The Sunday of the Final Judgement

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.

“Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, 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.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’

“And the king will answer them, ‘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.’

“Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You who are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels, for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you?’

“Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life” (The Gospel According to St. Matthew 25:31-46).

The great and terrible day of Judgement awaits us all. The Sunday of the Final Judgement in Orthodox churches marks the day when we begin abstaining from meat in preparation for Great Lent starting next week. This Sunday builds on the previous two Sundays: the Publican and the Pharisee and the Prodigal Son wherein we were invited to witness God’s mercy and compassion.

We saw how we ought to pray in a parable illustrating the very instructions Jesus our Lord gave during His sermon on the mount condemning spiritual materialism. We saw the love God has for His children, always, waiting for them with open arms, extending forgiveness to all who repent and wish to return home.

Now, we have a different vision. Jesus describes His coming to earth in glory, with all His angels, seated on the throne of judgement. He will separate the goats from the sheep, the very publicans from the pharisees, the repentant and the prodigal. We enter this day leaning on His rich and great mercy, relying on someone greater than ourselves, on He Who is: the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow (Hebrews 13:8).

We might do well to appreciate that the very idea that something could be the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow goes beyond our rational minds, it is a truly transcendent thought. And so, this Sunday we remember that tomorrow is coming. And Christ, in all the forgiveness, mercy, and love that He has shown His people we remind ourselves that this mercy is not a blank check and is not eternal like Christ.

Christ gives us a great gift with this vision of the Final Judgement, because instead of telling us to pray out of fear for this terrible day of reckoning, we are offered a different mode of being to cultivate our patience for this day. We have seen the Father’s love, His compassion, and His mercy. God invites us to participate in His love through repentance, prayer, and works done for Him, not for conceit or the eyes of men. God invites us to enter further into His glory by asking us to love as we have been loved.

To love others as God has loved us, the second great commandment, to love your neighbor as yourself. This can only be done through the work of God within us, by loving God Who is Mercy, Who is Compassion, and Who is Love we come to know ourselves as His own, belonging to Him and as such seeing our neighbors, even our enemies, as belonging God’s own children, too.

The image of Jesus Christ coming again seated on the throne of glory, judging the world, is not meant to inspire despair. It must not even inspire an anxiety of the unpredictable day that He will come with the sound of the last trump and His angels (Matthew 24:31) but must inspire humility. We must remember that God will come, but more than that, God is enthroned.

Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow: enthroned throughout all time and space and beyond.

It is too easy for us to forget that this day of finality is coming, and it is coming, but also to forget that Jesus Christ is seated on the throne of glory. I know I am bad at remembering this, and I wonder how many of us forget, maybe deliberately, because to enthrone ourselves feels better. As if we know better than Jesus, or as if we were His angels come to separate the wheat from the chaff ourselves.

I understand this Sunday is about remembering the day of reckoning as a call to repentance, a serious call, and not only that, and this call to repentance illustrates the image of this day. Namely, to dethrone ourselves in our lives.

That is what this Sunday is about, can we stop playing God in our lives? Can we stop treating the world around us as if we were seated in the dreaded judgement seat?

By the way, if you—like me—have an issue with self-righteousness thoughts, self-exaltation, and prideful condescension toward others I wonder if you might consider how exhausting it is to play God. Jesus’ yoke is easy, and His burden is light (Matthew 11:30), but can we unyoke ourselves from our need to control outcomes?

Can we remove the burden to feel greater than others?   

The Pharisee carries a greater burden than the Publican. The Prodigal returns home with nothing, yet his brother is weighed down with resentment.

So, I wonder how this day might be changed for us if we approach not only considering how we might be judged based on our inability to follow the great commandment, but also how do we judge?

We all judge. It is an aspect of our faculties that have been given to us by God, however we misuse them due to our fallen nature. It is a godly blessing to be given this criterion by Jesus before His Parousia, because there is no doubt we will find more ways to judge, to be conceited, subtle and insidious ways for our egos to claim lordship of our lives. I hope that God continues re-proving us by His grace to straighten our path and soften our hearts, otherwise we might never come back to ourselves like the Prodigal.

We pray for God’s mercy, not because of our anxiety toward this final day, arriving like a thief in the night, but so that we might extend His mercy through us. We pray for God’s mercy so that we can become a part of that mercy, reaching from eternity and meeting the world through the mercy that show to our neighbors.

To our enemies.

To the least of our brethren.

The least of God’s children.

We are not supposed to be met by God’s compassion or enveloped in His mercy then it end with us, like we are simply consumers of His love, a spiritual vacuum. When we pray the Lord’s prayer, though, we are given a formula for how we must act as children of God: Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done. We are to take His compassion and, out of love for Him, serve His kingdom. We are to follow the words of the Forerunner and make straight our paths that the kingdom might extend out through our very being.

To extend the mercy of God is to be an ambassador of His kingdom. And to be an ambassador of His kingdom is to take care of the least of the kingdom. The image of the Final Judgement is a call to repentance, yes, of course—and it is a reminder that all we have in this life is a moment, a moment followed by the next moment each providing us the opportunity to repent. The devil whispers in our ears telling us that there is always time to repent, tomorrow; repent, tomorrow. Jesus tells us this is not true, however, for we do not know the day will come when we no longer be able to repent.

