What do young people, ages 16-29, think about the church today? That was the gist of the survey done three years ago by the Barna Group. The findings are recorded in a book by researchers David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons called Unchristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity … And Why It Matters. What they found doesn’t flatter us. Three-quarters of those surveyed think the church is old-fashioned, out of touch with reality, insensitive to others, boring, not accepting of other faiths, and confusing. Nice. The harshest judgments, though, are that the church is antihomosexual (91%), judgmental (87%), and hypocritical (85%). We are something, don’t you know?!

Kinnaman says young people are mentally and emotionally disengaging from Christianity. The nation’s population is increasingly resistant to Christianity, he says, especially to the theologically conservative expressions of that faith.

So what’s the church to do? If we want to reach young people, are we supposed to become whatever they want us to be? Should we all move hard left to accommodate the more liberal-minded young people? Should we just drop the demands Christianity makes upon us and sell Jesus as a good boyfriend who always tells us how beautiful we are, even without the makeup, and “no, your butt doesn’t look fat in those jeans”?

No, it’s more about attitude than doctrine, more about learning the difference between judgment and judgmentalism. Kinnaman claims that young people, both those who are professing Christians and those who are not, do not want a cheap, ordinary, or insignificant life, but their vision of present-day Christianity is just that—superficial, antagonistic, depressing. They yearn for faith characterized by honesty, integrity, enthusiasm, energy, joy, humility, service, community, loyalty, faith, hope, and love. They are looking for a match between what is spoken and what is lived. It’s an enormous challenge to any congregation to cut through the curtain of skepticism that has been woven into the fabric of current American life.[1]

But how do we do that? Well, first we can learn to point the finger of judgment at ourselves instead of at outsiders.

This was the way of Jesus. He was always getting in trouble with the religious establishment for cavorting with sinners, and especially for seeming to have too good a time of it. And when he wasn’t in trouble with them for that, he was for telling them to shape up themselves. The way of Jesus is to welcome outsiders to the joy of the coming kingdom of God, and at the same time to call those closest to it already to demonstrate how the demands of the gospel lead to joy.

We saw an example last week in Virginia of why this is so important. A young woman was serving some customers at a drive-in burger joint, something like a Sonic. She wasn’t dressed provocatively, but she did have bleached blond hair, dark eye makeup, and a pierced lip. Keshia Canter delivered the order and leaned into the car to ask if anyone needed salt and pepper. At that point a woman in the back seat handed her a leaflet. She took it inside and showed it to her mother, who was there on her lunch break. It was entitled Women & Girls. Here’s part of what it said: You may have been given this leaflet because of the way you are dressed. Have you thought about standing before the true and living God to be judged? It continues with one essential theme: The sins of men are, in part, the fault of women, specifically women in tight-fitting clothing. Then this: Scripture tells us that when a man looks on a woman to lust for her he has already committed adultery in his heart. If you are dressed in a way that tempts a man to do this secret (or not so secret) sin, you are a participant in the sin. By the way, it continues, some rape victims would not have been raped if they had dressed properly. So can we really say they were innocent victims?[2]

Let me say this as plainly as I can: Yes! We can still say they were innocent victims. Modesty is a virtue, but women are not to be blamed for inciting rape by the way they dress. Rape is a crime of violence masquerading as sex. This kind of thinking is just what keeps allowing men to get away with it, because women do not want to come forward for fear of being blamed themselves.

But the point here is that the church too often sees itself as the morality police. It thinks its God-given mission is to clean up the world by getting everyone to dress and behave the way it thinks proper. And to what end? If Keshia had been a good young girl and dressed the way that that anonymous Christian lady in the car would have been comfortable with, what then? What in the blessed name of Jesus does that have to do with the blessed name of Jesus? Jesus didn’t come to save us from bad manners or seductive clothing choices. He came to save is from our sins and to call us to fruitful and flourishing lives that glorify God and give the world a true sign of God’s delight in creation.

This is where the church gets the kind of reputation the Barna study is talking about. Who will hold that well-meaning Christian lady to account for her judgmental attitude that drives people away from the way of Christ instead of toward it?

