Something I love about being a professor at the Augustine Institute are the many opportunities I have to think about and share the Scriptures with others. I get to teach Scripture classes in translation and in its original languages. I get to write books or articles that allow me to ponder aspects of God’s word and share them with general audiences or to present my thoughts to other academics working on the same things. And I have opportunities to journey with others into God’s mysteries in parishes, retreats, and elsewhere.

Something I was recently invited to do was to give an academic lecture, the annual Tekippe Lecture at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans. I spoke on aspects of a book I am currently writing on the little New Testament letter of Jude. The whole lecture is available at this link; this will give you a preview of its main ideas.

Jude addresses a church or churches experiencing a moral crisis – there are people who are participating in the church’s life (Jude 12) but who Jude says have traded God’s grace for licentiousness and reject the authority of Christ and of the church (Jude 4, 8). And not only do they do this themselves, but they seem to have some sway or influence in the church (whether as teachers or simply as people with clout in the community) and are leading others astray.

Jude’s response to this situation has a couple of main themes. One is to remind the people of God’s coming judgment and the seriousness of sin. Jude uses biblical stories to remind them of God’s track record for punishing sin in the past, and he points ahead to the return of Christ (with an interesting prophecy from Enoch in Jude 14). Jude reminds them of the destruction of Sodom, the punishment of fallen angels, and about the way God’s people were punished for rebelling against God in the wilderness (Jude 5–7). He likens these “scoffers”to Old Testament villains in Jude 11: Cain, who killed his brother; Balaam, a pagan diviner who was hired to curse Israel but was thwarted by God, so he devised a temptation to make Israel bring a curse on themselves; and Korah, who started a rebellion because he wanted to be a priest even though God had appointed only Aaron’s clan as priests. God opened up the ground to swallow Korah and reaffirmed his commitment to the Aaronic priesthood.

But judgment is not Jude’s only theme; we must not miss his emphasis on mercy either. He doesn’t pull any punches in denouncing wickedness. But when he tells his audience what they should actually do, he doesn’t tell them to oust or punish the “scoffers” in their midst. His call to “fight for the faith”(Jude 3) is not a call to fight against people, but to fight against sin. And he first wants the faithful to fight it within themselves. “But you, beloved, build yourselves up on your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God; look forward to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life” (Jude 20–21 NRSV). He wants them to respond to sin around them by growing in their own faith first, remaining in the love of God and awaiting Christ’s mercy. When it comes to those who are wavering or are in danger of judgment, Jude doesn’t invite the faithful to say “good riddance” or be arrogant. “Snatch some out of the fire,”he writes, and “have mercy on those who dispute” (Jude 22–23, my translation).On some, he says, mercy must be coupled with “fear” or caution, so that we avoid falling into the corruption we are trying to stop (compare Galatians6:1–2). But the goal for ourselves and others is salvation: to keep oneself in God’s love, and to try to win back the people who have abandoned God’s love, so that all might receive Christ’s mercy when he returns.

If Jude’s situation sounds familiar, Jude’s call to piety and mercy should instruct us as we respond to our own situations. Jude also, I think, is instructive in the way he points to biblical stories in order to shape our thinking. These are stories to which he appeals very briefly, and one can see the specific examples of judgment and sin within them.Yet these stories are stories not just of individuals but of major events in the life of God’s people, and God’s people in every generation can go back to these stories and learn by envisioning themselves in them.

As I hear Jude’s call to grow in faith and mercy, w hat can I learn from temptations I face to grumble in the wilderness (see Numbers 13–14 or Numbers 21 for starters)? When a new Korah arises, what can a priest learn from Moses speaking out against Korah and from Aaron making an offering to avert the judgment that befalls the people (Numbers 16–17? If I think the world around me is like Sodom, what should I learn from Abraham, who interceded in prayer for the city precisely when he knew how much sin God saw in it (Genesis 18)?

 Jude’s use of the biblical stories can be a model for us. Like Jude, we can derive comfort in knowing the crises we face are nothing new, and we can be instructed and challenged by his call to respond with faith and mercy for the salvation of souls—our own and others.

“Now to him who is able to keep you from falling, and to make you stand without blemish in the presence of his glory with rejoicing, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.” (Jude 24–25 NRSV)