Judgment Sunday - Heaven or Hell????

This is my reflection on this past Sunday’s Gospel in the Eastern Church, Matthew 25:31-46. Referred to as Meatfare or Judgement Sunday.

Jesus tells his disciples this story about a king who sits in judgement and divides the nations to his right and left. The surprise for the reader in this judgement scene is that it is not the actions done to the king himself that are rewarded, but how others treat their neighbors, this enables them to receive their reward from the king. Now at face value it does seem that the king is sending some people to heaven, if we understand “eternal life” to mean this, and other people to hell. Yes, I do agree in some sense this is true. There is a real and full judgment for us all someday. But I also think the story here told by our Lord goes much deeper than that picture. Many of the false images of the God whom Christians serve, comes from this, often short-sighted way of thinking about how God works within his world. As if God is just watching us from heaven to see if we are good or bad, then in the end, he sends you either to hell or heaven. This description seems to be, in some people’s minds, the totality of God’s actions in his creation. Is that what this story is all about? Is this what Jesus wanted us to know about “judgement” as he reached the end of his life here on earth? By looking at the larger plans and purposes of God, I think we can discover a much more complete and richer meaning to this passage. One not of an angry and threatening God that we are afraid of encountering, but one that calls us to be true and active disciples of Jesus Christ. In other words, to be the very people that God created us to be.

First this scene of judgement comes from a long section of related stories found at the end of Matthew’s Gospel (24:1-25:46), often called the Olivet Discourse. At the beginning of this discourse by Jesus, we are told, “As Jesus sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” (Matt 24:3) They are asking about the timetable for destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem that Jesus has just foretold to them. The passage we are looking at today comes at the very end of Jesus answering the disciple’s question. The basic question has two parts, “the sign of your coming” and “the end of the age”. The word “coming” means: appearance, arrival, or advent. Ok then how do we connect the second part of the question to the first, what is this “end of the age”? In the Jewish mind there are two ages that are part of God’s plan for the world. First the present age that all people live in, both Jews and pagans alike. Then at the end of that first age, God will come in and defeat any pagan nations who are oppressing his people Israel, thereby bringing in God’s new age. When only he is King and Lord. When did they expect this to happen? At the end of time. So really, what are the disciples are asking Jesus is, “when are you going to appear and bring in God’s new age, how will we know it has come?” Now the shock for them and many of us is that this “new age” did indeed start with the death of Jesus, and his “coming” in power at the Resurrection and Ascension. But it happened not at the end of time, as was expected, but in the middle of time. So, God has made the new age present, but it also overlaps with the old age. As St. Paul tells us in Galatians, “the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age.” (Gal1:3-4) We are delivered to serve God in the new age. The call of the Christian then becomes to make this new “age”, the age of God’s rule, present in our lives and world, through the working and power of the Holy Spirit. This gives us a great clue to what Jesus is talking about in this story of judgement. He is telling us how people live and treat others in God’s new age. This “new age” on the other side of Resurrection. By doing this we enter into what could be called “eternal life” in the present time. This is often very new and hard for people to get their minds around because we have been so programed into the heaven or hell contrast.

Let us now dig a bit deeper into the story itself and build upon what we have seen so far. We are told in verse 34, “the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Two words here jump out at me, “blessed” and “inherit”. Usually those who are “blessed” have received in some way God’s blessing, with the ultimate blessing being the forgiveness of sins. They are now his restored and redeemed people, in order that they can get own with the plan that God has for them. They are free to serve him and him alone. How do we connect this with “inherit”? Well, an inheritance is based on something that has been promised. Where do we find the great story of promise in the Bible? With the story of Abraham. In Genesis 12:1-3 God tells the future Patriarch, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” God is telling him that in your family, you “seed”, all the people of the earth will be blessed. In other words, the nations will have their sins forgiven by your offspring, Abraham. Now the question becomes, what is the other side of having one’s sins forgiven? Why goes God does this? So many people get caught up the how God has forgiven sins, they forget the why. Does he forgive sins through the work of Jesus Christ, only that we can escape this current world and go to heaven when we die? Or is it more to it than that? What are we supposed to do in the present time? How does our blessing and inheritance, connect with God bringing forth his “new age”? Think about what we ask for in the Lord’s Prayer, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”, here we are asking God to let his power, the very power and rule present in heaven, to be at work through us, for his “age” to come upon us. God forgives us and redeems us, so we can inherit his kingdom both now and in the future. Why then does this Gospel passage only have to be about “final” judgement? God is always working in the present time. His kingdom is always present, and he wants us to be a part of this kingdom in the here and now. To take possession of it and to become coworkers in his wise and faithful rule over creation. Thereby, doing daily in our lives what Adam failed to do: worshiping God, loving our neighbors, and taking care of God’s world. By doing this all creation is blessed by the family of Abraham, the family of the Christ.

