Ezekiel 34::11-16, 20-24, Psalm 100, Ephesians 1:15-23, Matthew 25:31-46
Do you want to be judged? Do you want to be judged by anyone? Do you want to be judged by God? Would you agree with the Hungarian Calvinist theologian who said that to be judged by God is the greatest privilege of a human being? Or does the judgment of God automatically feel judgmental, the negative of the gospel, because it means that some souls are judged against, and thus excluded from eternal life, so that God’s judgment is a doctrine to be avoided?
Judgment can be a good thing, of course. You want your leaders to have good judgment. You want the consistory to have sound judgment. You want the President to have sober judgment. You want to trust them with when to say Yes and when to say No, this is allowed, and that’s not. You want them to be good judges of persons, discerning who should be admitted and who should not, whether it’s simply as immigrants and citizens, or into the halls of power, the White House, the cabinet. And if justice is a major responsibility of government, than judgment comes along with it.
You don’t want to be judged by other people, but yet you want to be justified if someone questions what you did. Or if you’re angry at someone, you want to justify your anger. You want to be in the right, and to be seen aright, your person and your actions judged for what they truly are. But no judge is perfect, no judge is omniscient, no judge is without some bias somewhere, unless that judge be God, whom to have as final judge it is your privilege as a human being.
And on what basis does God judge you? What criteria? That’s the point of Our Lord’s last parable in his last public speech before his arrest and subsequent execution. The purpose of his execution was to preclude him from the throne of David in Jerusalem. But the consequence of his execution was to raise him to the throne of God in heaven, his execution having allowed his resurrection and his resurrection allowing his ascension. He takes the throne of heaven for several purposes, as suggested by our reading from Ephesians, and one of those purposes, as Our Lord suggests himself, is to be our judge.
To be a judge was part of the job of being a king. In ancient monarchies, the king was the supreme court, and the king would hear appeals from ordinary courts. When St. Paul was on trial, and he was doubtful of his exoneration, he appealed to Caesar, which as a Roman citizen it was his privilege to do. And just as it was a Roman citizen’s privilege to be judged by Caesar, so it is your privilege as a human being to be judged by Jesus Christ, the Son of Man. It is your privilege not as a Christian but as a human being. Such is the vision of the parable.
The detailed meaning of the parable is disputed by interpreters. Is this the final judgment, at the end of time, or is it a present judgment being exercised in real history by the Lord Jesus, though seen from a heavenly perspective? I would say it’s both: that the Lord Jesus is judging the nations at present, right now, according to these criteria, and that when his present heavenly judgment is finally unveiled to all the world, then every eye will see him as the one who has come to be their judge.
If you apply this parable to the last judgment, then it strongly suggests that pagans and non-Christians can be admitted to eternal life. Entrance into eternal life is not based on baptism or being a Christian but on your self-giving service, no matter what your belief. The exclusion is not of pagans per se, and Christians and Jews will be surprised at their exclusion, for they assume that they belong by right but did not practice the service of welcome and feeding and visitation.
If you apply this parable to the Lord Jesus in heaven at present, then it tells us what Our Lord is looking for among the nations. Not whether a nation is Christian or not, but how the system of that nation treats the least of its people. So then: What in the system of our nation is the Lord Jesus looking for? We might try to justify our nation by comparing it to others, but up against the judgment of the Lord that will not do. I think right now we’re among the goats, don’t you? I mean as a total system of economy and law, a total culture? Face it, we’re goats.
Another dispute among interpreters is the meaning of the phrase, “the least of these my brethren.” I’m not going to go into the options except to say that the issue of the parable is not who are the recipients, but the interests of the king and what he’s looking for, and his criteria of judgment.
This parable is powerful; I’d say it’s brilliant. It leaves no doubt about the values of Our Lord’s government, and which sort of persons are the beneficiaries of his government. Note that the beneficiaries are not only the strangers and the hungry and prisoners and such. The beneficiaries are also those who welcome them and feed them and visit them.
The parable is brilliant because it is a judgment parable and even though it convicts us we find ourselves saying Yes, Yes, we want the judgment to be on such criteria, we want this kind of a Kingdom of Heaven. And good news, this Kingdom is your inheritance. This parable is meant for you. It is to welcome you, and to heal you, and to feed you, and to clothe you in your right mind, and to comfort you.
This is what the great power that God has put to work in Christ does for you. His power is in the word of the gospel that you hear, and the word is powerful to give you hope and brilliant to enlighten your eyes and brighten your heart. This parable is your inheritance, and when you read it you say Yes, Yes, Yes.
The parable is mostly metaphors, but it’s not a dream, yet it is a vision, a vision of the kingdom of heaven. So this puts us in mind of our draft new mission statement, and this is my final sermon on it, at least for now. In its current draft it goes like this: Old First Reformed Church is a community of Jesus Christ in Brooklyn, offering a space of unconditional welcome, a practice of worship and service, and a vision of the Kingdom of Heaven.
If I connect the statement to our lessons, I can say that while the practice of worship is not explicitly mentioned, the language of Ephesians is all liturgical and worshipful. And then from the parable I can say that Our Lord’s vision of the Kingdom of Heaven takes form in the world whenever we offer to strangers our unconditional welcome and when we practice service to the hungry and the sick. And to propel us and sustain us in our practice, we are to see the Lord Jesus in the least of these who need our food and drink and our welcome and our visitation.
This is a parable, not a new law, not a new set of commandments. I have said before that Jesus doesn’t do do’s-and-don’ts. It’s not a sin if you fail to visit a prisoner. We have no record of Jesus himself visiting prisoners, nor of clothing the naked. The deeper point is how you want the power of the Lord Jesus in the world to be expressed. What’s your vision of the kingdom of heaven? What do you want to see, how do you want the Lord Jesus to be vindicated, how do you want your religion to be justified and your belief to be defended? This is how: in your welcome and serving and visitation.
So if you want to see God, this is where to look. If you want to feel the presence of Jesus in your life, in such involvement will you find him. If you want to sense that the Kingdom of Heaven makes a difference in the world, you will gain that sense when you participate in such service. If you doubt the resurrection or ascension, if you need some confirmation that Jesus is Lord, then visit prisoners and welcome strangers, and you will get your confirmation.
Yes, yes, you want to share this vision. You want to practice it. You accept being judged by it, and you will even judge yourself by it, but you will not condemn yourself. You can’t do all things. You will not condemn yourself because Our Lord is powerfully gathering all things unto himself, even our shy and nervous welcoming and our intermittent feeding and our hesitant visitation, so that all our efforts, from feeble to noble, are being gathered by Our Lord into his great reconciliation and his greater consummation, and no stained and spotted fruit will be excluded from this harvest.
You know I always like to end on love, the love of God for us in Jesus Christ. I think the love is in the visitation. God’s visitation of us has been so total as to become one of us in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. God says, "I want to be with you, and I want to be with you because I love you."
Copyright © 2017 by Daniel James Meeter, all rights reserved.
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