Pay special attention to today's text from Matthew's Gospel; perhaps you might want to just this once, take sermon notes. There will be a test at the end.
Like many, or perhaps even most Lutherans, I suppose, we
don't think very often or very specifically about the glorious return of Christ
for the final judgment. We believe in all these things. They're in the Bible.
They're in the Creeds. They're in our hymns. So, they are present in our Sunday
lives, but somewhere between Sunday, 11am, and Monday 6am, they stop shaping
our daily lives.
This leaves us with a big question for today about the final
judgment: when? When? By when I don't mean the year or the day or the hour or
the moment of Christ’s return. All of that will certainly be important enough
when it happens, but there's not a lot to say about that in the meantime,
except that we don't know, we won't know, and we can't know.
The big question in the gospel appointed for this day is
another kind of “when” question, when that some of you have wisely asked the
last few weeks. That question is, when will all this get decided? When does the
judgement stuff happen? When does the Lord make up His mind about who goes
where and what happens to us? When is it decided whether the nations of the
world belong in the ranks of the sheep or the goats? The answer to this particular “when” question
is not a secret, but it is really surprising. The answer to when is the final
judgment is, “Right now.” Today. And that answer may surprise you.
Many people, including perhaps some of us, may sometimes
suppose that it's all kind of up for grabs and to-be-determined until the end.
But Jesus says that when he returns, He will judge based on things that will
have already happened. That is stuff that people do right now, in fact.
It's all rather surprising.
When we were kids, one of my siblings had a jack-in-the-box.
You know, the kind that has this little clown doll on a spring and you push the
clown down inside the box and close the lid. Then you turn the little crank and
it plays this little song, “All around the cobbler’s bench…” And when you get
to one place in the song, the same place every time, “Pop! Goes the weasel!”
and the lid flies up and the clown popped out and it scared the bejeebers out
of the kid. Even though every kid knows exactly when the stupid clown would pop
up at the same place in the same stupid song over and over again, it still
surprised the kid every time. The point is that just knowing when doesn't
mean you won't be surprised.
That’s what Matthew means. Just knowing when doesn't mean
it's not a surprise. These folks are standing there, sheep and goats, and are divided
before the glorious throne of the Son of Man, and they hear Him speak blessing
or judgment at the end of time. In both cases, for the sheep on the right and
for the goats on his left, the basis for the judgment is the same. They have
all, He says, done - or not done - some crucial acts of kindness and mercy to
the Lord himself. And both groups, those
receiving His blessings and those being sent away, are surprised.
This is where they ask the big question for today, “When,
Lord? When did we see you hungry or thirsty, or strange or needing clothes or
sick or in prison? We don't remember any of that stuff about you. We're sure we
would have remembered something important like that.” It's almost as if all of
them, both the sheep and the goats, think there must be some mistake - maybe a
wonderful mistake; maybe a terrible mistake - but there must be some mistake.
“Are you sure, Lord?,” protest the sheep. “I think I would
have remembered if I'd ever had the chance to serve you personally. That surely
would have been a big deal. Something to mark on the calendar and write in my
diary. But all I can think of when I look back is all the ordinary stuff with
all those ordinary people… just the same old, same old. Nothing important
enough for You to bring up at an important time like this.”
On the other side of the aisle, there is also confusion and
surprise. “Now… now wait, Lord, there must be some mistake. Of course, if
there'd ever been anything I could do for You, you know, I wouldn't have
hesitated a moment. But we never saw You. We never neglected any of the really
important things that we did for You. We never let all the trivial stuff, or those
minor interruptions distract us from focusing on you, Lord. When did we do this?
When did we not do this?”
Then comes the kicker. It's a surprise, even though you know
it's coming. Jesus and Matthew have set us up. It's as if we're in on it, and
they - the nations - are not. You and I have heard it 100 times or more, and
you're going to hear it some more, before you hear it from the Lord Himself.
And still, it catches us off guard and makes us catch our breath every time. The King will answer them truly, I say to you,
“As you did it, or did not do it, to one of the least of these, my brethren,
you did it, or not, to me.”
These words of Jesus are like a spotlight that shines with
bright, blazing brilliance back through time, through our times, from the end
of time. It shows us our day-to-day and mundane lives for what they truly are: service
to Christ, or the refusal of such service. The beams of that light reveal the
colors and the contours of what otherwise seems like the most normal drudgery
and common labor. Well, it may be normal, but it's anything but common.
