“In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.”These famous words from John of the Cross, a Spanish mystic in the 16th century, come resonate in me as I read the “Parable of the final judgment“, the last parable in Matthew’s Gospel, the parable the lectionary leaves us with as we wrap up today our liturgical year and celebrate the feast of the Reign of Christ. If you remember, we have noticed that there are several parables of judgment in Matthew, at least four in chapters 24 and 25: The wicked servant, The ten bridesmaids, The talents and this one today. As we have observed before, each one of these parables is not a description per se of the judgment, rather each story presents us with an image of what the judgment could be compared to. Yet, although all four speak about judgment, this parable we have today is the only one that is called “The parable of the great judgment”. It is if you will the parable of all parables, or maybe it’s about the judgment of all judgments. This is the last piece of formal teaching Jesus ever gives on earth before he is arrested and put to death. This parable is, at least in Matthew’s understanding, Jesus’s masterpiece, the crown of all his discourses and sermons, the summary of all that Jesus has to say about God’s kingdom and how we find access to it, and St John of the Cross captured the point very well:“We will be judged on love alone”indeed.
Indeed, it has amazed many readers of the Gospel to notice that after all is said and done, in Matthew’s Gospel and in Jesus’s ministry, “in the evening of life we will be judged on love alone“. If you look closely, you will see that in the parable Jesus portrays himself as the Son of Man coming in glory to judge the nations and he says he will divide the people so he can shepherd his sheep into his kingdom, but nothing, nothing at all, is said about the beliefs and the religious practices of the elected. Jesus does not ask them: Have you said your prayers? Have you confessed my name? Have you obeyed the religious law? Jesus judges people based on love alone, based on what is in their hearts and based on how they have treated the least, the lost and the last. It is interesting because we have been schooled by many churches to believe that the only way to enter the Kingdom of God is on faith alone, believing in Jesus, and yet here we see that, if anything, confessing his name almost makes the matter worse if we have failed to understand that what is required of us is to love. Again, Jesus does not ask Have you said your prayers? Have you confessed my name? Have you obeyed the religious law? but Have you taken care of those in need?
And so, this should be very reassuring, especially when we think of those who never come to know Christ in this life: people from other religious backgrounds, non believers, and even the “not so good Christians” those who don’t come to church often. To be honest, it should also sound reassuring for many of us “Good Christians” who, under the mantle of our regular church attendance, are also full of doubts and very aware of our inadequacies and may even be crippled with anxiety about our ability to believe in God and live a pious life. Well, good news, it does not matter, because in the end Jesus will only ask us if we have loved.
Right. Except that, if we think about it, it may not be that reassuring. At least to me, I feel that it might be much easier for me if I were to be judged on church attendance only, and you may feel that way for yourself too. Because the thing is, obviously the love Jesus and John of the Cross are talking about is not the mere affection we naturally have for our close ones, or the pity we may feel also quite naturally for those in pain. The love Jesus is talking about is a demanding love, a love in action “with feet and hands” to paraphrase Teresa of Avila. It’s about serving those in need: the hungry and the naked, the addicted wandering on the street, the disabled, the chronically ill, the robber or even the murderer on death row. All the people we probably wouldn’t have chosen to love and actually those we often don’t even want to touch or to see or even think of.
And so you see a strange reversal happens: We thought it was comforting to be judged on love, but if we think about it it is actually quite a difficult thing Jesus is actually asking us to do. Impossible, maybe. Throughout my ministry, I have consistently had parishioners asking me how it is that they could take care of all the people in need, and give money to all those who ask of them. My answer is always that we just can’t. I don’t know how it is for you but right now my mailbox is blowing up with requests from all kinds of charities: Salvation Army, St Jude Hospital, Episcopal Relief and Development, Doctors without border, Amnesty International…all reminding me to make my Christmas contribution. How do I help all those in need? The obvious response is that I can’t.
The thing is I don’t think this is what Jesus is asking us to do. If you remember from last week, I told you we quite naturally read the Gospel through the lens of today’s world and we don’t understand the actual world Jesus lived in. In Jesus’s world, people weren’t aware of all the tragedies going on in the world with notifications on their phone each time there is an earthquake or a terrorist attack, people lived on a much smaller scale, they were only aware of the needs of those in their families and in their communities, people they could see with their eyes and meet on their streets or, for that matter, in the local jail. People who indeed were their neighbors. Applied to the world we live in it certainly does not mean we shouldn’t care for Ukraine or Africa, of course we should, but it is also crazy to think Jesus is asking us to do it all. We will need to pick who we think we can help best. Secondly, we also need to notice that Jesus does not ask us to heal the sick, or to free the prisoner, or to stop famines and wars, what he asks us is to have a gesture of love and service, not to solve the problem. And then, we can also notice that Jesus is addressing the nations, so he is asking people to work together. We don’t even have to do it on our own. The parable is not a parable about saving the world, asking us the impossible, rather it is an illustration of Jesus’s great teaching, what it actually means to love our neighbor, and even deeper, the parable shows us what it means to obey God and to worship God. We worship God when we honor the bodies of our brothers and sisters, hungry bodies, sick bodies, tortured bodies, dying bodies. Jesus came to us in the flesh and we can find him in the flesh of all those who suffer.
And so, I think this is were the true difficulty is. The real difficulty I think is that we naturally want to worship a God of power when in fact God most often comes to us in this life in flesh and blood and in vulnerability. I know it may not be our natural reaction to agree that we worship a God of power, it certainly isn’t mine. I honestly don’t relate to the psalmist when he turns to a God who brings destruction on his enemies and slays the wicked. But if I look closer, I am not sure it means I look for God in vulnerability either. I want a God who fixes me or who fixes things for me, or fixes the people I care for, I want a God who makes me feel better and even happy. I am not sure I find delight in a God who wants me to show up at the shelter in the midst of a busy day and asks me to serve food to a homeless person who snaps at me. I don’t find delight in a God who makes me go to the store for at least the fifth time of the week because there are hungry stomachs at home. I don’t find delight in a God who may show up in a sick dog waking me up in the middle of the night…If that sounds familiar to you, you may very well know that love does not always feel good or look pretty. But it’s okay because Jesus is not judging us based on our feelings.Jesus isn’t asking his followers if they have found delight or fulfillment, Jesus is only asking them if they have taken care of what and who was right in front of them and it does not matter if it makes them or anyone else happy or satisfied, because in the end they do it for his sake, and for his sake only. Because this how he wants us to find him, to love him and to worship him, no matter whether we know his name or if we have no idea what we are doing: We’re here to love and to learn how to love because the kingdom of the king is a kingdom of love, and we don‘t have a king who enjoys punishing anyone but if we are unable to love, then how will we ever enter the kingdom? If our hearts are unable to love, there will be no kingdom of love for us. And so yes, this is where I find the story not that reassuring and actually quite scary. There’s in it a stern warning.
So maybe for this week, or even for the whole season of Advent, I would like to challenge us with this thought and this practice: How can we become aware that loving is the most important thing we have to do on earth and apply ourselves to it? Not just being warm and friendly, or on the other side, no wanting to save the world or to do all sorts of good deeds, but applying ourselves to find God’s presence in all, a God who does not show up in might and power but, from the crib to the cross, comes to us naked and hungry.