The Judgment of the Nations
Matthew 25:31-40
August 18, 2019
This summer at the Sabbath Café we’ve swung back and forth between sermons and conversations as we’ve slowly and methodically worked our way through the 25th chapter of the gospel of Matthew. We’ve created some temporary liturgical art along the way, and used a variety of prayer practices and practices of engaging the text.
So we really have looked at these writings together through a variety of lenses, but through it all, we’ve left one piece mostly unexplored: the broadly social and political implications of the text. This morning, reverting to a more traditional homiletic approach, I want to point to a few such implications.
Such a turn toward the broadly social and political is inescapable if we read this text honestly and accurately. Oh, to be sure, we can talk about the virgins and their lamps and the slaves and their talents in terms of individual piety and preparedness, faithfulness and stewardship if we choose. But it’s simply dishonest to look at a text generally referred to as “the judgment of the nations” and take it solely as guidance for personal piety.
To be clear, one can read it that way, in part. Indeed, a week ago yesterday I did just that in preaching my mom’s memorial service. I began that homily saying that we’ve been reading Matthew 25 here all summer, and maybe all I really needed to do to explain it was to tell y’all about my mom’s life.
I stand by that, but only while also insisting that the personal is always already also the political.
You know the old parable of the river? The one where folks downstream keep pulling struggling kids out of the river until eventually somebody says, “we need to go upstream and stop whoever’s throwing these kids in the river in the first place”? I’ve heard that tale told to distinguish the work of charity from the work of justice, and, too often, to valorize the latter at the expense of the former. That interpretation always leaves me thinking, “well, the kids in the river right now surely need that charity.”
All of which is to say, feeding the hungry and working to change systems that confine some folks to hunger are necessarily two sides of the exact same coin.
When the sheep and the goats are separated it won’t be merely a coin flip. Did you feed the hungry? Did you give water to those who thirst? Did you visit those in prison? Did you care for the sick?
Each of us can, and should, do those things to the best of our ability according to our gifts and our callings. That much is simple and unassailable.
But, when the sovereign comes in glory to judge the nations, such questions will also sound like this: did you dismantle systems that create poverty and work to build new ones that assure that everyone has enough to eat? Did you understand that water is life? And did you do something about Flint? Did you create an actually just justice system? Did you do away with cash bail? Did you create a health care system that ended the sad disgrace of medical bankruptcies and that recognized access to health care as a fundamental human right in the 21st century?
Did you welcome the strangers, no matter how many feet they had to stand on and no matter the color of their skin or the continent of their birth? Did you understand that the systems that imprison people in poverty and hunger are not “you” problems; they are all “us” problems? And did you do all you could, where you were, with you had when you came to such understandings?
In other words, did you work for justice? Did you work to create just social orders?
Or did you just walk past on the other side of the street and say, “not my problem.”
In the play, No Exit, one of 20th-century French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre’s characters famously remarks that “hell is other people.” The Jesus of Matthew 25 insists on the opposite: hell is the absence of other people.
That is to say, in this parable of judgment, entering into the kindom of God depends entirely on our relationships, here and now, with other people. Moreover, our citizenship in that kindom prepared for us from the foundations of the earth, rests on our relationships with other people who are hungry, thirsty, poor, immigrants, strangers, prisoners – in other words, the marginalized and powerless.
Any one of us may, of course, find ourselves in any one of those – and countless other – conditions of powerlessness at any point in our lives. Every one of us participates in various structures of power, as well. We are, variously, citizens, siblings, parents, employers, employees, students, teachers, executives, line workers, and so on and on through the various roles we play. Each of the roles embeds us in social structures and power dynamics, and in each of those structures we have some agency with respect to the power dynamics. That is to say, we have some relative amount of power – ranging from a great deal to precious little – within every system even if the only power we have is resistance and non-cooperation. Trust me when I say, no toddler is powerless within a family system.
The question, always, is how and for what purpose will you use the power that you have?
Every hierarchy is violent. Will you use the power at your disposal to level the field?
