The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

In the name of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, One God. Amen.

During recess in elementary school, I swung on the swings and played tag on the playground rather than play sports with most of the other boys my age.

I remember kids saying, scrunching faces, judging me, “dude are you gay!?”

I didn’t know what that word meant. But I rapidly associated the actions I performed, and the term “gay,” with something bad, something that I had to hide or change about myself. Middle School and High School did not get much better, as one can imagine.

Our experience of judgement from one another often induces feelings of shame, smallness, brokenness, anger.

Generally, we associate judgement with something top-down, something done to us when we don’t ask for it, something finicky and small that makes us shrivel.

So it’s not surprise that when we encounter divine judgement in the Holy Scriptures, we may feel a little on edge. A little put off. A tad nervous.

Jesus states, at the end of today’s parable about the net thrown into the sea, “The angels will come and separate the evil from the righteous, and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 13:49-50)

Last week, the parable of the weeds and the wheat concluded with a similar sentiment. At the “end of the age” the angels collect “all causes of sin and evildoers” and “throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 13:41-42)

These are uncomfortable words. These are words of God’s judgement.

But the judgement of God is not something from which we can shy away. It is a prominent theme in Holy Scripture. God is love, God is creator, God is merciful and compassionate. God is also perfectly just and the great Judge of the cosmos. And when examined carefully, we will see that divine judgement - divine justice - has much more to do with a revelation of how we treated the most vulnerable among us; and that in that revelation, we are purified and ultimately more capable of receiving the reconciliation of God.

So. The furnace of fire. The Gospel of Matthew has 12 instances of the word fire, and 10 of them have to do with God's judgement.

Most of these fiery instances occur in a parable or allegorical teaching of Christ.

Parables use simile, metaphor, and allegory to describe how God is interjecting Godself into this world. In Jesus’ teaching, parables illustrate the intervening work of God in human affairs. Many begin with a simile, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like…” or “the Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to.”

And the judgement of God, these acts of separation and tossing to the outer darkness or to the fire, reveal to us something about divine judgement. The judgement & justice of God is part of God’s work in human history, so the parables tell us.

The Kingdom of Heaven is near - the incarnation of God in Christ cries out, “Now is the judgement of the world!” (John 12:31).

St Paul writes, “For all of us must appear before the judgement seat of Christ, so that each may receive due recompense for actionsdone in the body, whether good or evil.” (2 Corinthians 5:10)

The interesting thing about judgement in the Scriptures is that it doesn’t seem to focus on our belief, how well we pray, or even our baptismal status.

Rather, divine judgment appears to be focused on what we did in our lives.

To understand more fully what the sorting of the fish, and the fires of judgement, mean in Matthew’s Gospel, we need to look ahead to how Jesus describes the final judgement in Matthew 25:31-46.

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him… all the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people.” The passage continues. Describing how the judgement is to take place. Christ says,

“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me” (Matt 25:35-36), and “Truly I tell you just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.” (Matt 25:40). 

In the passage, the reverse is also true - when we fail to do these acts to people, we fail to do them to Christ.

The scripture makes abundantly clear that the judgement of Christ is specifically a judgement about how we, as individuals, as a society, as a nation, treat the weakest, and most vulnerable people. 

This is not a matter of some liberal interpretation of the Gospel. This is not a matter of modern political realities. This is straight up how Christ judges us. This is how God judged the nations, and particularly Israel, in the Old Testament. It is how God’s judgement continues to this day.

Drawing on the work of renowned Orthodox theologian David Bently Hart, he says that the judgement of God is not so much, “a judgement Christ passes on us.” Rather, “it is a revelation of the judgement we passed upon Christ in the course of our lives. The final judgement is now because we are always already standing before the dread judgement seat… The language of the Gospel cannot be clearer - it is no one other than Christ whom we meet in the suffering and destitute, the prisoner and the refugee, the abused migrant or asylum seeker.”

This is the crux of judgement then. Christ is the Light of the World who shines in the darkness (John 1:4-5), Christ is the revealing light which discloses who we are before God. Christ reveals before our very eyes how we receive Him in the faces of others, of all people yes, but especially the most vulnerable.

The judgement of God is a revelation, a disclosure, of how we have passed judgement on Christ in the face of the other. 

And this is revealed in the searing, burning, light of Christ. That great fire which burns the chaff, separates the fish, and refines the soul.

Malachi 3:2-3, Proverbs 17:3 call divine judgement a refiners fire. John the Baptist declares that Jesus will baptize “with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (Matt. 3:11). St Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 3:1-15 that “the [judgement] day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will prove the quality of each man’s work.”

When we contemplate, truly contemplate, the judgement of God, and how we have passed judgement on Christ in the other, we see ourselves in the light of Christ as broken and beautiful, as fallen and yet called to stand, as stumbling yet held by God.

In the revealing light of Christ’s judgement, we cannot help but be made profoundly aware of the gap between Creator and created; between Redeemer and redeemed; between Perfection and our imperfection; between Divine Love and our fickle, halting, love; between who we could have been had we only heeded Christ’s call, and who we actually are.

And the final act of the judgement of God, after this disclosure, after this revelation, after this refiners fire burns the chaff, is that in Christ that chasm between us and God is closed. In an instant, in the flash of an eye, we stand before the unfettered, marvellous light of Christ, and are held, and loved.

Divine judgement is nothing like human judgement.

Human judgement often says “You are wrong, hide yourself, be small.”
Divine judgement shines a light upon us that says “See where you have failed to love as I have loved you; let the refiners fire burn away the brokenness, and be transformed.”

Divine judgement reveals how we passed judgement on Christ through the course of our lives.

It reveals, and purifies, and heals, and reconciles. And when we accept the true sight and revelation and love of Christ to heal us, to transform us, we are all the more capable of being and becoming who Christ calls us to be - which is His very hands and feet in this broken world.

May we recall that we stand before Christ’s seat of judgement even this day, and strive to serve Christ in all people, especially the most vulnerable in our world.

Amen.