In the Name of the Living God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
All of us are both fascinated by and afraid of judgement.
We are clearly fascinated by it, because we spend so much time judging others – judging their politics, their parenting, their perspectives and so on.
Yet, at the same time, we’re afraid of judgement, because the prospect of being judged is frightening. And it’s frightening because we have “done those things we ought not to have done, and we’ve left undone those things we should have done.” Add in a few tablespoons guilt and shame and it means it’s all rather difficult to simply pack up our pasts and stick them in the attic of our imaginations.
A friend of mine recently sent me an article in the Washington Post about an emerging trend that newspapers are seeing in obituaries submitted for publication. Mad at your mom? Mad at your dad? Well, publish an obituary like this one, which was published recently in the Redwood Falls Gazette in the small town of Redwood Falls, Minnesota:
[Our Mom] Kathleen passed away on May 31, 2018 in Springfield and will now face judgement. She will not be missed by [her children] Gina and Jay, and they understand that this world is a better place without her.
This isn’t just anger and bitterness. This is burning hot judgement – it’s about our fascination with judgement, with our tendency to be unforgiving and our prideful need to have that silly last word.
And yet, on the other side of the coin, we remain afraid of being judged. Isn’t this a fascinating quandary? Oh, to be human! You know, puppy dogs and kitty cats don’t have this problem!
Even the very word strikes fear in our hearts. Listen to how it sounds rolling off the tongue – “judgement.” It doesn’t have even one pleasing syllable. “Cupcake” – oh, that sounds nice. “Champagne” – now that’s a movement I can support! “Harmony” – oh, that’s pleasing to the ear. But “JUDGEMENT” – it’s the word of doom!
Today we have ten verses before us from the second letter of St. Paul to the Church in Corinth. Nine and a half of those verses warm the heart with memorable phrases like:
• We walk by faith (yeah, sign me up!)
• The love of Christ compels us (great!), and
• If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation (hallelujah!)
But, tucked right in there amidst all those cupcake verses is verse number ten:
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the body.
At this point in this little homily, I have to state the obvious.
I have actually never been to the hereafter, so I’ve never seen the judgment seat of Christ.
As a footnote, when our daughter Camille was about five years old, she was disappointed that I couldn’t tell her exactly what the Blessed Virgin Mary looked like. When I explained that I’d never been to heaven, She said, “You mean you tell people about heaven for your job, but you haven’t even been there? That’s just weird, Dad” So, we had a nice chat about another verse we read today – about walking by faith, not sight.
My point is simply this: don’t be fooled; nobody can explain exactly how our appearance before the judgement seat works.
But, we can, with faith and clarity, preach the basics of the Christian gospel. And it’s the basics – the bottom-line good news of Jesus – that allows us to make sense out of verse ten.
One of my fellow Anglophiles, who is not a believer, and I had a phone chat last week about the recent royal wedding. At one point, he told me, “Charleston, don’t you think it was cool how Meghan Markle walked into to St. George’s Chapel, Windsor as American commoner and walked out a royal duchess?”
I was feeling pretty sharp and spicy that day, so I replied, “If you think that’s cool, let me tell you about the time my parents brought me to the font – how when I went down into the waters, I was covered in original sin and shame, and when I came up I put on the garment of grace….I became more than royalty…I became God’s own forever.” I thought I did pretty well. But, he always has the last word, so he said, “That’s amazing; all this time and I didn’t know you were baptized at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor?!?”
Did you all hear about the vase sold at Sotheby’s in Paris last week?
A porcelain vase that had long been packed up and forgotten in a rural French attic sold for 19 million dollars at auction. The vase turned out to be the finest remaining piece of 18th-century Chinese porcelain. It now holds the record as the single most expensive item ever sold at auction in France. The Daily Telegraph reports that the vase “arrived at the auctioneer’s office inside a shoebox and wrapped with old newspaper.”
Because we are all afraid of judgement, especially God’s judgement, we have to do something, and we have to do it today.
We must go up in the attic of our souls and go over in the back left corner, and reach up, way up, to that dusty old top shelf (the one where all the dust mites live) and we have to pull down that old, dusty shoebox wrapped in newspaper.
Inside the box you and I will find the garment that we’ve forgotten about for all these years – the garment of God’s grace and mercy, our robe made clean by the blood of the lamb, Jesus.
But, it won’t do us any good just looking at it again. We’ve got to put it back on and make it ours again today.
As soon as we slip it back on, we’ll realize it still fits – better than ever – and we’ll discover it is more valuable than even the crown jewels – more valuable than ten million rare vases.
Do you really, really believe that the one who created us, and who literally moved heaven and earth to redeem us to be in a relationship with us, is anxiously sitting there in a courtroom waiting for us to arrive so that He can press play on some X-rated slide show of all our sins – some full-colour streaming video of all our dark secrets and thoughts? I don’t think so, but, like I said, I’ve never been.
But, what if we really are new creations in Christ? What if God really did make him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the very righteousness of God?
What if God’s love, grace, mercy and forgiveness truly are sufficient – sufficient now, sufficient tomorrow and sufficient on the day of judgement?
It’s not your job to be perfect; it’s your job to be thankful.
Sermon preached by the Rev. Charleston D. Wilson
Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
4th Sunday after Pentecost
17 June 2018