Every system has its limits. Will you use your power to expand those limits to include more people?
Every community has its boundaries. Will you use your power to interrogate the boundaries and ensure that they protect the vulnerable instead of entrenching the powerful?
To a certain extent, the parable of the judgment of the nations reminds me of Jesus’ remark to Judas: “you will have the poor with you always.” One could read both of them as profoundly pessimistic assessments of the state of the world.
I don’t think that is the case. I understand them in the same way I understand the line in our Brief Statement of Faith – “in a broken and fearful world, the Spirit give us courage to pray without ceasing, to witness among all people to Christ as Lord and Savior, to unmask idolatries in Church and culture, to hear the voices of peoples long silenced, to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.”
Matthew 25, Jesus responding to Judas, and that statement of Reformed conviction each accepts the reality that we live in a broken and fearful world. Jesus does not imagine human beings inhabiting a fully realized kindom of heaven on earth. Ours is not a utopian faith resting on notions of unlimited human progress.
Instead, what we imagine, what we long to be, what we call forth in the world is a community that knows brokenness and is acquainted with suffering and is, therefore, prepared to take up the cross and follow the way of Jesus in the world. In other words, we sojourn with the broken and the brokenhearted, bearing one another’s burdens, binding one another up, and loving one another as we work to create broader systems of justice and of peace.
We try, in a limited and provisional way, to exhibit the kindom understanding that it is already in our midst but not yet fully accomplished.
In the closing scene of the judgment of the nations, those who have been cast out into eternal punishment are just as surprised at the judgment as the righteous, and they ask the exact same question: “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?”
Notice first that it is not a question of recognizing the lordship of the king here. Those cast into darkness have clearly seen the source of the light and acknowledged it. Yet they have also missed or chosen to ignore that same light shining through the lives of the poor, the stranger, the outcast, and marginalized.
They’ve missed the fundamental shared condition of our common humanity, and their eternal punishment is a continuation of that basic misunderstanding. When we miss the humanity of the marginalized, we are at the very same time missing the divinity of Christ. When we miss the humanity of the marginalized, we miss the divinity of Christ.
When we construct systems that deny that basic humanity we are living in a society deep in the throes of idolatry. When we, as the body of Christ in the world, that is to say, the church – when we fail to name such idolatry for what it is, then we are dangerously close to the false doctrine rejected by the authors of the Theological Declaration of Barmen when they spoke out boldly against the Nazis and the so-called German Christian movement in the early 1930s.
As Barmen puts it, “We reject the false doctrine, as though the church were permitted to abandon the form of its message and order to its own pleasure or to changes in prevailing ideological and political convictions.”
Thus, in this and every moment, as church, we are bound to our commitment to follow the way of the nonviolent Jesus in the world, to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, bind up the broken, love even those our political leaders would demonize and call our enemies, do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.
That is what it means to be a Matthew 25 community. May we aspire to such lives together in this place. Amen.
When the sheep and the goats are separated it won’t be merely a coin flip. Did you feed the hungry? Did you give water to those who thirst? Did you visit those in prison? Did you care for the sick?
Each of us can, and should, do those things to the best of our ability according to our gifts and our callings. That much is simple and unassailable.
But, when the sovereign comes in glory to judge the nations, such questions will also sound like this: did you dismantle systems that create poverty and work to build new ones that assure that everyone has enough to eat? Did you understand that water is life? And did you do something about Flint? Did you create an actually just justice system? Did you do away with cash bail? Did you create a health care system that ended the sad disgrace of medical bankruptcies and that recognized access to health care as a fundamental human right in the 21st century?
Did you welcome the strangers, no matter how many feet they had to stand on and no matter the color of their skin or the continent of their birth? Did you understand that the systems that imprison people in poverty and hunger are not “you” problems; they are all “us” problems? And did you do all you could, where you were, with you had when you came to such understandings?
In other words, did you work for justice? Did you work to create just social orders?
Or did you just walk past on the other side of the street and say, “not my problem.”
In the play, No Exit, one of 20th-century French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre’s characters famously remarks that “hell is other people.” The Jesus of Matthew 25 insists on the opposite: hell is the absence of other people.
That is to say, in this parable of judgment, entering into the kindom of God depends entirely on our relationships, here and now, with other people. Moreover, our citizenship in that kindom prepared for us from the foundations of the earth, rests on our relationships with other people who are hungry, thirsty, poor, immigrants, strangers, prisoners – in other words, the marginalized and powerless.
Any one of us may, of course, find ourselves in any one of those – and countless other – conditions of powerlessness at any point in our lives. Every one of us participates in various structures of power, as well. We are, variously, citizens, siblings, parents, employers, employees, students, teachers, executives, line workers, and so on and on through the various roles we play. Each of the roles embeds us in social structures and power dynamics, and in each of those structures we have some agency with respect to the power dynamics. That is to say, we have some relative amount of power – ranging from a great deal to precious little – within every system even if the only power we have is resistance and non-cooperation. Trust me when I say, no toddler is powerless within a family system.
The question, always, is how and for what purpose will you use the power that you have?
Every hierarchy is violent. Will you use the power at your disposal to level the field?
Every system has its limits. Will you use your power to expand those limits to include more people?
Every community has its boundaries. Will you use your power to interrogate the boundaries and ensure that they protect the vulnerable instead of entrenching the powerful?
To a certain extent, the parable of the judgment of the nations reminds me of Jesus’ remark to Judas: “you will have the poor with you always.” One could read both of them as profoundly pessimistic assessments of the state of the world.
I don’t think that is the case. I understand them in the same way I understand the line in our Brief Statement of Faith – “in a broken and fearful world, the Spirit give us courage to pray without ceasing, to witness among all people to Christ as Lord and Savior, to unmask idolatries in Church and culture, to hear the voices of peoples long silenced, to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.”
Matthew 25, Jesus responding to Judas, and that statement of Reformed conviction each accepts the reality that we live in a broken and fearful world. Jesus does not imagine human beings inhabiting a fully realized kindom of heaven on earth. Ours is not a utopian faith resting on notions of unlimited human progress.
Instead, what we imagine, what we long to be, what we call forth in the world is a community that knows brokenness and is acquainted with suffering and is, therefore, prepared to take up the cross and follow the way of Jesus in the world. In other words, we sojourn with the broken and the brokenhearted, bearing one another’s burdens, binding one another up, and loving one another as we work to create broader systems of justice and of peace.
We try, in a limited and provisional way, to exhibit the kindom understanding that it is already in our midst but not yet fully accomplished.
In the closing scene of the judgment of the nations, those who have been cast out into eternal punishment are just as surprised at the judgment as the righteous, and they ask the exact same question: “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?”
Notice first that it is not a question of recognizing the lordship of the king here. Those cast into darkness have clearly seen the source of the light and acknowledged it. Yet they have also missed or chosen to ignore that same light shining through the lives of the poor, the stranger, the outcast, and marginalized.
They’ve missed the fundamental shared condition of our common humanity, and their eternal punishment is a continuation of that basic misunderstanding. When we miss the humanity of the marginalized, we are at the very same time missing the divinity of Christ. When we miss the humanity of the marginalized, we miss the divinity of Christ.
When we construct systems that deny that basic humanity we are living in a society deep in the throes of idolatry. When we, as the body of Christ in the world, that is to say, the church – when we fail to name such idolatry for what it is, then we are dangerously close to the false doctrine rejected by the authors of the Theological Declaration of Barmen when they spoke out boldly against the Nazis and the so-called German Christian movement in the early 1930s.
As Barmen puts it, “We reject the false doctrine, as though the church were permitted to abandon the form of its message and order to its own pleasure or to changes in prevailing ideological and political convictions.”
Thus, in this and every moment, as church, we are bound to our commitment to follow the way of the nonviolent Jesus in the world, to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, bind up the broken, love even those our political leaders would demonize and call our enemies, do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.
That is what it means to be a Matthew 25 community. May we aspire to such lives together in this place. Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
6:39 AM
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