In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Justly, my brothers and sisters, this day is known as Last Judgment Sunday. All of the hymnography has to do with the final judgment. Starting last night at vespers, we were hearing about the river of fire, through much of matins this morning. And the odes at matins this morning are identical to the ones we’re going to be having very shortly, same odes we use—exactly the same odes we use for Great Canon: same melody. Same text, same melodies.

Let me talk about the judgment today, the judgment that’s in the future. I want to take an expression, first of all—this is point one—an expression that’s commonly used, and subject it to a little bit of analysis. That expression is “the judgment of history.” I just want to look at that grammatically. “The judgment of history”: what is the force of that expression, “of history”? Because today’s reading certainly is about the judgment of history, but not the way that is normally used, the way that expression is commonly used in common, particularly in political parlance, where that expression, “the judgment of history,” has chiefly been seized by charlatans and tyrants.

If I say this morning that we’re talking about the judgment of history, it seems surprising, but let us reflect that the expression, “the judgment of history,” faces the same ambiguity as any other abstract genitive. All abstract genitives use the analogy of possession, but the analogy of possession covers a very wide range and variety of references. When, for instance, we speak of “hen’s eggs,” most of us do not presume that the hen actually owns the eggs. Consequently, nobody feels guilty at taking the eggs away from the nest, even if the hen complains at the intrusion. We recognize the expression “hen’s eggs” is simply a genitive of source. Again, when we come to a corner in the bookstore marked “children’s books,” we do not presume that the children actually own the books. We only mean that the books were written for children. In the expression, “children’s books,” we recognize a genitive of purpose. There are also what we call appositive genitives, in which the two terms indicate the same reality. Thus we speak of “the city of Chicago,” “the state of Illinois,” or, for the last time today, “a breakfast of ham and eggs.” [Laughter] There are purely descriptive genitives, such as “a roomful of toys.”

Some genitives or some genitive expressions do not seem to fit any grammatical category. For example, I think understand what someone means when he calls me a “son of a gun,” though I would be hard-pressed to give the thing a suitable grammatical analysis. What, then, do we mean when we speak of “the judgment of history”? Most politicians and commentators, when they invoke the judgment of history, clearly intend to invest an authority in the opinions held by future generations. Otherwise it makes no sense, does it? They invest an authority in what people in the future are going to say, and submit themselves to that authority.

Now, I don’t know why I should do that. I don’t know why I should submit anything I do to the authority of the fools who are going to be born in the next century. [Laughter] You see, this investment makes no sense at all unless we presume a progressive theory of history, that is to say, unless we’ve already bought the French Revolution package. If you bought that, then it makes sense. That is to say, it is an irrational appeal to the judgment of people in the future. We can’t do this except on the premise that the people in the future will be wiser than the people are now. And now, since the level of literacy in this country is about half what it was when I was a boy, I’m not sure that that’s a useful investment. I submit, in fact, that this premise is at best very shaky. Is it really obvious that history is on a progressive march? Are we all convinced that the population in general is getting wiser? And if it’s not, why should we invest in the judgment of those that come next?

But does this supposition have any merit at all? I will come to point two. The merit of this supposition, I believe, is simply this: It assumes that there will be a judgment in the future. And that idea does not come from the French Revolution; that idea comes from the Bible. This assumption is absolutely correct. There will be a judgment in the future. We in the West have lived with this assumption for most of 3,000 years. It is a thesis we can trace back to the Prophet Zephaniah in the seventh century before Christ. It was Zephaniah who spoke of the Day of the Lord, by which he meant the day that the Lord will have his say.

This morning at matins we kept hearing this expression, “day of wrath, day of wrath.” There’s a great poem that has that title: Dies Irae, “Day of Wrath.” It’s been set to scores of— Well, scores of scores. Lots of great musical variations of this. I’m not sure any of them beat the Gregorian chant version of the Liber Usualis, but Mozart and others made a noble effort. This expression, “day of wrath,” dies irae, comes from Zephaniah. According to Zephaniah this would be a day of universal judgment. This notion of a universal judgment comes from the Jews; it comes from the Hebrew people, the day of judgment. And we accept that. We not only accept that, we go one further. We don’t just accept this Jewish idea; we believe a Jew will implement it!

Think about this, beloved. We assert that every human being who has ever lived, from the dawn of time, from the dawn of the human race, everywhere, in every circumstance, from caveman to astronaut—every human being in the whole world, in all of history is going to be judged by one Jew! To put it in those terms, that’s a very sobering thought. It’s no wonder that Voltaire hated us. No wonder that Nietzsche hated us. We assert that all of history is going to be judged by one Jew.

