This is something you miss if you go from zero to Christmas, as the world normally does, but if you have the time and the occasion to think about it, you think about how dire the situation actually is. I'll explain.
For most of us, we have the idea that Jesus came to earth, as a little baby, to take away the sins of the whole world. That much is sure. And when we think about sins, we do so pretty much by the list that St. Paul gives us, telling us that the works of the flesh are evident: Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. Things like this, and the decalogue, have a way of working on us, in which we get the impression, the very reasonable impression, that the scriptures give us a near constant idea only of what we ought not to do. It's easy to think that, since Jesus died for the sins of the whole world, that we ought perhaps to avoid these sins, to steer clear of them and forsake them. No problem there. And this list of things almost always comes down on the side of working out what you did. That will be the basis of judgment, right? If you were bad, if you committed sins, if your sins were greivous and stank to high heaven, then you'll be damned to hell for all eternity. So the thinking goes, at any rate.
But here's the snag with our thinking - That we don't exist in a vacuum. We aren't individuals who exist and function in nothingness. In other words, it isn't as though our only choices are evil or neutral.
This is going to be hard for good Lutherans to hear, because we have been, for a long time, dissuaded from talking about works, believing that discussion of works would lead to us assuming that
This is the fatal flaw with law preaching, I suppose, is that it can, in theory, terrify the flesh, but it does little beyond paralyze you as a human being, even as a Christian, into complete inactivity. And if we were Lutheran Christians, we would expect the image (the only image) of the last judgment that Christ paints to be specific in its nature. We would anticipate that it would be someting that would talk only about our faith, right? As Jesus separates the sheep from the goats, as he divides the saved from the damned, he doesn't mention faith. I know, I know, we're delving into this territory
Now, this is something that we accuse other church bodies of doing. We tell the Jehovah's Witnesses that they ought not do that, that they mustn't change scripture to fit their conclusions. They can't alter the words of the Bible to fit what they want it to say, and they need to do what we as Lutherans do, which is to let the scriptures say what they plainly say.
Now you look at this passage, and tell me it has nothing to do with works. I dare you. I double dare you to look at this, and claim that it has nothing to do with works at all. Are you sure? And how much are you willing to wager on it? How much are you willing to gamble on this topic? Are you willing to risk eternity on this?
The big surprise lurking for us when we look clearly in this passage from Matthew 25 is that Jesus makes no bones about what is happening in his division of the sheep from the goats. He tells the sheep that they were good to him. When he was hungry, they gave Him food. When he was sick, they took care of Him. When he was in prison, they visited Him. These things, when they were done to the least of all people, were done to Christ himself.
In the modern church, in the modern Lutheran church, these things are downplayed. They are downplayed to the point of not being discussed at all. We don't want to talk about works, we don't want to talk about what you should do. We're much better at talking about what you ought not do.
But Christ, in his painting of the picture of the last judgment, he makes it fairly clear that you have not been placed here on this earth for inactivity, for selfishness, or for squandering of his gifts. This is what the parable of the prodigal son is all about. If you remember it, the parable of the prodigal son is about using up what God has given unto you. It's about taking the many and various gifts that God has supplied you with, and wasting them. Running them into the ground. The prodigal son took all his interitance, and blew it on wine, women and song. He used it all up until it was gone, then he had to grovel back. It's a disastrous story for us, because, unlike the majority of scripture, it's written for us.
Look at who this passage is spoken to - It is spoken directly to his disciples. Privately. It isn't delivered on a mountain, it isn't delivered to the crowds, it isn't spoken from the cross. It is spoken to his disciples in private. And that makes sense.
It makes sense because passages like this are written to and for Christians. It's spoken to the disciples, men who were of the inner circle, men who had been following Jesus for the duration, but more than that, men who had become comfortable, complacent, as regarded their position. People who were, as we are in the church, comfy with the idea that Jesus has accomplished our salvation for us.
Ah yes. But he has not done everything for us. He has placed us within a unique position that we don't think much about for much of the time. He has placed us in a space in which we have the opportunity to work in his service every minute of every day. And the sad thing is how often we waste that chance.
Look around you. All around you are the the people who make up this edict from Jesus. The schlubs you pass at Wal-Mart, the beggars you find on the street, the scammers online, the telemarketers calling you during supper, your bigoted uncle Ted, the loudmouth in traffic, the teenagers who live down the street, all of them. They're all an opportunity to serve Christ. And what do we do with them? We ignore them, we push them aside, we move past them always, and move towards something else.
