2 Samuel 5:1-3
Psalm 122:1-5
Col 1:12-20
Luke 23:35-43
From the earliest days of Christian worship, followers of Jesus have gathered at day's end and have sung this hymn, the oldest hymn found outside of the New Testament itself:
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Now as we come to the setting of the sun,
and our eyes behold the Vesper light, we sing thy praises, O God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Thou art worthy at all times to be praised by happy voices .... |
For many people today these sensibilities feel remote, far from our own temper and outlook. Martyrdom? The Last Judgment? Aren't these concepts .... ancient history? What have they to do with our modern and scientific world?
To such people we might say two things. First, the twentieth century saw more red martyrs than all previous centuries combined. Today, many, many people continue to be persecuted for their Christian beliefs ... increasingly in the United States. Second, if you don't believe in the "end times" or the "last things," you will, for each of us was born to die, and the day of our death is not given for us to know.
But, wait, how does one's own death relate to the Last Judgment? Ought Christians not believe, as Fr. Richard John Neuhaus so often reminded us, that the baptized sleep in their graves until a General Judgment comes about? Well, yes, here on earth, we live in a timebound state. Life proceeds sequentially down a timeline that began with the creation of the world and will end as we arrive to the Last Four Things: death, judgment, Heaven, Hell. But we must remember, God does not live within, nor is He limited by, our timebound world. Neither (any more) does His Son, Jesus Christ, nor does their Holy Spirit. They live in eternity (beyond our knowledge and grasp) in which all temporal and spatial states are present to them. For the Holy Trinity, the Last Judgment has already occurred. When we die, we leave our timebound world to enter this inscrutable eternity. God's truth becomes our truth and with greater clarity than ever before.
If this were not true, then how could we entreat the saints in Heaven to pray for us? For, else, they would be sleeping in a grave. Or how could we encounter our loved ones who had gone to the greater life as so many of us most certainly have? Most important, how could Jesus promise a penitent thief, "This day you will be with Me in Paradise"? Yes, for God the Last Judgment has already occurred. And each of our particular deaths mysteriously participates in that cosmic drama.
With this realization, suddenly the Last Judgment becomes a quiet, deeply personal, even intimate event. And this is in keeping with God's most commonly experienced miracle -- that He speaks into each of our lives everyday as if the universe had been ordered to us. Somehow we become the central concern. And this is the miracle: that each of us should experience this phenomenon even as it is happening to everyone else and in the self-same moment and place. How many of us hear the Scripture readings in church and are stunned at how uncannily they speak into our own situation that very day? Or how many hear the homily and wonder, "Could Father really have composed this for me? How could he know ..." The Psalmist assures us that God numbers the hairs on our heads, and we are confounded as we try to imagine it, .... and yet, it is true.
If this be true, then it should not surprise us that the most important moment in our life, which is our death, should share in this common miracle? Far from being a loud, jostling event that involves vast multitudes, it turns out that the Last Judgment includes only two: the Lord Jesus Christ and ourselves. We are alone with Him. We are alone, each with a personal history present in a form of clarity that would elude Technicolor -- alone with Him, the One Who alone knows our lives honestly and truly. (Sadly, we are the last ones to see ourselves honestly and in the the truest light.) We are alone with Him, Who is perfect in justice and perfect in mercy. He achieves this perfection by bringing each of us inside of His deliberations so that we know the rightness of His justice and the depth of His mercy to a certainty. In this sense, each of us is to become our own judge.
One of the greatest theologians of the twentieth century, Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar, wrote that we see our lives in His face with perfect clarity. Our response to this truth, which is a consuming fire, goes to the heart of our eternal judgment. Who can say, while they are alive, how he or she will respond? For hearing our own voices on a recording or seeing our own image in a video ... even these mild exposures to true appearance and likeness can be unnerving for many people. And being unnerved, we begin to understand the counsel of the saints to be quiet and humble, for we see instantly what loud and boisterous behavior really is.
What we shall see in the Lord's face, however, will go far beyond merely our voice and image. How will we respond revisiting the scenes of a life that are cause for the deepest shame? What will we say in the face of a searing embarrassment? How will we explain our very worst moments? Here is our life seen through the Lord Whose recollection is flawless and Whose vision is perfect. No harsh line will be airbrushed out. No hasty word spoken or regrettable act committed will be erased. His justice is perfect, and His sensitivity is exquisitely attuned, for He is the Holy One. In like measure, His face is the face of perfect love. No one could ever love us as He does. He is mercy itself.
In this face we shall see all of scenes and stories that make up our life. And our response to all of this will go to the heart of deciding our eternal dwelling. For, after all, Heaven is about our own heavenliness, and Hell inescapably is the outcome of hellish lives. The most important question of our lives, all of our lives, is His: "Who do you say that I AM?" And in the end He asks its corollary to us: "Who do you say that you are?"
The photograph appearing above (on our webpage for this Sunday) is a frieze set over doors entering and leaving the Cathedral at Autun (France). At the center sits the great Judge, the Lord Jesus Christ. On His right hand are those destined for happiness, for dwelling with Him eternally. On His left are those boarding the ferries to Hell, to be separated from Him forever, from whose bourne no traveler returns. We may be sure that worshipers arriving each Sunday would enter the door under His left hand to signify their regret and would exit through the door beneath His right hand to express their hope. From my point of view the most important part of this Sunday journey was what happened in the pews during their stay. For it is in church, above all other places, where we are able to approach Him really and truly and consider our lives before we durst approach the rail to receive His precious Body and Blood, to be set among the many unworthinesses within us.
Our formation during the course of our lives has been the only truly important thing each and every day. And it will be central to our response at our Last Judgment. A life of self-indulgence, with its follow-ons of pridefulness and anger, only will hardens over time. The character it forms will not be undone and remade in an instant. The insolent man might see his life in the Lord's face in every honest detail and .... will deny it and then stonewall or will resent the fact that someone has ratted him out or, failing all else, will spit in the Lord's face as an act of final and ultimate defiance. By contrast, a life of humility, of daily or weekly examination of one's failings, of reasonable regret and a continual desire to be reconciled to others, all of these traits carefully developed and practiced, will not easily be unseated in the end. Such a person will see his or her life in the Lord's face and will say, Yes, I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against You, O Lord, have I sinned. Truly, I have done what is evil in Thy sight, and I knew it when I did it .... but I did it anyway. O Lord, forgive me. Purge me, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Is this not the scene set before us on this the final Sunday of the Church Year? All humankind stands before the Cross as the Lord Jesus hangs on Calvary. His arms are outstretched gesturing to every nation. On His left is one who reviles Him, whose mind shifts restlessly about, searching for every selfish angle unto his last breath. On His right is one who acknowledges his sins: "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong."
Do you see? Do you see that Jesus continues to teach us and minister to us with His dying breath? The Last Judgment is set before us in its plain simplicity. The great Judge sits at center. Two men are to die. The one on His left thinks only of himself, and such a life shall be granted him, for Hell is filled with such men as these. The one on His right desires justice .... and also mercy, but this not for himself, but rather, for the Lord of Life. Amen.