Passage for reflection: Matthew 25: 31 to the end of the chapter
I wonder if you read a book whether you are impatient to see how it ends. Some naughty people look at the back page of a book to see if it is worth investing their time trawling through 200 pages! An ending can sometimes be a surprise, what you least expected.
The way we watch television dramas seems to have changed in recent years. We now are in the era of box sets and complete series being available on demand so you can binge on them in one go because you can’t wait a week to find out how they end. We are dreadful because we watch things late at night and just start another episode having already watched three but then we fall asleep! The joy of on demand is that you can wind programmes back. Do you remember the days when we taped stuff and the video recorder cut off the end so you never knew what happened.
We have reached the end of the liturgical year in the Church. The Sunday before Advent is known as Christ the King Sunday. The readings for the day are all about how the story of Jesus ends. Ho does it end? It ends with him coming in glory. It ends with his eternal reign. It ends with judgment on his people concerning how they’ve behaved in their lives, it ends with all creation worshipping him.
The Nicene Creed puts it in these words:
“We believe he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and that his Kingdom will have no end.”
We don’t often think about the second coming. But Advent, which we are soon to enter, is really a reminder of how he came as a child, but more crucially, an expectation he is coming to reign in glory soon. We put off making decisions and we drift along whereas the first Christians saw how we live as an urgent matter because they believed the parousia was imminent.
What will it be like at the end?
Well, two things. First, there will be judgment. How we have lived in this life will matter. God will reward human acts of kindness and faithful Christian service. When the king comes in his glory he will do some sort of performance management on us. We will be judged by how we showed love by ministering to the hungry, the sick, those in prison. By visiting the needy. By doing these things we are serving the king or forsaking him. Matthew 25 is pretty brutal! To not reflect the king and the kingdom has huge consequences.
Then the king will be remembered. Nadia Bolz Weber, one of my favourite contemporary writers reflected this week on some dodgy leaders mentioned to give context towards the beginning of Luke’s Gospel. She writes:
“You know that list of powerful men? Those emperors and rulers and governors and power brokers who were so feared and powerful at the time- you know what? The only reason anyone knows their names…the only reason anyone even says their names – the only reason these tiny, pathetic so-called powerful men are even remembered at all 2,000 years later is as a footnote to Jesus of Nazareth. Those who were caught up into the powers and principalities of violence and empire and greed – whose power at the time they were alive felt so absolute– are only a footnote to Jesus. Jesus - the prince of peace, the man of sorrows, the friend of sinners, the forgiver of enemies. Jesus – a homeless dude who hung out with fishermen and sex workers and said we should love our enemies. Can you imagine what a blow to Pontius Pilate that would be if he had any idea? So my prayer this week when I just didn’t know what to pray was simple. I named every single thing and person that seems so powerful right now as to feel inescapable – rulers, tyrants, my own sins, societal forces etc. and I named them and then said “footnote”.
Pontius Pilate? footnote.
Your depression? footnote.
Student Loan debt? footnote.
Pathetic Narcissists of every variety - footnote
Don’t mistake me – all of those things are very real and the harm they have on us and on the world is also very real. But to me, the whole point of having faith – the whole point in believing in a power greater than ourselves –is that it allows us to believe in a bigger story than the one we tell ourselves, a bigger story than the one being shouted on Cable News, a bigger story than the one being shouted inside our own heads. In my own anxiety I can only see a few feet in front of myself and the world can feel like it’s closing in on me, but in the bigger picture I defiantly believe that God can convert our anxiety into hope. In the bigger picture I defiantly believe that forgiveness is more powerful than resentment, that compassion is more powerful than judgement, that love is more powerful than fear. ”
We believe the Kingdom will come. We believe Jesus will reign. The end is not a bad one but a triumphant one. As Billy Graham once said,
I've read the last page of the Bible, it's all going to turn out all right.
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