The Teacher of Non-Judgment

Of all the sayings of the desert, none is more closely bound to Moses than the episode of the council. Called to a meeting of the brothers convened to judge a monk who had fallen into sin, Moses came carrying a leaking basket of sand on his back, and when asked the meaning answered: “My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the errors of another.” The council, the tradition says, forgave the brother. This file sets out the episode and the desert theology of not-judging that it crystallized — the conviction that the one who would not be judged by God must first refuse to judge his brother.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Desert Father; martyr)

The Council and the Basket of Sand

The episode is among the most famous in the whole Apophthegmata Patrum. As the alphabetical collection records it: “A brother at Scetis committed a fault. A council was called to which Abba Moses was invited, but he refused to go to it. Then the priest sent someone to him, saying, ‘Come, for everyone is waiting for you.’ So he got up and went. He took a leaking jug, filled it with water and carried it with him. The others came out to meet him and said, ‘What is this, Father?’ The old man said to them, ‘My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the errors of another’” (Apophthegmata Patrum, Moses 2; trans. Ward 1984). The tradition adds that when they heard this they said no more to the brother but forgave him (Ward 1984, Moses 2). [Disputed: the *Sayings* give the leaking vessel as a jug (or basket) carried so that its contents — water in the alphabetical collection of Ward (1984), sand in many retellings — run out unseen behind Moses; the variant between water and sand is a feature of the differing collections and translations. The lesson, "my sins run out behind me and I do not see them," is constant across the witnesses, and the episode is firmly attached to Moses (Moses 2 in the alphabetical collection).]

The action is a parable enacted. The leaking vessel, trailing its contents unseen behind the one who carries it, is Moses himself: his own sins are running out behind him constantly, where he cannot see them, while he is being summoned to fix his eyes on the visible sin of another. The image makes the argument with a force no sermon could: how can a man whose own sins are pouring out behind his back presume to turn around and judge what lies in front of him? The council, confronted with its own situation in Moses’s enacted parable, dissolved into forgiveness.

“Judge Not”

The episode is the desert’s most vivid commentary on the Lord’s command, “Judge not, that you be not judged” (Matthew 7:1), and on its corollary, “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3). Moses’s leaking vessel is precisely the log in the eye made visible — the great mass of one’s own unseen sin that disqualifies one from sitting in judgment. The desert fathers held the refusal to judge as one of the highest of the virtues and one of the surest signs of spiritual maturity, and they returned to it constantly: the Apophthegmata are full of sayings against judging, and Moses’s is the most memorable of them (Ward 1984; Harmless 2004). The point was not indifference to sin — the desert took sin with deadly seriousness — but the recognition that the judgment of persons belongs to God alone, and that the monk’s business is his own repentance, not his brother’s condemnation.

This theology is rooted in the gospel’s own logic of mercy. The measure a man uses will be measured to him; the unforgiving servant is handed over; the publican who would not lift his eyes goes down justified rather than the Pharisee who thanked God he was not like other men (Matthew 7:2; Matthew 18:23–35; Luke 18:9–14). Moses, the former robber, stood permanently in the publican’s place: he could not have judged another without forgetting what he himself had been, and his refusal to judge was simply his refusal to forget. The desert saw in this the deepest wisdom — that the consciousness of one’s own sin is the only safe ground on which to stand before God and one’s brother (on this theology, see Humility and Self-Knowledge).

The Penitent Cannot Judge

The episode is so perfectly suited to Moses because his whole life was its premise. A man who had led a band of murderous robbers could have no illusions about his own sinfulness; the leaking vessel was not a humble pose but an exact self-description. This is why the non-judgment of Moses carries a weight that the same words in another mouth would lack. When a man who has never gravely sinned counsels against judging, it may be theory; when the chief of brigands does it, it is autobiography. The desert prized Moses’s teaching on this point above all others precisely because his past guaranteed its sincerity (Ward 1984, introduction and Moses; Chitty 1966).

There is a further depth. The desert held that to judge another is itself a sin — often the very sin one condemns — and that the act of condemnation cuts the judge off from the mercy he himself depends on. Moses, who depended on mercy more than most, could not afford to forfeit it by judging; his non-judgment was, in the desert’s logic, an act of self-preservation as much as of charity. He would not pronounce against his brother because to do so would be to pronounce against himself. The forgiveness the council extended to the fallen brother was, in this sense, the forgiveness Moses needed extended to him.

A Parable for the Whole Church

The council-episode has long since broken out of the monastery and become a parable for the whole Christian world. It is told and retold, quoted in sermons and books of every tradition, precisely because it captures something the gospel everywhere insists on and the human heart everywhere resists: that we see our brother’s sins and not our own, and that the cure is not better judgment of others but clearer sight of ourselves. Moses, carrying his leaking vessel to the council, has become one of Christianity’s permanent images of mercy — the saint who would not condemn (on his reception, see The Black Desert Father and Moses in the Monastic Tradition).

The theology that this episode enacts — the connection between self-knowledge, humility, and the refusal to judge — is developed more fully in its own place, together with the related testing of Moses’s humility at his ordination (see Humility and Self-Knowledge and Ordination and the Test).

See Also

References

  • Ward, Benedicta, trans. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection. Rev. ed. Cistercian Studies 59. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1984. (Abba Moses 2: the council, the leaking vessel, “my sins run out behind me,” and the forgiving of the fallen brother; the desert sayings against judging.)
  • Chitty, Derwas J. The Desert a City. Oxford: Blackwell, 1966. (The desert ethic of non-judgment; Scetis and its councils.)
  • Harmless, William. Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. (The theology of not-judging in the Apophthegmata; Moses 2 as a type-scene.)
  • The Holy Bible (Matthew 7:1–5; Matthew 18:23–35; Luke 18:9–14). (The dominical sayings on judging and the parables of mercy that the episode enacts.)