The Lasting Judgment

A sermon About God's challenge for our future

Even though you all began without me this morning, I know just how you began.

You began with that wonderful prayer about reading, marking, learning and inwardly digesting scripture, building up blessed hope for everlasting life. I’m betting that as soon as that prayer was offered, you added your own audible Amen—your own affirmation of “so-be-it”—and then sat down to listen to the first reading.

As you were praying and reading, the SCRIPT teens and I were gathered in my office around—you guessed it—our own reading from scripture, pooling insights about ways these pages offer a script for living our lives. It comes as no surprise that whenever we Episcopalians are asked what we’d like to learn more about, we say scripture. 80% of our Prayer Book is made up of scripture arranged for public worship. The lyrics of our hymnal are scripture set out for singing. Our entire worship service is one extended encounter with scripture designed to draw us in, and give us voice, in the telling of God’s unfolding story.

Many Sundays reward us with pleasing and comforting images…

Such as the Good Shepherd caring for us sheep, or the forgiving father coming after us prodigals, or the great banquet prepared for us in the big mansion with its countless rooms. We’re given hints about the herculean efforts God is making to woo and win us even when we stray and falter. Through scripture we are reminded how God is forever comforting us when we are afflicted, even when our wounds are self-inflicted.

On other Sundays we are faced with challenging images, such as bridesmaids being shut out of a wedding for which they hadn’t prepared, or greedy tenants being brought to task for their ingratitude, or harvest chaff being burned in a roaring fire. In these readings we’re given hints of the holiness of God in whose image we are made, and our easy self-satisfaction isn’t so easy any more. We are reminded that God is not only always comforting us when we are afflicted, but also afflicting us when we grow too comfortable with our own status quo.

Between Genesis at the beginning of the Bible and Revelation at the end, God is forever on the move righting and restoring his bond with us, bringing the relationship between heaven and earth back into balance, so his story can move forward toward the happy ending he has planned.

Today is one of the challenging Sundays where scripture brings the relationship back into balance, by testing our comfortable status quo.

We start with a startling image of our namesake Michael, presiding at the end of time when everyone who has ever lived is summoned to see what their lives have actually amounted to. In the case of the un-prepared bridesmaids, if after missing one wedding they go on to miss a hundred more, always blaming the bridegrooms for the blunder, that pattern will have to be accounted for. In the case of the greedy tenants, if having once mistaken their landlord for a weak and naïve fool they go on to stiff a dozen more landlords, that pattern will have to be accounted for. In the case of the worthless chaff contaminating the precious grain, if the first bonfire doesn’t burn through the bravado and a lifetime of flawed harvests follows, then that pattern will have to be accounted for too.

The truth is that at the end of life, when you and I finally stand face to face before God, we can only appear as the actual people we’ve spent our lives becoming. The truth will win out and be revealed, and so it is a great kindness to us that scripture reminds us of that fact now, while we are very much alive and able to make new and different choices that break self-defeating old patterns.

Several years ago on a trip through eastern France, Luke and I happened on the Hospital of God in Beaune, a palace for the poor and sick erected in 1443 by a wealthy and powerful official named Nicolas Rolin. Rolin and his wife were getting on in years, and thinking more and more about what their lives were amounting to. Perhaps inspired by Jesus’ counsel on linkage between this world and the next,--“In my Father’s house there are many rooms, and I go to prepare a place for you”—they decided to create this place where those who were sick and hungry could spend their final days in peace and dignity. He used the very best materials available to erect a large and gracious hall where each patient would have his or her own velvet-lined cubicle, and a chest for private belongings, and a personal seat at a heavily provisioned table. Rolin endowed the hospital so that the tender ministrations of Sisters of Charity nuns would forever serve and succor his guests.

Rolin designed the far end of his hall to open into a magnificent chapel, and for the wall above the altar he commissioned the famous Flemish artist Rogier Van der Weyden to paint a glistening reredos. Each Sunday and holy day at Mass, the Sisters of Chairty would swing the immense arms of the altarpiece open to reveal the very scene portrayed in today’s reading: Michael presiding over the summoning of everyone who had ever lived, to see what their lives had really amounted to.

In commissioning this painting for ailing guests, Rolin was doing them the great kindness of reminding them that they would soon be standing face to face with God. If there were habits in their hearts they needed to break, there was still time. If there were imbalances between their giving and receiving—either emotional or material—their relationships could still be restored. Whatever they had done or not done in life up until this moment, this very day was the first day of the rest of their lives, and so they still had hope.

Rolins wanted them to remember that the Good Shepherd was already pacing through this very place, searching tirelessly for lost and straggling sheep. The father was already peering from his doorway, straining to glimpse the approach of a prodigal son he’d so long awaited. God in heaven was already setting an immense banquet table and readying uncountable rooms, in anticipation of guests that he so desired would return.

Holy Scripture is indeed written for our learning, and God grant us the grace us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life. Amen.

Listen to the Sermon: