Judgment Day

Philippians 4:1-9; Matthew 22:1-14

October 15, 2017

First off, this is a pretty hilarious text to encounter for the first sermon following our elder son’s wedding. I do not recall any gnashing of teeth on the final Friday of September, and the only tears were those of joy. I reckon that’s how it goes when you’re just the father of the groom and not the king.

Probably all for the best. Being king sounds like a royal pain – especially when things are not going well, when the invited guests don’t come to your party, when those who do show up get things all wrong, when the whole show is just going to hell in a hand basket.

In such moments, this challenging parable from Matthew suggests, it certainly feels as if the judgment of God is upon the land.

Contemporary listeners can certainly be forgiven for looking around the state of the world and imaging that God’s judgment has been rendered and it is harsh. We all know that certain conservative televangelists regularly announce that the judgment of God is upon the land whenever a hurricane or other major disaster strikes. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’d bet that the California wildfires will be blamed on the GLBTQ-friendly culture of wine country. After all, the drought was blamed on abortion laws so it’s really just a matter of time.

I mean, Hurricane Harvey’s destruction in Houston was blamed on that city’s election of a lesbian mayor, and Irma was blamed in some quarters on Miami’s “permissive culture.” I don’t know what the poor people of Puerto Rico did, but it probably has something to do with the gays.

Now we may chuckle at such ham-handed explanations of natural disasters, and we should be instantly and deeply suspicious when our God hates the same people we hate.

Ooops. I just flipped the pronoun script. “Our God …” Yeah, liberals can be just as guilty as conservatives when it comes to creating God in our own image. When God hates the same people you hate, you might just be creating God in your image and not the other way round.

That said – and that is important – I’m pretty much ready to join with those who say that the judgment of God is upon the land. If God is the God of life and of creation, then these climate-driven and profit-motivated disasters are surely part of God’s judgment. The size and strength of tropical storms, the depth and length of droughts – these are all perfectly in keeping with weather predictions of climate scientists. The profit-driven coastal developments, on the one hand, and flimsy shacks on the other – both in the eye of the storm – are also equally parts of predictions of economists describing late capitalism’s rising inequality.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not suggesting that God is sitting on high with the puppet strings deciding which trailer park gets hit by a hurricane and which winery gets destroyed by a fire. I am, however, suggesting that what we have done to the climate and to the economy – and these are deeply intertwined concerns – what we have done is an affront to the God of beauty, creation, and justice.

We were invited to a party, but we failed to read the fine print on the invitation. You see, we were invited to bring our whole selves to this party. We were invited to put on garments of righteousness for this party, but instead we showed up in the finest suits of injustice. Why should we be surprised to find ourselves out on the curb?

The point is, God invites us to bring our whole selves to the party – our whole selves that have been created in God’s own image for God’s purposes.

Too often, we can’t muster more than a faint trace of that image and instead of our whole selves we offer only a fragment from an original that has been shattered by our own histories of brokenness. It’s true what they say, “broken people break people.”

It’s also true what my children say: “we broke the planet.” They say this every time conversation turns to the latest climate catastrophe. Broken people break people, and, together, we break creation itself.

That’s where the judgment lies. Not that God sits on high and punishes us for our selfishness, greed, and short-sightedness, but, rather, that God gives us this magnificent and horrible freedom: freedom to create incredible, heart-breaking beauty; and freedom to destroy it such that we live as those cast out of the great banquet.

Moreover, in sovereign love, God invites us all to this great banquet – the table at the center of the beloved community where all are welcome, all are honored, all are richly fed in body, mind, and spirit.

The invitation itself is enough to change a person, but, the parable tells us, some folks refuse to change. They are invited into the light, but insist on wearing the darkness.

This is, of course, all parable and metaphor. So let’s make it real. Here are some real “garments of darkness” that we wear. Not each of us wears all of them, but all of us wear some of them: we put on the cloak of crippling fear that keeps us from risking anything of value on behalf of someone else; we wear the dress of deep-seated consumerism that drives us to spend our money on that which does not feed – ourselves or our communities; we don the mask of unquestioning militarism that too easily confuses and conflates the values of the American empire with those of the kindom of God; we pullover it all a propensity for violence – of word, of thought, of action – that defies the image of God in others and defiles that same image in ourselves.

Is it any wonder that the judgment of God is upon the nation? Is it any wonder that the streets resound with weeping and wailing, the rending of garments, the gnashing of teeth? If you doubt any of this, then simply recall the place names: Puerto Rico, Las Vegas, Aleppo, Orlando, Houston …. The litany of names of places of violence or climate catastrophe is long, but not nearly so long as the scrolling images of faces of those directly affected.

So where is there any good news in all of this? Surely this parable of judgment is not the final word.

It’s a slim reed, but the final word, I believe, comes in the singular word, “called.” Many are called. Indeed, I will insist, all are called. That is God’s doing. God’s voice calls. The “chosenness,” on the other hand, is up to us. We choose how to respond to the call of God, and we choose it in how we live our lives.

That is why Paul, writing from a prison cell to the small community of Jesus-followers in Philippi, encourages them, “finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.”

Keep on doing these things – these things that make for justice, these things that make for peace, these things that make for beauty, these things that make for love. Keep on doing these things. These things that feed people, these things the reconcile people, these things that heal people – keep on doing these things. These things that teach people, these things that comfort people, these things that inspire people – keep on doing these things.

Though the journey is long, and the way is rocky, keep on doing these things.

Though the world be harsh and it sometimes feels hopeless, keep on doing these things.

Though the principalities be powerful and we will wear scars, keep on doing these things.

Keep on doing these things, and together we can create a great banquet where all are welcome to sit down together at the table of plenty in the center of the beloved community. Keep on doing these things. Amen.