According to this Hebrew Prophet Zephaniah, God’s judgment will visit all nations, not just local folks like the Philistines and the Moabites, but also the Ethiopians at the southwestern edge of the Fertile Crescent and the Assyrians at the other. The Lord, declared Zephaniah, will cut off all nations. And this is what Jesus describes in today’s lesson in the Gospel. “When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the holy angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory, and all the nations will be gathered before him.” Notice it is not just individuals, but nations. In other words, this has a political context: nations are going to be judged, not just individuals. Today’s gospel reading about the judgment of history means that judgment to which history itself will be subjected. The judgment of the future is not going to be a judgment rendered by the future. It will be a judgment on the future, and on the past and on the present.

And third, I guess in order to have some sense of comfort in the Gospel, according to this parable, a specific human being will be the future Judge. The judgment all of us face is not just the judgment of God. In fact, God is not going to judge us. Jesus says it explicitly: “The Father judges no man.” God is not going to judge us. The judgment to come will be rendered by One identified as the Son of Man. Jesus declares this truth also in the gospel of John: “The Father judges no one. He has given all judgment to the Son.”

It is imperative to observe that the last activity ascribed to Christ in the Nicene Creed is: “He will come again in glory to judge.” Ironically, even the terms of the future judgment are human terms. We will all be judged by our treatment of other human beings. Especially to be noted in this parable is Jesus’ association with all mankind, especially the poor, the destitute, the neglected. To serve the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the sick, the imprisoned is to serve Jesus, who identifies himself with all of them. And this is the basis for all Christian service to suffering humanity. This is not a negligible aspect of the Gospel, but contains the very subject matter of the final judgment.

The dominant idea of this parable, in fact, is the plain and declared fact of the judgment. Christ really does judge. He really does discriminate. It’s astounding to me that discrimination is regarded as a vice, that discrimination is— we’re not allowed to do it. It’s a bad word! Why in the world is that a bad word? I discriminate between things I want on my table and things that I don’t. We make discriminations all the time. Why is that a bad word? Why have we taken that word and applied it to the worst of vices? But, see, God does discriminate, and therefore Jesus discriminates. He will not confuse a just man with an unjust man. He discerns the difference, and that difference means a great deal to him. He does not take the difference lightly. He assigns eternal destinies to all human beings on the basis of that difference.

Matthew’s story of the sheep and goats is of wholecloth with the story of the wheat and chaff, of the wise and foolish maidens, of the good and worthless fish caught in the same net. How do we know where we stand with respect to that judgment? How do we know? Lots of Christians worry about that. How do we know? John Calvin believed that it’s revealed of the conscience by the Holy Spirit. Most Christians don’t believe that at all. I certainly don’t believe it, in other words, that my salvation is an article of faith. In a sense, we really cannot know. Moreover, it is not important that we know. If we knew, we might become complacent. God will not have a Christian feel so secure that he neglects his duties in this world.

In the present parable, the just are not preoccupied with themselves, are they? They are preoccupied with the needs of those around them. Their lives are spent addressing those needs. They have neither the leisure nor the inclination to think about themselves, even about their eternal security. They are too busy doing God’s will with respect to their fellow men. They’re not trying to achieve some inner psychological conviction or state. In fact, it seems to me that that is probably the major heresy of the last 500 years, this need to keep examining one’s spiritual state, to be preoccupied with one’s spiritual state. They call it “spirituality.” I don’t think that has anything to do with the piety of the first millennium and a half of Christian history.

Let me in passing—because this is not in my notes— Let me recommend a little novel to you. The novel was written anonymously. The author was given as C.S.M.—or S.M.C. It’s actually S.M.C. Those initials stand for Sister Mary Catherine, who wrote the novel—goodness—70 or more years ago. It’s called Brother Petroc’s Return. When I was in high school, we put that story on as a play. It has a dramatic form of it. It’s a novel, but it’s been made into a play: Brother Petroc’s Return, and we put that on in high school. It made an enormous difference to me when I was there. It’s the story about a young monk who seems to die, but he actually goes into suspended animation, and they discover him in a vault in a monastery in Cornwall later on in the 20th century, and he comes out of it, he looks around at the Church of today—of course, that’s not the Church of today; it’s the Church of 1920. He could hardly believe his eyes. “Is this the same Church?” In fact, the English language had changed so much that he could only communicate with the other monks in Latin. [Laughter] Nowadays, he wouldn’t even be able to do that. Anyway, I recommend that little novel, Brother Petroc’s Return, and you can get it on Kindle, by the way.

Thus the faithful of the final judgment arrive, with no sense of eternal destiny, with no sense of eternal security. They arrive there; they’re going to hear their sentence. They arrive there unaware that they’ve ever served Christ at all. All along, they simply imagined that they were taking care of the poor, and they were taking care of the poor because the poor needed to be taken care of. That was the reason! In other words, it was a human judgment. At the judgment, the righteous are surprised to learn they have been serving Christ.

This morning, sweet people, we approach the threshold of the Great Lent. Perhaps for some of us this will be our final Lent in this world. Today this may be the last time some of us hear the story of the last judgment. For all of us, however, today’s story stands as a clear and serious summons, a summons of grace and redemption. Amen.