Readings: Isaiah 11:1-10 / Matthew 3:1-12
7 December 2025 – Advent 2
The second of a series of five Advent ‘talks’ (this one for blog only)

This week there has been a serious suggestion that the right to Jury trial in most criminal cases in England could, as a matter of expediency, be restricted to the most serious cases of murder, rape and the like.[i] This blog is not about the rights and wrongs of this as such, but by way of introduction to my theme, my concern is not so much with this proposal as it stands, as with what could happen subsequently.

What I mean is, at present the British legal system is widely respected as one of the fairest and least corrupt in the world. Sure, there are occasional miscarriages of justice, but our magistrates and judges, with or without juries sitting, are on the whole highly regarded and trusted. If there is any doubt as to someone’s guilt, then they are given the benefit of the doubt and declared ‘not guilty’.

The risk is that, as has happened in the USA[ii], our politically neutral judges could be replaced by politically biased yes-men under a far-right government. I leave it to the reader to assess how likely that is in the UK’s current political situation. Without juries, they could pervert justice far more easily.

That got me thinking: what qualities do we want in a judge to ensure a fair trial? How about these:

• Officially authorised and qualified to hear the case
• Personal integrity
• Detailed knowledge of the law
• Lack of political, religious or other bias
• Willing to listen to all witnesses and assess all evidence
• Open to ‘mitigating factors’
• Able to make a decision: guilty, or not guilty?
• Setting a punishment to fit the crime

This principle was enshrined in Jewish Law:

You must not pervert the law; you must be impartial;
You will take no bribes,
for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and ruins the cause of the upright.

Strict justice must be your ideal, so that you may live long
in possession of the country given you by Yahweh your God.

[Deuteronomy 16:19-20, New Jerusalem Bible]

It is these principles that I have in mind as I turn to the lectionary readings for the second Sunday of Advent. Isaiah, 700 years before Christ, uttered a prophecy of a ‘root of Jesse’ [i.e. a descendant of the great King David] who would be a great judge:

On him will rest the spirit of Yahweh,
the spirit of wisdom and insight,
the spirit of counsel and power,
the spirit of knowledge and fear of Yahweh.

His inspiration will lie in fearing Yahweh.
His judgement will not be by appearances.
His verdict not given on hearsay.

He will judge the weak with integrity and give fair sentence
for the humblest in the land.
He will strike the country with the rod of his mouth
and with the breath of his lips bring death to the wicked.

Uprightness will be the belt around his waist,
and constancy the belt about his hips. 

[Isaiah 11:2-5, NJB]

That seems to tick all the boxes in my list, although the sweeping death sentence for ‘the wicked’ might sit uneasily with our contemporary views. As I wrote in last week’s sermon-blog[iii],  in Advent we think not only of Christ’s first coming as Jesus the man, but also of his eventual return in power and glory. This passage, written at a time when the people of Judah were becoming disillusioned with the corruption of their dynasty of earthly kings in a time of war, looks forward to a time when a perfect son of David would reign in perfect justice over a peaceful kingdom[iv]. In Christian tradition, this will be fulfilled at Christ’s second coming.

How about the phrase in verse 4 about this judge ‘giving fair sentence for the humblest in the land’? Is that not in itself a form of bias? It depends what you expect from a judge. All I have said above about the English courts relates to the ‘Crown’ or criminal courts, where the determination of guilt or innocence is the desired outcome. But other European countries have a less adversarial system than ours. And in England, we also have a ‘County’ court system for civil law cases, presided over by a single judge. The desired outcome there is a fair balance between competing claims, usually expressed in a requirement for one party to compensate the other financially.

According to one commentator at least, the understanding of a judge’s role in ancient Israel and Judah was much more like that type of hearing.[v] God does not so much determine whether we are guilty of breaking his law (we all know we are, in some way), but whether we have tried our best to ‘live in love and peace with our neighbour’, whether we are honest and fair in our dealings with others, whether we have shown mercy to others as God has shown mercy to us. As St James reminds us, ‘the merciful have no fear of judgement’.[vi]

It is also important to remember that God knows every one of us inside out, from before we were born, more aware of both our strengths and weaknesses than we are ourselves (see Psalm 139). God, the perfect judge, knows whether the ‘mitigating circumstances’ of our lives – our personality traits, the abuse we have suffered from others, the stress we are living under – make his hearing more deserving of mercy than of condemnation. 

