If you find courtroom dramas and detective thrillers great entertainment or enjoy wading into mystery novels and who-done-its, you share this enthusiasm with a good deal of the American, British, and German public [Luther’s people just love a good Krimi, aka, crime novel]. Crime and mystery novels, radio shows of the 1930s and 1940s, and a host of movies beginning with the 1908 film Falsely Accused are clear evidence. Several classic films continue to hold the public’s attention and the respect of the film academy: 12 Angry Men (1957), Anatomy of a Murder (1959), Inherit the Wind (1960), and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) unfolds the tragedy of justice derailed as told in Harper Lee’s 1960, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. Witness for the Prosecution (1957), based on Agatha Christie’s 1953 stage play of the same name, boasted a stellar cast, was nominated for the Best Film award, and eventually named the sixth-best courtroom drama on the American Film Institute’s Top Ten list. Of course, there is a host of television dramas and series ranging from Perry Mason (1957-1966) and L.A. Law (1986-1994), or the many British shows including Kavanaugh, Q.C., Midsomer Murders [you will not be able to watch all the reruns in your lifetime!], or the jolly but cantankerous Rumpole of the Baily.
While it is enlightening to compare and contrast media similarities and fine points of the American and British courtroom traditions, one thing in common is the presence of the Court Bailiff charged with keeping order and decorum before, during, and at the conclusion of court sessions. His / her stentorian “All rise!” or “Be upstanding in court!” are the judicial equivalents of the curtain going up in a theater. A hush falls and the court stands. It is far more than a formally polite greeting for the august and learnéd judge who enters. Particularly, a British bailiff’s more typical call to “be upstanding in court” includes social and moral expectations too easily overlooked with the more prosaic demand that “…all rise!”
No matter which side of the Atlantic, the judge upon entering to fulfill the duties entrusted is understood to be the very embodiment of the government’s, or in the case of a British judge, the Sovereign’s justice. The religious antecedent we read in Psalm 72:1: Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king’s son…, thereby explicating somewhat the religious pomp, ceremonial, words, and clothing in the coronation liturgy of a British monarch. [It is helpful to remember that none of this was present in the recent streamlined investitures of the Dutch King Willem-Alexander’s and the Danish King Frederik X’s upon their queenly mothers’ abdications in recent years.] Moreover, there is much expected of the defendants, witnesses, juries, and spectator’s to whom “Be upstanding!” is spoken.
The Middle English “be upstanding” originally meant “stand up” as is seen in its first known citation in the Folk Mass Book of 1375, similar to rubrics in our bulletins and worship books: the congregation / all / we stand… However, its meaning has evolved over time, and by the mid-nineteenth century it implied personal behavior that is honorable, trustworthy, peaceable, and straightforward. Biblically, the word includes both God’s pattern of being as well as God’s people who embrace such behavior: Good and upright is the Lord; therefore he instructs sinners in the way. He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way [Psalm 25:8-9]. Also, God’s faithful people by their words and actions are to teach and encourage others to be upright, particularly children in their care: Train children in the right way, and when old, they will not stray [Proverbs 22:6]. Sadly, God’s woefully misguided followers have often forgotten the meaning of “upright” which neither includes being censorious, self-righteous, nor harsh, fixating instead on the ill-conceived advice of poet Samuel Butler (1630-1680) in Hudibras: “…spare the rod and spoil the child.” Proverbs 22:8 counters such intentional cruelty with wisdom: Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity, and the rod of anger will fail. Later, the author of Ephesians reminds parents and guardians: …do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord [Ephesians 6:4]. Such discipline is grounded in St. Paul’s ample description of Christian behavior in Romans 12:4-21.
This coming Sunday’s Gospel [Mark 9:30-37] finds Jesus reminding his disciples of the sufferings he must endure only to discover them bickering about who might be the greatest. Jesus turns the tables not only on them but on us who think children are merely empty buckets we, for better or worse, are to fill up with our own take on being upstanding disciples fit for God’s kingdom. As we already have heard over the past weeks, he welcomes children and reminds the rest of us that entry into God’s eternal kingdom of love has something to do with those tykes. What’s Jesus’ point?
A former pastor of mine was chatting with a few of us about his second son, by anyone’s standard a handful and a half already early in life. While the boy was still a toddler the good pastor could lift him up on his shoulders. Putting his hands securely around the boys ankles, he then lifted him over his head. The boy straightened upright while enjoying the view far above the rest of us watching the bit of family circus. Later, the father said that sadly it wouldn’t continue to happen too much longer because a) the boy was growing and getting heavier, and b) his son would soon enough conclude that he probably couldn’t trust even his parents, whether true or not. As a toddler, he implicitly trusted mommy and daddy but would learn that one can easily fall, and not even mommy or daddy could protect him from all the bumps and bruises life provides.
What Jesus likely was pointing to was not a romanticized “innocence.” Toddlers and even infants can be self-centered, greedy beings. The teaching Jesus commends about children is the abiding trust they first place in their parents, then siblings and close friends. The circle continues to widen as time passes. However, disappointments, not to mention betrayals, outright lying, cheating, or abuse, all limit our early childhood trust in those folks who first loved us. Caution is certainly necessary as we mature as well as begin to understand healthy boundaries and mutual respect for one another. However, Jesus’ “Children’s Moment” underscores an abiding truth about the God Jesus continues to reveal to us.
As Luther once remarked, Jesus is “the mirror of the Father’s heart.” What we affirm about the Godhead is clearly reflected in God’s Son. The Creator of heaven and earth doesn’t lie, cheat, or steal, hedge bets, bait and switch, gossip and malign, or any other of those nefarious tricks we all spend long years perfecting. By asking us to embrace the trust those little ones depend upon, Jesus brings us back to our “roots.” We discover ever anew what it means to be upstanding by pondering daily the God and Father Jesus points us to. The author of I John 4:16b-19 summarizes for us: God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us. And, as the Small Catechism repeatedly asks: What does this mean? It is simply God’s expectation of us: Be upstanding, …you who stand in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God [Psalm 135:2].