Lectionary 32.09                                                          Christ Church , York

Standing in the parlor at church that day was not unlike the many other occasions when I had attended a family upon the death of one they had loved. Moving from person to person, group to group, I greeted each with words of comfort, consolation and hope. I was a pastor going about my normal pastoral work, preparing to begin the funeral rite for yet another saint of the church. Amid the whispers, the tears, the hugs and even the laughter at memories shared, a pastor also hears many other things spoken in death that perhaps would never be spoken in life – truths finally told about the brokenness of the relationship between father and son; the private rage of a man whom others only knew from his public image as a jovial individual; the pain caused by things said long ago which were never taken back nor repented. And mixed in with all of these are the beliefs that people have about death and what happens to us at the moment of death so that I am quite used to hearing that “Grandma is with Jesus” or “soon we will all be together again.” But on this day it was the words of a family member which most caught me by surprise. To my spoken words of consolation and the promised hope of resurrection, the wife of the deceased responded almost as a matter of fact that her husband was even now standing before the throne of God being judged and that she did not expect the outcome to be good for him. Somewhat taken aback and not wishing to enter into a full theological debate in the middle of the receiving line, I let the matter drop.

But even as I started the funeral service, I was haunted by those words and that image. All the promised words of the service, all the hope embodied in the actions of the liturgy - the placing of the pall and the sprinkling with water in remembrance of baptism to the commendation at the end, all these seemed to lie in the shadow of the words spoken by this man’s wife and the anger with which she had spoken them. But there were also images raised up for me in those words for they took me back to my childhood, to the words of the sisters and the priests who helped raise and train me, to the things that I had been taught about that book into which each and every deed, and I mean every little deed was recorded so that it could be used against me when I appeared before the throne of God at the hour of my death. It was a fearsome God who would judge me on that day. It was judging God who would condemn me when my turn came. I lived in fear of that God, always believing that the moment of judgment would be terrible and that I simply did not stand a chance of being saved.

It was those words that I heard that day. It was those beliefs that came back to haunt me. For why would God not judge and condemn us? That saint of the church who lay in his coffin in front of the communion rail may have seemed like a good man on the surface. He may have been a regular in his attendance on Sunday mornings. He may have given some of his time, talents and possessions to the church. He may have helped his neighbor in need on occasion. But he was not perfect; perhaps even far from perfect as the words of his wife seemed to intimate. He was not a saint, sinless in every regard. Rather it seems that he was a common and ordinary sinner, one who stood in danger therefore of God’s judgment at the hour of his death. And it is no different for any of us. “For we all sin and fall short of the glory of God” as St. Paul reminds us none too gently. There is not one of us who can claim that sinless state, no one of us who does not deserve the judgment of God.  

Yet we believe and confess that when Christ shall come again there will be a time of judgment. Our creeds tell us clearly that “He shall come again to judge the living and the dead.” And judgment, the Day of Judgment, has an ominous tone to it for surely it implies that there will be some punishment for I cannot imagine in my wildest dreams that Jesus is intending to come back just to give me a pat on the back or a nod of the head for a job well done. Judgment, as God’s people of old knew only too well, was found in the form of God’s wrath, His pouring down of fire and brimstone, His condemnation of the wicked for treading in the ways of other gods and failing to worship the One, True God. When Jesus comes again therefore we can expect good, old fashioned judgment, at which that famous book, held over my head to great effect by the nuns of my youth, would be read and I would be found wanting in some way or another, guilty to some degree or another, sin filled in more ways than I could count.

And there is no putting off that Day of Judgment for, again as the nuns were fond of telling me, Jesus is coming again whether we are ready or not. That is the lesson we read in our Gospel over and over as Jesus speaks of the bridegroom coming unexpectedly in the middle of the night; as we are told to be on guard for we know not the day or the hour; as the man would have guarded his house if he had known at what hour the thief was coming. But this Day of Judgment rests upon this understanding of the coming again of Jesus again. And this coming again lies at the heart of our faith. Jesus came once, breaking into this world in the form of a child, making the Incarnation that focal point wherein God pours out His love for the world. But having ascended through the heavens, as the author of Hebrews has previously told us, having been seated at the right hand of the Father, having been made High Priest in that eternal Holy Place, so Jesus will return, not as a child but rather “seated on the clouds of heaven, in power and great glory.” And His return will usher in judgment, and judgment will usher in punishment and punishment could usher in all sorts of things I am not sure that I want to think about although I suspect that the wife of that deceased member may already have worked out in her own mind the punishment for those un-named sins of her husband.

Living in this moment all would seem to be despair, without hope. Yet all is not lost; all is not hopeless; all is not despair. For now the author of Hebrews steps in to remind us that while death is indeed our lot in life, for all that is mortal will pass from the face of this earth, and while death will bring in good time judgment, such judgment is not something to be feared, not something to stand in dread of, not something that should strike fear into our hearts. For Christ has come and in coming He offered Himself on the cross for us, the perfect High Priest making the perfect sacrifice through the shedding of His own blood for our salvation. And this sacrifice, unlike those done in earlier days by the high priests of old, this sacrifice was done at the end of the age once for all. But now comes the really good news for “Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.” Christ is coming and there will be judgment. But the One who has died did not die so that we might also die but so that we might live and have new life in Him. The One who has come will come again not so that we will have to face Him for our sins and be found wanting but rather so that we can rejoice for in Him both sin and death have already been defeated and so no longer have a hold over us. For the judgment which we face will be at the mercy seat of God. Standing there before the throne of judgment, standing in danger of condemnation, facing the punishment which is our just reward, it is the mercy of God which steps forward in the person of Christ Jesus Our Lord, who comes to claim as His own all those who have eagerly waited for His return. That poor wife, stricken with all the pain, grief and perhaps guilt she carried, may have believed that her husband was facing punishment and condemnation. Her husband, standing there before that throne, already knew a different truth. Perhaps in time she might also come to know this same Jesus who will come to save all those, including her, who are eagerly waiting for him. Amen