Tomorrow is not to be expected, nor even today can we trust, but this one moment is all we have.

Shout out to the addicts who know the value and eternity of a single moment.

But I want to offer another view that is a continuation of this thought that every moment is an opportunity to repent while also an opportunity to become like Christ in the world. Every moment is an opportunity to become like the presence of Christ, not to enthrone ourselves on the seat of judgement, but to embody His mercy, His compassion, and His love unto our brethren, unto our enemies, and unto the least of His children.

Can we take time this week, as the Orthodox prepare for the beginning of Great Lent and others continue their Lenten journey to think of times during their day that we can, if we come back to ourselves, become the Presence of God in the world?

The world judges enough by itself, how can we leave that practice alone and instead practice mercy? Patience? Compassion?

Practice the Presence of God.  

I believe the Word of God written is our trumpet call, must be like lightning and thunder accompanying the Presence of God. We must treat Scripture as if it were preparing us for this Second Coming, by being a type of merciful Parousia helping us to become holy, fortify ourselves by His Word, and strengthen those around us. Every moment is an opportunity to become God’s Word, to empty the self so to be filled by His glory and be present as He is present.

The Lord charges us to love our neighbors, love our enemies, and take care of the least of our brethren, for as we do to them, we also do unto Him. The ground of their being is the same as ours; it is Christ Who indwells within us all.  

In this week’s epistle reading the Apostle writes to the church of Corinth,  

“Brethren, ‘Food will not bring us close to God.’ We are no worse off if we do not eat and no better off if we do. But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if others see you, who possess knowledge, eating in the temple of an idol, might they not, since their conscience is weak, be encouraged to the point of eating food sacrificed to idols? So by your knowledge the weak brother or sister for whom Christ died is destroyed. But when you thus sin against brothers and sisters and wound their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food is a cause of their falling, I will never again eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.

Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord? If I am not an apostle to others, at least I am to you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 8:8-13/9:1-2).

The Apostle continues the formula of taking every moment to repent, to embody the presence of Christ, and to follow the words of Christ on the Mount to first seek the kingdom of God (Matthew 6:33). Seek first the kingdom of God, which is see others as Christ. He Who is: the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow Who dwells within our hearts, within our souls, and sustains us by His Holy Spirit. When we see others as Christ commands then we recognize this internal operation, the entelechy of all being, and approach the world through this lens.

While we must not forget that the Final Day of trumpet, lightning, and thunder does come like a thief in the night, and we must fortify ourselves for that moment as if every moment were that moment the Apostle points us toward the spirit of the Word in the Gospel reading. It is not enough for us to repent and return back home, to pray like the publican rather than the pharisee, but to see others as Christ. Christ, the Ground of All Being, dwells within our hearts, within our souls, sustains us by His Holy Spirit.

To be a Christian is to recognize that internal operation, the entelechy of all being, and engage with the world through that lens.

Consider, my friends, seeing Christ in everyone, especially those we would grumble against. I wonder how much our lives might change if we meet those who we consider having a weak conscience, or inexperienced, or just frustrating as if they were Christ-bearers. How might we change our attitude to the least of our brethren if we start seeing Christ in them?

And you know, as a personal challenge, I would go further than this by saying that it is not simply in the least of our brethren that Christ indwells, but in our enemies. This is the Lenten challenge for me, anyway. Embodying Christ for the least of our brethren implies that insidious means to self-exalt the self, enthrone oneself, again, as Christ instead of His servant.

The people we grumble against do not have to mean the people in our communities that we find irritating for one reason or another; the people we grumble against must be seen as those we would stick our nose up at for their perceived wickedness. It is too easy for us to see Christ in the least of our brothers and sisters, as if this were a call to see Christ in the unhoused and immigrant.

I challenge us to see Christ in the people we might naturally hate.

Jesus Christ Himself says it, I was in prison and you visited me. He does not say I was in prison for a victimless crime, or I was in prison because I was in the wrong place and the wrong time, or I was in prison because I had an overworked public defender working my case.

He says I was in prison, and you visited me.

Can we do both: embody the mercy of Christ unto our enemies and see Christ in them?

May this Lent be a season of allowing Christ to temper us through His will, seeing Him in every moment, and in every moment the opportunity to see Him. And to become like Him. When the trumpet sounds and He returns to glory, it will not matter, because there will be no more opportunities.

Truly, there will be no one to stand with us, for we are all judged on our own.

Who will welcome us then? Who will visit us then? What will meet us on that day?

How we wish to be met is how we must meet others, for Christ is with us all. Always.

Until the heavens pass away with a loud noise, and the elements are destroyed with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it is disclosed (2 Peter 3:10) we have this moment to choose.

God has left the choice up to us. Amen.

“When Thou comest, O God, upon the earth with glory, the whole world will tremble. The river of fire will bring men before Thy judgment seat, the books will be opened and the secrets disclosed. Then deliver me from the unquenchable fire, and count me worthy to stand on Thy right hand, Judge most righteous” (Kontakion).

Si comprehendis, non est Deus