My first sentence, I said there was a test. These are the
questions. Of course, I'm not sure I want all the little encounters and choices
and decisions that make up my life to get loaded with that kind of
significance. I'm not so sure that the everyday conduct of my life can bear the
weight of that ultimate and decisive meaning. The truth is that I, and perhaps
you too, live most often in the comfortable shadow-lands, where we test pretty
well when we have time to prepare, but we’re not so good at keeping up with the
daily homework of life with missing or incomplete assignments. Come to think of
it, I probably count on much of what I do not actually mattering all that much
in the end, one way or the other.
But it does matter in the end, one way or the other. What I
do and don't do to the scruffy looking smelly guy that asked for money on the
street matters. How you treat that annoying neighbor who plays her Taylor Swift
CD's late at night and won't return your tools that he borrowed, it matters.
The phone call we decided to put off to that guy we haven’t seen in months and
years, it matters. Jesus, you see, injects Himself into the daily choices you
and I make about humdrum moments and ordinary people even, or perhaps
especially, the least of these. He shines an extraordinary light into our ordinary
lives and interactions because it's not only the life and death necessities;
it’s the seemingly little and regular stuff, too.
Can we hear the Lord saying, “I had an owie and you made it
better.” “I lost my dog and you comforted me.” “I was exhausted after all day
with the kids and you did the dishes and folded the laundry.” “I didn’t
understand the assignment and you sat with me and encouraged me.” He adds eternal
weight to the mundane duties of our daily vocation – the using of the gifts we
talked about last week. The surprise is the answer to the “when” question. When
do you serve Christ? When you are a faithful – not perfect, but faithful - husband,
father, sister, mother, son, neighbor, teacher, student, friend. Because then, Jesus
says, you do it to him.
What would it be like to live every single day as if
eternity were riding on it? What would it mean if we encountered every other
human being as if he or she were Jesus Christ himself in disguise? C.S. Lewis,
whom you probably know from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe,
quoting John Dunn, posed the question. “What if this present moment was the
world's last? Wouldn't it be a surprising life?”
The final judgment, my friends, is really going to happen.
And a lot of people, maybe most people, are going to be really, really
surprised. Many, of course, are going to be surprised that it happens at all, but
according to the words of Jesus, they're going to be surprised also by the “when”
of it all, not the date or the time of day, which will be a surprise of its own,
but the “when” of all those moments that counts and are counted in the final
analysis. When Lord? The sheep, the righteous, the blessed of the Father will
be surprised. When the day feed the hungry Christ in disguise? When did they
visit a sick Christ without knowing it? When did they take care of a needy
Christ and not recognize him? The goats, those who have brought a curse down on
their own heads, will also be surprised. How were they supposed to know that it
all mattered?
And just one more little surprise: Jesus does tell His
disciples – us - about this final judgment to make us consider carefully what
we do now in the coming light of His return. He wants the certainty of His
second coming and the assured secrecy of it to be connected with a mighty therefore
to the way we conduct ourselves in the meantime. He wants us to be surprised,
but surprised the way the sheep are surprised and not the way the goats are.
But the whole picture, the big picture, of glorious judge, and sheep, and
goats, and angels is also meant to comfort us in an altogether different way because
there's somebody else in the picture there - somebody you can almost overlook,
somebody you don't notice at first glance. They're up there. Beside the throne,
kind of huddled around Jesus. “They're the ones,” He says, “these are My brothers
and sisters.”
That congregation includes you and me, because we're Jesus
disciples. His own blood removes all threat of punishment from us. His spirit
sends us out as His messengers, and it matters to Him a lot how His messengers
are treated. It matters to Him how His message is received. “He who receives
you receives Me,” Jesus tells the disciples, “And he who receives Me receives
the One who sent Me. And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of
these little ones, because he is My disciple, I tell you the truth, he will
certainly not lose his reward. I’ll remember.”
Jesus sends His disciples out under His authority on His
mission to make disciples of all nations. Gathered and divided before the
throne the nations will be called to answer for how they treat the disciples.
Not because we are big stuff in and of ourselves, but because of whose brothers
and sisters we are. If something is done or not done to even the least of these
brothers and sisters of His, it's done to Jesus Himself.
I think that guy may have been the one I bought dinner for
at Jack in the Box. I think that might be the teacher who taught one of your children.
I think that might be that very, very quiet woman or man at work. I think you
might live with one of those least of these, my brethren. It might even have
been you.
It is a matter of ultimate concern to Jesus: What becomes of
you, His brothers and sisters; how it goes with you, whether you are fed,
whether you are clothed, whether you were treated well, whether you were visited,
whether you are cared for. He will ask about those things when he returns in
glory. He will remember. Because He cares for you. Isn't that a surprise. Oh,
and by the way: the test starts now.
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