A month into my first semester of seminary, things began to fall apart—not with my own situation but with the seminary itself. Tension between the faculty and dean had led to a standoff and strike, and students were trapped in the middle of it all. Classes were paused for many weeks, and no one knew what the future would hold in terms of any kind of real education and formation.
As the semester end drew nigh, and when I had already made plans to transfer to another seminary, the standoff ceased, and classes began to resume. This time was traumatic for the student body. Any semblance of order and routine had been shattered in late September, and by late November, somehow we students had to think about exams and grades amid all the mess. It was the last thing any of us wanted to do.
And I will never forget the response of one of my professors. He was a wonderful teacher and a kind man. He had continued teaching his classes throughout the faculty strike, and when the final exam approached, he announced that, because of all the drama and unrest of the semester, the final exam would be open book and take-home. As I recall, the deadline was extended, too.
I will admit that as an overly conscientious student, who was committed to studying and working hard even in the midst of instability at the seminary, I was both relieved and yet a little disappointed. My weaker side wanted to be able to deliver an excellent exam in spite of all that had transpired over the course of the semester. I suppose I secretly wanted to best those other students who had chosen to slack off. They should get their due.
But what I remember most about my professor was his graciousness and mercy. He was empathetic enough to recognize that we students had been put through something painful, through no fault of our own. And his way of demonstrating his compassion, was to change the conditions of the final exam.
Truth be told, I don’t think I learned any less in preparing for the exam because of how it was structured. I may even have learned more. I still remember quite a bit from the semester in that one class. Above all, though, I remember that professor’s kindness.
Of course, my professor knew he shouldn’t cancel the exam. Grades, after all, are part and parcel of the academic experience. As faulty and potentially unhelpful as they can be, they rightly demand accountability. My professor was trying to hold two things in balance: a gentle “carrot” towards good academic performance that would hopefully be an incentive to learn and a merciful stance that acknowledged difficult circumstances.
The author of the Second Letter of Peter seems to be doing something quite the same. He wrestles with a balance between two things. He encourages holy living by reminding his audience of the reality of judgment, and he also emphasizes God’s mercy. The part of Second Peter that precedes this morning’s lesson has some rather harsh images of what happens to those who don’t follow God’s commandments. There has been too much libertinism and moral squalor, and the author knows there must be some bounds. There needs to be the prospect of judgment in order to understand the harmful effects of turning away from God. Such knowledge can incentivize good behavior. Such an understanding in and of itself reveals that God cares about humankind. God knows that holy living is what is good for our souls.
But it seems that the author of Second Peter also can’t avoid the potent reality of God’s great mercy. In spite of all the author’s harsh assessments of scoffers and false teachers, he is irresistibly drawn to God’s compassion. His explanation for the seeming delay in the day of judgment is not just that God’s time is different from ours, but that God is deliberately delaying judgment out of mercy for humankind. It’s an astounding concept!
As Second Peter puts it, God’s forbearance—his abundant and generous patience—is intentional. God is giving humanity every chance to repent. God wants no one to perish and desires that all move towards true repentance. God, it seems, wants no one to be left out.
But should this really surprise us? If we recall God’s incessant blessings of creation as good, indeed very good, why would God not wish all to repent and experience salvation? If we remember the manifold times in the narrative of salvation in which God called his people back to him after they went astray, should God’s mercy surprise us?
True, God’s judgment is quite clear in Holy Scripture. God is depicted as wrathful and punitive at times. But lest we miss the big picture, we should recall the consistent motif that runs like a thread throughout Scripture: God waits with open arms for his people to return to him. And especially when things are looking quite dire, God consistently offers a promise of something more wonderful to come.
Somehow, though, over the course of time, perhaps through false teachers or through the distorted lens of our broken humanity, we have chosen to ignore God’s mercy and focus only on God’s anger and wrath. Why is this? My own instinctive reaction back in seminary to a compassionate gesture of a professor may be some indication. To hope that all the slackers get their due, is often more about human pride than about real justice.
Is our picture of God at times an idol made in our own image? That is to say, have our own sinful desires for revenge and our animosity towards others become the characteristics we erroneously ascribe to God? If the world in which we live is any indication of our values, this might be true.
We seem to be more adept in labeling people as criminals rather than helping them transform their lives. Individual ambition and personal preservation become the reasons to put others down and to hope they in their own endeavors. We rejoice when the wicked get their due. We long for that awful person to experience the full brunt of God’s wrath and anger, because, we say, they deserve it. Fair is fair.
Or is it? How does all this square with a God whose only Son Jesus Christ came into the world not to condemn it but to save it? How does this mean-spiritedness mesh with the heart of the Christian faith, which proclaims that we aren’t out of the game after one strike, or even three, but that we are offered multiple chances to repent and turn back to God?
Could it be, then, that the human tendency to see others get their due is because we ultimately fear God more than we love God? There may be a place for the carrot on a stick to encourage good behavior, just as grades supposedly encourage learning. But at some point, it might be that we have tipped over more into what we fear rather than what we love. We have perhaps forgotten that we are first and foremost to love God, because God first loved us. Holy fear is meet and right, but it is not the same as the miserable fear we so often have of God. Seeking heaven because we are afraid of God misses the point. Then, heaven wouldn’t be heaven.
And so, because of our own insecurity about our status on the day of judgment, we long for others to feel the same. Others should get their due if we ourselves are going to get ours.
But Second Peter reminds us of something extraordinary about God that we might be prone to forget. God exhibits compassion by recognizing that it’s difficult to be a part of humanity. God seems to know that we need more time for the exam. God wants the end result to be favorable because God wants what is good for us. And God knows that by giving us the time to accomplish that, the world will be saved.
Our sanctification is not so each of us can get an A on the exam and the eventual gold star on the diploma. Our sanctification is good for the whole world, and with God’s help, it is the way we encounter a new heaven and a new earth.
What seems like painful destruction to us is evidence of God recreating the world for our own good. It’s only painful to us because we resist it. But when all the dross, sin, and evil of this world have been melted away, we awaken to a pure life where righteousness dwells.
God has provided us with a marvelous gift: the gift of more time on the exam. God knows our struggles in a life of sin. God knows us more deeply than we know ourselves, and God loves us in the same way. That precious face of yours that God so lovingly sculpted, those strands of your hair that God fully counts, and that heart of yours that longs for God without sometimes even knowing it, all of it is why God is patient with you and with me, because he made them.
God doesn’t want those features molded by his hand to perish, but through our own process of holy living, God desires that they be transformed into a new creation, where righteousness dwells, and where we fear no more, because we see God face to face. And God is patient with us as we try to get all that right.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Second Sunday of Advent
December 6, 2020