Let us turn now to the Gospel according to Matthew. Do we find here Jesus the magistrate, carefully balancing arguments and imposing a penalty on the less deserving person? No! Instead, we find a terrifying and judgemental vision of his return. Here is his forerunner, John the Baptiser, speaking of Jesus who was soon to eclipse him:

I baptise you in water for repentance,
but the one who comes after me is more powerful than I,
and I am not fit to carry his sandals;
he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

His winnowing-fan is in his hand;
he will clear his threshing-floor
and gather his wheat into his barn;
but the chaff he will burn in a fire that will never go out.

[Matthew 3:11-12, New Jerusalem Bible]

There is apparently no mercy here, no mitigating circumstances, anyone who does not meet the standard of being useful (‘wheat’) will be burnt for ever. Perhaps that is where the medieval picture of Hell comes from. It reminds us of the cliffhanger at the end of last week’s gospel passage:

Then of two men in the fields, one is taken, one left;

of two women grinding at the mill, one is taken, one left.

[Matthew 24:40-41, NJB]

How do we square these two pictures of God’s judgement? One giving a fair assessment of our performance, with what Catholic social teaching calls a ‘bias to the poor’, the other apparently setting an exacting standard with terrible consequences for failing to meet it, and judging us suddenly and without a fair hearing. Perhaps the answer is in the context of John’s words. They were spoken to the ‘Pharisees and Sadducees’ – the religious leaders of his day. He had previously said to them:

‘Do not presume to tell yourselves, "We have Abraham as our father," because, I tell you, God can raise children for Abraham from these stones.’

[Matthew 3:9]

His point seems to be that relying on some kind of human status for salvation will fail us. Just because these men could prove their ancestry and had high status in religious circles – some of them having a role as judges of the Jewish law - did not make them right in God’s eyes. On the contrary, they should have been living closer than other people to the way of life that Jesus modelled: that is, humble, living simply and sustainably, kind and merciful to everyone. But they were not. They judged others without thinking that they could be subject to God’s judgement. They were not useful wheat but useless chaff.

What, then, can we do to prepare for the Day of Judgement when it comes (as Jesus teaches that it will]?

First, we must be aware of the law. I’m not thinking here of the Levitical requirements of diet, clothing, ritual cleansing, etc., none of which the Church has ever seen as required of Christians. Not even particularly of the Ten Commandments, though these we do believe hold true for all who believe in God, and are a good basis for any system of practical ethics.

The law I mean is the law of love. A law that God writes on everyone’s hearts, whatever their religion. What Lewis calls ‘the law of human nature’.[vii] Think of the example of the Good Samaritan, who put aside all considerations of religious rules to help a fellow traveller in distress. Sometimes, the principle behind a law (‘love your neighbour as yourself’) is more important than the letter of the law (to touch a foreigner would be regarded as ‘unclean’).  If we order our lives according to these principles of love, then come the day of judgement Christ will find for us, rather than against us. In chapters 24 and 25 of Matthew’s gospel he tells a series of parables, concluding with that of the sheep and goats, in which he says quite clearly that meeting the practical needs of others will be the basis of his judgement.

Second, we must be aware of our own sin. Don’t be like the Pharisees and Sadducees who trusted in their religious status. Having a rhythm of prayer that includes confessing our sins and repenting of them is a healthy way to remain open to receiving God’s mercy on the last day.

Thirdly, we must trust in God’s judgement. God who sees and knows everything, who knows the law perfectly because he made it and he alone can override it, who cannot be bribed or deceived, will take into account the facts, seen and unseen, and all mitigating circumstances. With his bias to the poor and humble, he will find in favour of those who have suffered at the hands of others. And if despite all that the verdict on us is ‘guilty’ or ‘in debt’, then we can rely on Jesus who has taken the punishment for all our sins and debts on the Cross. [viii]

Let me finish with a verse from an old hymn:

The Lord is King! Child of the dust,
the judge of all the earth is just.
Holy and true are all his ways,
let every creature sing his praise.

[J.Conder 1789-1855]

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[i] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg1q62jmv0o

[ii] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-will-name-conservative-judges-may-even-pick-majority-supreme-cou-rcna179130

[iii] https://pilgrims.org.uk/wp/2025/11/30/preparing-for-peace/

[iv] Barry Webb, ‘The Message of Isaiah’, IVP 1996, pp 74-75.

[v] Simon Stocks, ‘Psalms’, Bible Reading Fellowship 2018, p.57

[vi] James 2:13, Jerusalem Bible

[vii] C.S.Lewis, ‘Mere Christianity’. Fount 1952, chapters 3 & 4

[viii] A fuller exploration of the concept of sin as a debt to God and other people is given in ‘Sin: A history’, Gary A Anderson, Yale University Press 2009.