I think this verse from Leviticus can help with the picture that I am trying to paint, “But I have said to you, ‘You shall inherit their land, and I will give it to you to possess, a land flowing with milk and honey.’ I am the LORD your God, who has separated you from the peoples.” (20:24) Here God is sending his people into the Promised Land and they are set apart from their pagan neighbors by the keeping of the Law. This Law tells them how to live and treat each other, as they worship the living God. How do we bring this forward to the New Testament and the revelation of Jesus Christ? God through Jesus has given us not just a strip of land in Palestine, but the whole world. As St. Paul says in Romans, “The promise to Abraham and his descendants, that they should inherit the world.” (4:13) Now that we have been given all creation, what do we do? Jesus tells us very clearly in this Gospel from Matthew, “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ (25:35-36) This is how we treat each other as people in God’s new age. We are God’s “set apart” people to bring his rule upon creation; a rule of love and mercy, not of condemnation and judgement. We bring to fulfillment what Leviticus saw from afar, becoming a people not like the other nations but a people bringing those nations into the people and family of God, not by the sword but by the power of compassion. Sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ, not simply in words but in actions as well. Doing what Jesus tells us to do, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations… teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you”. (Matt 28:19-20) It is then at the heart of God’s “new age” and his “coming” kingdom, that the Ten Commandment or the wider Jewish Law, and then such teachings of Jesus himself, as found in the Beatitudes, find there full meaning and attended purpose for God’s people. If we turn this divine revelation into just following a set of rules, that one day I will get rewarded for if I do so, then the whole thing falls apart. The connection between the present and the future kingdom is lost and there is nothing to fill the void.

Make no mistake, I could go on and on about what is means to be God’s true people living in his new age, because the Bible is full of this story. But let me give one more example to make this point sharper. In Luke Gospel before Jesus tells the Parable of the Good Samaritan, he has this conversation with a Jewish expert of the Law, “And behold, a lawyer stood up to put Jesus to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.” (Luke 10:25–28) In essence the lawyer asks Jesus the same question that we see answered by our Lord in the story of the “final judgement”. “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Again, he is really saying, “how do I have life in God’s new age”? He is not asking Jesus, “how do I get to heaven?” Jesus’ own response should tell us this much. He tells the man, to love and serve God through worship and to also love and care for you neighbor. A short hand condensed version of the scene we find in Matthew’s judgement. Then Jesus brings the full weight of what it means to be a kingdom person, “do this and you will live”. You will live! You will have the life of God’s new age at work in you and you will be fully “alive” as God’s saved and redeemed son or daughter. A people called to make the victory of the Resurrection manifest even in our present time. Showing forth brightly, that the life-giving love of Jesus Christ is always overcoming the works of death and darkness. As St. Paul teaches us in Romans, when speaking about baptism, our entrance into this “new age”, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. (6:4) St. Paul proclaims, here and now, the newness of our resurrected lives are at work in God’s kingdom. By making disciples of all the nations through love, mercy, and compassion. By loving God and putting our neighbors first. As Jesus tells us, “Amen, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25:40)

From here we are able to see how God’s new age, his “eternal life”, and the kingdom come together in the story of "judgement" that our Lord gives us. A story of mercy and the example of how to live as a faithful Christian. Let it be a call to us all to pay closer attention to how we treat others. Are we doing enough of that Jesus himself calls us to do? Or, are we doing too much of what Jesus tells us to avoid at all cost? We should all daily make a list of what we did that day for God and others. Then a list for what we did for ourselves. Which list has the greatest weight? If it’s the second, well then, our priorities are in the wrong place. Love of God and neighbor must be at the center of our hearts and minds to be God’s faithful disciples. He wants Spirit filled, Cross Shaped, participants in his new age. He truly desires people who make the kingdom present through their daily lives.