First Among Sinners?

     In the prayer before communion we hear these words:"I believe, O Lord, and I confess, that You are truly the Christ, the Son of the living God, who came into the world to save sinners of whom I am first." We hear these words frequently, each Sunday, and it is right that we should do so, for they sum up succinctly our faith and our personal rela-tionship with God. We should interiorize them, learn them by heart.
     And yet, from time to time, people will come to me and say: "How can I make these words my own? I don't really believe that among all sinners I am first. A sinner, yes, and a bad one. But not the worst of the lot." For such a person the requirement of truth seems to prevent them from making this prayer their own.
     St Paul's Epistle to the Romans (14:1-3) offers an answer to this question, and does so by means of a very simple image. St Paul says, to begin with: "Let not him that eats despise him that does not eat; and do not let the one who does not eat judge the one who eats..." And then he adds: 'Who are you who judge another man's servant? It is before his own master that he stands or falls." In other words, judgement belongs to our fellow Christian's mas-ter, to Christ, and not to us. The particular relationship of the master and his servant is not one into which we can enter, we cannot know it from within. And there-fore, we cannot pass judgement on its true nature.
     But if we turn aside from judging our brothers and sisters in the Church, there is just one relationship left where the judgement of God concerns us and where we can feel free to judge: our own relation-ship with Christ, our own relationship with the Savior. We are "first" among sinners because we are the "first". And when we judge ourselves, then, we are both "first" and "last", since there is no one else we can take into account.
     St Paul, by the image he has chosen, encourages us to look upon ourselves as servants, servants of Christ, and therefore to apply to ourselves the words used in every weekday Vespers: "As the eyes of servants look to the hands of their mas-ters, as the eyes of the maidservant look unto the hands of her mistress, so do our eyes wait upon the Lord our God." (Psalm123:2)
     To be a good servant is to be attentive, to be sensi-tive to the smallest sign, to be alert for the softest word. How can we have time to look at and judge others, if all our attention is directed towards Christ?
     So let us today resolve not to judge one another. Instead, let us inwardly turn ourselves towards Christ. Let us clear our hearts and our minds of the background noise of judgement and criticism, so that we can hear what Christ has to say to us, and can find His hand guiding us in the most ordinary moments of our lives. Amen.

By Bishop Basil Osbourne, from Speaking of the Kingdom