Well, it seems Jesus himself will. If you look more closely at this passage from Luke’s gospel, you find Jesus finishing up his words of warning and judgment toward those closest to him. He’s on his way to Jerusalem. He’s told his disciples that he will suffer and die there and then be raised because, as we are learning in this Lenten season of following him more closely, the way of the cross leads home.

Jesus wants us to follow him on the way of the cross that leads home. But if we do, we will find that he will be judging us all the way. And before we jump out of the way of Jesus for fear of his judgment, we should know that the whole point of his judgment of us is to keep us on the path all the way home to God. Since it’s a hard way to go, he needs to keep reminding us how to walk that way. And sometimes what he says to us may be hard to hear.

Like when people wanted Jesus to make a judgment about why some Galileans were slaughtered by Pontius Pilate and had their blood mingled with their sacrifices at the Temple. Or when the tower of Siloam fell on those eighteen Judeans in Jerusalem, killing them all right then and there. Jesus doesn’t offer any simple cause-and-effect explanations like they expected and like everyone had a history of doing. He didn’t say that it was because they were worse sinners and God selected them for murder or accident in order to judge them.

Jesus teaches us to stop looking for explanations of why these things happen to other people and focus on ourselves. You see, the hidden motivation in their question was that they wanted to be able to judge themselves more righteous than the sinners who were punished. And that’s just the impulse that gets us off the way of the cross that leads home and onto the path of judgmentalism that leads to nowhere but hell.

Jesus says that the right response to these things is to realize how fragile life is and how easily these things could happen to any of us at any moment. Then we would be judged ourselves. And the question is, have we done everything we need to do to be prepared for our own judgment? Repent, Jesus says. Repent so that you will not perish as they did.

Now, repentance does not mean groveling before God for mercy. It’s changing your mind and attitude, which changes your ways. And there’s a paradox to repentance: you get better by focusing on others, by forgetting yourself on purpose and focusing on the well-being of others.

In the chapter before this one, Jesus mentions some of those things that will make us ready for judgment. He tells us to stop worrying about our possessions—both the accumulating of them and the protecting of them. Trust that the Lord will provide for you all you need, but don’t store up treasures on earth. Be rich toward God. Strive for the kind of life that serves others. Don’t hold grudges. Forgive each other quickly and freely. Settle your disputes without going to court, because you don’t want to be caught at the judgment with unsettled relationships. Drop everything that weighs you down and prevents you from living the kind of life that makes you free and generous with God and others.

To illustrate his point, the preacher Jesus tells a parable about a fig tree that wasn’t bearing fruit. It was taking up nutrients from the soil, but all it did was take for its own life, and it never produced anything that proved to the owner of the vineyard who had planted it there that it was fulfilling its purpose. So the owner was about to give up on it, but the gardener begged patience for the tree—one more year to allow it produce. And what’s more, the gardener redoubled his efforts to feed and nourish it so that it would be judged worthy and be allowed to live.

I think Jesus’ point is that we are to be toward others as he is toward us. Just as he is the gardener who begs God to have patience with us, we are to do the same for those we’re tempted to write off as worthless and deserving of judgment.

After trying to justify themselves over against the “sinners” who were killed by Pilate or the tower falling on them, Jesus is showing them the right way to act toward others whom they may think of as sinners. Be patient with them, pray that God gives them more time, and try to find ways to help them grow. When you do that, when you stop worrying about comparing yourself to others and instead give yourself to them in love, you yourself will be changed. You too will bear fruit.

In her classic fable, The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett tells the story of two sickly and spoiled children who work together on a secret garden that has become overgrown and unproductive. They are fascinated by the way nature works and how you can look at something that seems dead, but if you are patient and work with it, there’s a kind of wonder that appears as it blossoms and grows right before your eyes.

What happened to Mary and Colin in their tending of the garden is that they so lost themselves in their caring for it that not only did the garden grow, but so did they. When they stopped worrying about themselves and threw themselves instead into serving and caring for the garden, they were being made whole.[3]

This is the way of Christ. He calls us to drop dead to our selfishness and get outside of ourselves. When we worry more about the well-being of others rather than ourselves, we will find ourselves prepared for the judgment to come.

And if we do that, we might just find some young adults who used to write us off coming home to God and maybe even to the church. After all, the way of the cross leads home.