The Sceptre of Equity

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. God is one. Amen.

This Sunday we remember both Meatfare Sunday and Last Judgment Sunday. Meatfare Sunday is the last day before Pascha for eating meat, but we can still eat dairy products until the start of Great Lent. This year Great Lent begins on Monday, March the fifteenth; and Pascha is on Sunday, May the second. Last Judgment Sunday is not concerned with specific dates but with how we live throughout the year and the consequences. Both Meatfare Sunday and Last Judgment Sunday set us a challenge: How might we change what we eat and how we live?

The Gospel reading from the Gospel of St Matthew, chapter 25, verses 31 to 46, focuses on the meaning of God’s judgment. The key question is: Who will be judged and blessed by God and why? Verse 32 states clearly that it is “all the nations” that will be judged. As verse 32 states, and I quote: “All the nations “will be gathered [before Christ], and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the kid goats,” wrote St Matthew. This is a mixed herd of sheep and goats. The sheep are older, more mature, than the kid goats, so the Last Judgment is about whether the nations have grown up, whether each culture in each century has reached maturity—has fulfilled God’s will for that particular nation, that particular culture. However, the basis for the judgment of nations is what individuals within each nation have done. Who has given food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, visited the sick and welcomed the stranger? In other words, who has lived with prayer and empathy for those in need of help?

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines empathy as “the power of mentally identifying oneself with (and so fully comprehending) a person or object of contemplation. Pity is feeling sorry for someone; empathy is feeling sorry with someone.” Now, that’s a very human definition about how human beings relate to each other. However, as Jesus Christ states in the Gospel reading today from St Matthew, Christ Himself is present in each of these human beings in need; and each of us can learn to see Christ in those human beings.

Proverbs chapter 22, verse 2 reads, and I quote: “The rich and poor meet together; the Lord is maker of them all.” St Augustine preached of this verse: “This one was born, that one was born, their lives were crossed…. And who made them? The Lord. The rich man, to help the poor; the poor man, to test the rich,” concluded St Augustine. So, judgment is very much linked to justice and inclusion for all people.

In today’s Gospel, both those who chose to help others and those who ignored others were surprised that whether or not they cared for others was an important part of God’s judgment on their lives. Bishop Maxim Vasiljevic of the Western American Diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church stresses how God first loves us, before we learned to love Him. Bishop Maxim writes in History, Truth, Holiness; and I quote: “The biblical approach [to holiness] points to God as Holy because he freely reveals Himself as a loving Being and invites us to encounter Him, to experience a relationship with him. As the First Letter of St John, chapter 4, verse 19 states, ‘We love Him because He first loved us.’ [God’s] appearance to Elijah on the mountain [in First Kings, chapter 20, verse 12] was not manifested in lightning and thunder (which indeed would have caused fascination and trembling) but in the ‘tiny whispering sound,’ wrote Bishop Maxim [p. 6].

In Confessions, chapter 4, verse 9, St Augustine frames this challenge of how we respond to God’s love for us as a choice between fear and hope; and I quote St Augustine early in his life as a Christian: “I alternatively quaked with fear and warmed with hope, and with rejoicing in Your mercy, O Father,” wrote St Augustine. Now, the Last Judgment is a good reason to fear God, because we are all sinners. However, we can prepare for that judgment now; and then we have no reason to fear. Our preparation involves learning to love God and others, as well as understanding how the Lord works with us now to prepare us for the Last Judgment later. Furthermore, it is helpful to understand that there are two kinds of fear. As the 5th century monk Cassidorous reflects, and I quote: “Fear of people breeds lack of confidence, but fear of God yields the support of hope,” concluded Cassidorous. 

God the Father is King and rules over all of us. As the voice of God tells St John in the Book of Revelation in chapters 2, 12 and 19, He “will rule over [all mankind] with a sceptre [or rod of iron].”  That sceptre or staff is a sign of God’s sovereignty—of his supreme power over all of life on this planet and in the cosmos and in heaven. This is the sceptre in Psalm 44/45, verse 6, and I quote: “Your divine throne endures for ever and ever. Your royal sceptre is a sceptre of equity”—that is, a staff of justice and fairness. St Augustine explains how both Jews and Christians should relate to this sceptre, both today and throughout all ages. He writes; and I quote: “It is a sceptre of righteous rule because it guides us aright. You must straighten yourself to fit his will, not attempt to bend his [will] to suit you. You cannot [bend it] anyway. Your effort is futile, because his will is always perfectly straight. Do you want to be united with him? Then allow yourself to be corrected. Then it will be his sceptre that rules you [to correct or bless you], his sceptre of righteous rules…. Draw near to this sceptre and let Christ be your king, allow this sceptre to rule you, because otherwise it may break you… Some it rules, others it breaks; it rules the spiritual, but breaks the carnal. Come near to this sceptre then,” concluded St Augustine.

There is the key question: Do each of us truly and totally “want to be united” with God? Do we want Christ to be our King? If so, then we have to allow “this sceptre to rule [over us], because otherwise it may break [us].” The choice of whether God’s power and sovereignty will guide us or break us is a personal choice we each make. God draws us into this choice gently, first through correction and only later through punishment if we do not accept His correction.

The Psalms as interpreted by the Church Fathers can guide our choice. Of Psalm 57/58 on justice John Chrysostom preached; and I quote: “[God] does not allow the good to become bad… He threatens [before] he punishes…This then is a mark of God’s great care… Because [the Ninevites] repented, they caused the threat to stop at words only. Do you wish [God’s warning] to be a threat only? You have the disposal of that matter. Become a better person, and it stops only at the threat. But if … you despise the threat, you will come to the experience of it. Those who lived before the flood, if they had feared the threat, would not have experienced the execution of it. We, if we fear the threat, shall not expose ourselves to experience the reality. May the merciful God grant that we henceforth, having been brought to sound mind, may obtain those unspeakable blessings,” concluded St John Chrysostom.

Of Psalm 31/32 on confession and forgiveness Augustine writes; and I quote: “The first stage of understanding is to recognize that you are a sinner. The second stage of understanding is that when, having received the gift of faith you begin to do good by choosing to love you attribute this not to your own powers but to the grace of God,” concluded St Augustine. This is not a race to see which one of us can come closest to God. As St Augustine writes of Psalm 24/25; and I quote: “[God] will teach his ways not to those who want to run on ahead, as if they could rule themselves better than he can, but to those who do not strut about with their heads in the air or dig in their heels, when his easy yoke and light burden are set on them,” concluded St Augustine.

I end this sermon with a warning about God’s timing on judgment, preached by St Jerome from the prayer for healing in Psalm 6. St Jerome preached; and I quote: “While you are still in this world, I beg of you to repent. Confess and give thanks to the Lord, for in this world only is he merciful. Here he is able to be compassionate to the repentant, but because there [after death] he is judge, he is not merciful. Here, he is compassionate kindness; there, he is judge. Here, he reaches out his hand to the falling; there, he presides as judge,” concluded St Jerome.

And so, we ascribe as is justly due all might, majesty, dominion, power and praise to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, always now and ever and unto the ages of ages.          Father Emmanuel