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The Fifth Sunday In Lent
O Almighty God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men: Grant unto thy people that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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The Fifth Sunday In Lent
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A Sermon by
Fr. Fletcher
✛
Apostles’ Creed Series —
From Thence He Shall Come to Judge the Quick and the Dead
Today we come to the fulfilment of Christ’s mission to redeem the world in the last of the statements in the Creed about Jesus Christ.
The Coming of Christ is threefold. He has come; he is coming; and he will come. He has come in his first coming at the Nativity, when he comes in obscurity and is revealed only to a few shepherds, a few wise men, and a few inhabitants of Bethlehem, as well as , of course, Mary and Joseph. This first coming is a past event. It is complete, but it has ramifications for all people throughout all time.
His Second Coming is the great climactic event that Christians foresee as the end of time, when he will come in power and glory to judge the world with an authority given to him by the Father because he is the Son of Man[i] this will be a coming that no-one can fail to see. The Apostles’ Creed, as you will have noticed, does not say that Christ comes ‘in glory’; that was added in the Nicene Creed – not to change the meaning, but to emphasise it.
But there is also the intermediate coming – the coming of Christ into our own lives as we are living them. ‘If a man loves me, says Jesus, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our home with him.’ [ii] So we are not to be abandoned by God between the Ascension and the Second Coming. Christ comes to us in our prayers and in all our Christian activity, whether spiritual or practical, but especially in the Eucharist. This is the intermediate time – the time that we are now living, and we live this time accompanied by Christ on our earthly pilgrimage, and we live this time in expectation and hope.
It is clear from the New Testament, that the early disciples of Our Lord anticipated an early return by Christ. The Second Letter of Peter[iii] shows the Church having difficulty explaining Christ’s non-appearance. But he never specifically indicated an early return, and, when asked, he tells the disciples ‘It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has established by his own authority’. [iv] As Christians, we need to put aside any worrying or arguing about the timing of the Second Coming. But we do need to make preparations for it. There are a number of Jesus’ parables that deal with this, such as the ‘Unfaithful Servant’[v] or the ‘Wise and the Foolish Virgins’[vi] which finishes with Jesus saying, ‘Therefore stay awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour’.
So, what preparation can we make for this? When we come before the throne of judgement, we cannot barter or bargain our way into God’s favour, but I think there are three areas that we all have to work at now:
1.The search for truth – for Christ himself – a deepening of our knowledge and experience of Christ.
2.An awareness of our own sinfulness and a penitence for it.
3.An ever-expanding love both for God and for our neighbour.
If we can work on these three things, then we will probably have gone as far as we can to prepare ourselves.
As the centuries have passed, it has become increasingly difficult to keep an eager expectation of the coming of Christ in the forefront of our minds – difficult, but necessary. It could happen tomorrow or it could be in a million years’ time. It could happen while we are still alive, or it could happen after we have died.
The Creed states: ‘From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead’. There has been judgement in the world ever since our first ancestors disobeyed God and allowed evil and sin to enter into the world. Adam and Eve were judged and were condemned and were expelled from the Garden of Eden. Judgement continued through the Old Testament, especially in the life and teaching of Moses and the prophets. But this was judgement within the confines of human history. The judgement that we associate with the Second Coming will take place at the end of time.
The three synoptic Gospels all give space to warn their readers of what will lead up to the Coming of the Son of Man. [vii] They speak of trials and tribulations, of treachery and deceit and of false Christs and false prophets coming and deceiving the faithful. The purpose of these chapters is partly to encourage the early Christians as they face persecution, by showing them that these things had to happen; and partly to warn us, generally, that we need to be prepared; just because Christ has lived and died and risen for us, it does not mean that the powers of evil have been vanquished outright. We have been armed for the battle, but the battle continues.
Just as we do not know when the Second Coming will take place, so we do not know how it will take place. Saint Paul writes to the Corinthians,[viii] ‘For the trumpet will sound, the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed’. The important thing is not what key the trumpet will play in or whether it is actually a trumpet or a trombone, but that there will be one almighty noise or some similar happening that no-one will be able to miss. It will be cataclysmic beyond anything previously experienced.
Jesus does not give us a blue-print for the events associated with the Second Coming. The Gospels are not a systematic statement of the Christian faith, and Saint Paul was, by and large, writing to Churches to answer specific problems. So we are left with the necessity of piecing together what is written in Scripture so as to give ourselves a meaningful explanation and a coherent picture, whilst at the same time acknowledging that not all our questions will be answered in advance.
The parable of ‘the Sheep and the Goats’[ix] describes the Son of Man coming in all his glory, assembling the nations, and then judging them, and separating them as a shepherd separates his sheep and his goats – rewarding one group for their faithful observance of his commands of love and care for others, and punishing the others for their neglect. The implication of this is that all will be judged, but not all will be condemned. There truly is hope!
In a similar vein, the parable of ‘Dives and Lazarus’[x] shows the Poor Man rewarded for his sufferings and the Rich Man punished for failing to care for the needs of others. This parable says that there is no way of passing from one form of after-life to the other, and that no-one is going to return to earth after death to warn us of the consequences of our actions. We must heed the words of Christ and the prophets.
Judgement does not necessarily imply condemnation. Judgement is an impartial assessment which may lead to reward or punishment. But the result of this judgement is that both the living and the dead will be assigned their eternal destiny in either heaven or hell.
Scripture had no doubt that there is a heaven and a hell, nor did the Church Fathers, but the images of the past do not meet the needs of the present. Hell must surely be the summation of all that we fear and dread: the fear of loneliness and disease, of pain and helplessness. Heaven, likewise, must be the summation of all that we hope and long for. We have our earthly hopes and aspirations, but by the time we come face to face with God in all his glory, these will seem tawdry baubles, and all our longings will be fully satisfied by the very presence of God himself.
This raises the questions, ‘Is anyone ultimately going to be condemned?’ ‘Is anyone actually going to end up in hell?’ The honest answer is that we don’t know. I, fortunately, do not have to make the decision; that is entirely in the hands of God. There will be a judgement – of that I have no doubt. That there has to be the possibility that someone will go to hell, again I have no doubt. But the decision is God’s to make in a mixture of justice and mercy. Saint John writes: ‘For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.’[xi] But some will refuse that offer – the life that they have led on earth will not enable them to accept. If any of us does get to heaven, it will not be as a result of our own deeds or virtues, but through the love and forgiveness of God and because of the sacrificial self-giving of Christ in his death and resurrection.
May Christ look upon each and all of us in love and forgiveness, and bring us one day into his everlasting presence in heaven. Amen.
◄previous sermon in the series
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[i] John 5:27
[ii] John 14:23
[iii] 2 Peter 3:4
[iv] Acts 1:7
[v] Matthew 24:45-51
[vi] Matthew 25:1-13
[vii] Matthew 24:1-31; Mark 13:1-27; Luke 21:5-28
[viii] 2 Corinthians 15:52
[ix] Matthew 25:31-46
[x] Luke 16:19-31
[xi] John 3:17
