws are precisely why we needed Christ to come. We should be more diligent to feed ourselves and one another with the Word of Christ, and let the soothing grace of God cover and heal our wounds, and then help the wounds of our brothers and sisters to heal too. By this grace we pull the planks of wood out of our own eyes, and then we have clearer vision to help our fellow Christians clear the motes out of theirs. We don’t water down God’s standard of measurement, but recognize that that standard can only be met if it is founded upon Christ and Him crucified, and the immeasurable blood which flows from that atoning sacrifice onto us. Instead of either legalistic condemnation or antinomian permissiveness, we see the flaws in each other as an opportunity for God’s mercy to prevail, for the manifestation of all of us as the sons and daughters of God. Encouraging and upbuilding each other, we become a means of grace by which we, through Christ, deliver one another from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Amen.