When Jesus talks about the final judgment, his question to us is what did you do? It isn't 'where did you go,' or 'what did you think?' as we would expect. Instead, it ends up being 'what did you do?' And that's a harder question for us, as it exposes us, nakedly, as being bad stewards. And none of us like that discussion. When Jesus talks about the final judgment, he does so by saying to us that we have not done what we ought to have done. This is, and always should be, unsettling to us. We ought to be bothered by it. We ought to be perturbed. We, in the church, rarely have cause to be unsettled. If I were to read through that list of sins earlier, then you'd likely hear me read them, and shrug your shoulders, and assume that it had nothing to do with you. And odds are you'd be right, up to a point.
But if you were to hear the words of Christ from Matthew 25, if you were to hear Jesus speak to you directly, calling you out for your sloth, for you laziness, for your lax attitude about the poorest and most vulnerable of all people. Do you feel uneasy? You ought to. In amost every way, when we look into the scriptures, we end up as
It's at this point that I end up thinking about summit fever. Summit fever is the desire of climbers to reach the top of the mountain no matter what. You must know by now that 1 in 6 people who sets out to climb Mount Everest will die on the mountain. They will be swept away in avalanches, suffer from high altitude edema, fall from great height, or simply freeze to death in the heights of the world. Now you would expect people to die in an area that dangerous, but what you might not expect is how frequently people will walk right past disasters. People will step over the dying to get David Sharp, who froze to death most of the way up the mountain, in green boots' cave, who was passed over by 40 people on their way both up and down the mountain. They walked right by him, almost stepping over him, and left him to die up there on the mountain. And die he did. David Sharp did not survive to walk down that mountain.
Now, as shocked as you may be at that story, think of all the times you have walked right by someone who needed your hlep, someone who was in a bad state, someone who wanted money, or food, or heck, even your time, and you brushed them off. You stared at the ground and kept walking, you breezed right on by, you switched your radio off, or changed the channel on the tv, you ignored the whole thing, and kept on going. You weren't even climbing Everest, you were just trying to grab some groceries, or go shopping for Christmas presents, or whatever. And even in that situation, you couldn't be bothered to help. In your life, you have your own summit fever. You have your own goals, you have your own desires, your own things you want to do, and you're fine stepping over people, stepping past them, leaving them to die, as long as you get what you watned to get. As long as you crest what you want to do, no matter how insignificant, then you're happy to step over whoever you need to. You don't mind stomping all over the workers in the textile factories who work for basically nothing to provide us with cheap clothes, or the workers in electronics factories who live and die so that our ipads are cheaper. We are happy to pass by those who get gobbled up by the machinery of this modern world, those who don't know how to cook, who don't have jobs, who don't have clean clothes or kitchens, any of that. And we pass right by them on our way to our own personal summits.
As the church year draws to a close, as we enter into the last few days before Advent, we are reminded of just how much we have not done. We are reminded of how far we have to go, how much we habitually leave undone. As Christians, at this time of the year, we are reminded of how much we have had placed before us, and how much of it we have ignored. And this is why we need Christmas.
We need Christmas because of the promise of that baby in Bethlehem. We need Christmas because of our lack of activity, for our sloth, for our dereliction of duty. We need Christmas because of what we have not done, for all the times we have hardened our hearts like Pharaoh, for all the times we have passed by the needy like the Pharisees in the parable of the Good Samaritan, for all the times we have squandered our inheritance like the prodigal son, or buried our talents in the field. We need Christmas as Christians not just for what we have done, but perhaps even more, because of what we have not done. We knew what we should do, and we refused to do it.
The baby in the manger, the promised savior, the child being born held all that promise. To save us from our sins, sins of omission, sins of commission. If you read through Matthew 25 and it makes you uneasy, if you read through it and it bothers you, if it frightens and upsets you, if you read through Matthew 25 and you want to change the words in there to make it say something different, you need to stop. Because for maybe the first time in your Christian life, you know what you have to repent of. You know why you need Christ. It could be that you've been going to church, listening to sermons for decades, heard the pastors denouncing this sin or that sin, and you thought to yourself, as the rich young ruler did, how great it was that you didn't have these problems. Well now you know what problems you have. And now you know how much you need the mercy and merits of Christ. If someone was toe go down the list of people you have mistreated, have ignored, have passed by, you could not stand. So if you cannot stand, you must kneel. And seek forgiveness. When the final judgment comes, you need to understand and to remember that none of us can stand on our own. We all depend on the merits of Christ, and not our own. What do you need forgiveness from? Your sloth and apathy. How do you get it? Through Christ's death for you.
Amen. Come Lord Jesus.
No comments:
Post a Comment