Gotta love what the Apostle Paul sets forth as the “Marks of a True Christian:” Love out loud! …God, neighbor and even strangers. Hold fast to that which is good, render to no one evil for evil. Support the weak, help the afflicted, honor everyone… these admonitions should sound familiar to you. Spread the Good News. Build up the Church. Have faith. Pray. Bless the folks who seem to be out to get you. Bless them! Don’t bless ‘em out… not even in private. Share in people’s sadness. Be humble… not snooty. Do the right thing because it’s right thing to do. “Play well with others!” for goodness’ sake. We’ve got all this “true Christian stuff” licked so far, right? At least some of the time. 😉
And then, “Beloved, never avenge yourselves [on your enemies], but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord’ (cf. Deuteronomy 32:35 NIV).” “Alrighty then!” we say as we rub our hands together. We’ll just sit here upon our high horses, patting ourselves on the back, mouthing Christian platitudes, secure in the knowledge that the Almighty’s gonna smite whoever’s abused us, or assaulted our sensibilities, or in some way called into question the value of all our hard work in being good citizens, and playing by the rules of the “salvation game.” God’s gonna get ‘em!
Except… Let me tell you a story.
Back in 1978, when I was nineteen, dabbling at college and sitting on a bar stool singing songs for my supper a few nights a week, I was on my way home from one of the aforementioned bar gigs at 11pm when I got pulled over by a Dekalb County cop for running a stop sign while turning right. He was polite and professional, and left me with a ticket that would cost me more money than I made in a month. Ouch! I didn’t remember running any stop sign so, after the officer had pulled away, I retraced my route. And sure enough, when I arrived at the intersection in question, there was no stop sign… only a yield, and I had yielded! So, I girded my loins and prepared to fight the citation in court.
I had never been to Dekalb County Traffic Court before, and it was impressive. Dekalb had benefited from a significant influx of tax dollars during the early 1970s, due to “white flight” from Atlanta/Fulton County, and they had spent a fair portion of it on police and fire services and public works… like the courthouse I was visiting. Deep, rich wood paneling… high ceilings and doorways… lots of officious looking folks scurrying about, doing things officious people do. And me… the nineteen-year-old long-haired troubadour, armed with some photos and diagrams (but without an attorney) here to fight a traffic ticket. I felt pretty small, and out of place.
And then it was, “All rise!” and I did, and the judge entered the courtroom. An older white gentleman, with silver-gray hair, dressed in a black robe. He didn’t look all that much bigger than me… and he had a nice smile. The roll was called and, since my case was towards the end of the calendar, I settled in for what was likely to be a long wait. And it was, but I got to see lots of different cases play out in court that day, not all of which were traffic related. It was fascinating stuff, and some of the stories were compelling. The judge seemed firm, but fair. I don’t remember all that much detail about that day, nearly fifty years ago, but one story has stuck with me. A young, African-American kid, probably seventeen or eighteen years old was in court accompanied by his father. Apparently, he’d been pulled over for some sort of traffic infraction and, during the course of the stop, the investigating officer found a full-sized, no-kidding military bayonet under the driver’s seat. The cop inquired about the bayonet, and the kid was discourteous and not particularly forthcoming, and managed to talk himself into a ticket.
The young man was similarly sullen and belligerent in Court, and I could see that his dad was about to come out of his chair and smack him. At one point the judge had had enough and instructed the bailiff to take the lad down to a holding cell in the Courthouse basement. Click, click went the cuffs… a pat down was conducted, and off he went to experience a taste of incarceration… all in the space of about ninety seconds. On his way out, the young man looked over his shoulder at his dad. He no longer looked sullen or belligerent. He looked scared. There was a moment of silence in the Courtroom, before the judge called the father up to the bench. “Your honor, I’m gonna kill him!” the father blurted. The judge just smiled and said, “No you’re not. You’re his dad. You’re gonna love him.” The father looked taken aback, and started to respond, but the judge continued, “Your son’s got some things to learn, and we both have a part to play in that learning… but our roles are different. Right now, he feels like he’s got it all figured out, and it’s him against the world. It’s my job to help him understand the error of his ways… and it’s yours to let him know that he’s loved no matter what. We’ll let him sit in the holding cell for a few minutes and see how he likes it. I hope I never see your son in this court again, but you’re gonna be seeing him regularly and being his dad for the rest of your lives together. Cherish that.” This was not the sort of conversation a black father had expected to have with a white judge in a largely white courtroom, after his son had behaved so poorly in front of the bench… and he was abashed. You could have heard a pin drop.
So, the dad went back to his seat, and the judge heard a few more cases before he sent the bailiff to spring the young man from civic purgatory. When he returned to the Courtroom, his head was down, shoulders slumped, tears were in his eyes. He had not known how long he’d be held… or what the judge or his dad would say or do… or even if his dad would be there when he returned to the Courtroom, and it had weighed on him. Mightily. In the end, the judge imposed a fine, admonished the young man sternly about his future behavior with cops and judges and released him to his father. As they left the courtroom, the dad’s arm was around his son’s shoulder. Sweet.
“Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord.’” It’s easy to hear those words spoken in tones of thunder by an angry God, but I’m not so sure. Certainly, we might have said it that way… we’re only human, after all. But what of our heavenly Judge? “Right now, your son feels like he’s got it all figured out, and it’s him against the world. It’s my job to help him understand the error of his ways,” said the temporal magistrate. That courtroom experience, all those years ago, causes me to reimagine this passage from Romans as being spoken gently… as a corrective to those of us who might be tempted to either impose discipline ourselves or, perhaps more insidiously, harbor a “you’ll git what’s comin’ to you”attitude. “Vengeance is mine, says the Lord. I will repay. Your job is to love. Completely, unconditionally, even sacrificially. That’s it.” There’s no room for self-righteousness or gloating or distancing ourselves from those we believe have sinned. There is only love.
So, how’re we doing with that? Rest assured, there will be a day of judgement for all of us… good, bad and ugly… and we will all be held accountable, firmly but fairly I think, for things done and left undone. I like to think that the young man in the story learned some life lessons that day in Court, both from the judge and his father, and eventually managed to get things figured out. Maybe. Hopefully. But here’s the thing: we must never forget that God is God, and we are not. Let God be the judge. We have one job, and that is to be Church… extending the love of God wholeheartedly and without conditions, to our friends, enemies and everyone in between. And that’s plenty enough work to last us a lifetime.
And yes, by the way, I did end up weaseling my way out of my ticket… thanks be to God! 😉
A few words from Father Kemper 