The Rev. Noah Van Niel
The Chapel of the Cross
August 11th, 2019
Proper 14 (C): Isaiah 1:1, 10-20; Ps 50: 1-8, 23-24; Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16; Luke 12:32-40
When I was in college, my least favorite time of the week was Sunday afternoons, because Sunday afternoons were when the football team would gather to watch the film from the previous day’s game. For those unfamiliar with what I’m talking about: in football every play of every game and every practice is videotaped. And most of the preparation and coaching comes from reviewing those films and using them as teaching tools. So, every Saturday in the fall we would play a game, and, win or lose, we would gather the next day to dissect every last play. Every mistake, every misstep, every missed block or dropped pass rewound and replayed over and over and over again. If you have never been through this process, it’s kind of like having your exam graded in front of the entire class, except instead of just having your intellectual deficiencies pointed out, you are also having your physical ability, your toughness and by extension your courage and character publicly called into question.
As humiliating as this process could be, it did have one commendable quality: honesty. As we were told and came to believe, “Film don’t lie.” Now the truth could have been delivered a little more gently and with fewer four lettered words, but come Sunday afternoon, the truth would come out and you would have to answer for your actions.
Which is not unlike what happens in our Gospel passage this morning—a knock on the door, and an account to be made of what had been done with one’s time. In fact, I even took to half-jokingly referring to these football film sessions as, “Judgment Day” because in my mind, that’s what I imagined that was going to feel like: honest truth telling about one’s life. Now, the church has a confused approach to Judgment Day. On the one hand it is there, ever-present, especially through the works of the New Testament, and even in some of the Old. But no one can quite agree what it’s going to look like. Is it a superhero Messiah riding in on clouds of glory surrounded by a consuming flame and a raging storm like in our Psalm this morning? Is it going to be more like the apocalyptic wasteland after the cosmic battle in the book of Revelation? Like a shepherd, separating sheep and goats? Or will it be like a master returning home unannounced to see how prepared his servants were for his arrival? The tradition is not clear on how it’s going to go, but there is general agreement that somewhere, somehow, we are going to be called to account. And my clearest understanding of what this will be like, is that it will look and feel like an honest truth telling about one’s life. And having sat through a few judgment days on Sunday afternoons in college, I don’t need any consuming flames and raging storms for that prospect to spark a little bit of fear in my gut.
Motivation through fear has made judgment a distasteful topic in many churches of our ilk. To scare people into action seems a manipulation, and Lord knows, churches have abused this power to stoke fear in order to pad their pockets and fill their pews. And while I do believe our God is slow to anger and of great kindness, I wonder if we haven’t let judgment slide a bit too far off our radar screens. Because no matter how it is rendered, judgment provides a measure of motivation to our lives as people of faith: the belief that at some unknown hour that knock is going to come when it does we’d better be ready for an honest truth telling about our lives and what we did with them, because one thing is for sure: Christ don’t lie.
Lucky for us then that rather than a coach bent on our humiliation, we have a God who, Jesus insists, wants to give us the Kingdom—it is His good pleasure. And He has given us numerous hints as to what he is looking for from us. We have the answers to the exam. So long as we do your part, then Judgment Day shouldn’t be anything to worry about. And what then is our part?
Well, throughout the Scriptures there is one thing that God is obsessed with; one thing we are called again and again to devote our lives to; one measurement to gauge the quality of our actions: justice. You heard Mother Joyce exhort us to it in her final word a few weeks ago and I say it again to you, we are called to be a people of justice. Did you hope I was going to say something else? Perhaps that we’d be measured by Faith? Hope? Love? Undeniably, those are the foundations of Christianity, but their measure is in how they are lived, how they impact your life and, critically, not just your life but the lives of those around you. Faith as exhibited by following. Abraham didn’t just believe in God’s promises he upended his life and followed them to their fruition. Hope measured in how much it is spread, not hoarded. Love as shown in action: Jesus didn’t just sit there feeling abundant love towards us, that love propelled him all the way to the cross. Yes, Faith, Hope, and Love are foundational, but God’s going to want to know what we did with them; how we used those tools to bring about justice. How we built on that foundation and what difference it made in our lives AND the lives of our neighbors. As Christians that is what we are called to do with our lives: make the world more fair, equitable, peaceful and good for all people.
And what that means is that all our prayer, all our study, all our worship as is meant, first and foremost, to give us a vision of that more just and peaceful world and then to equip us to go out and make it so. Otherwise our glorious Sunday worship is for naught. This is Isaiah’s word to the people of Judah, whose moral center had dissolved; whose society was replete with injustice and oppression, with selfishness and violence, with no compassion or care for those who had no power to care for themselves. “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord…bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me…I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them…your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow,” then let’s talk, he says.
As a people who love a good solemn assembly this should sting a little bit. As citizens of a nation whose hands are full of blood— young blood, old blood, black blood, brown blood, white blood, blue blood, flowing crimson down our streets—this should rightfully scare us. Lately we seem to have mixed up Isaiah’s injunction and learned to do evil and ceased to do good, and God is watching how we respond. We can’t claim ignorance when God calls us to account and says, “So, tell me, what did you do to make the world more just? I’m glad to hear that your heart broke for those people who were gunned down, but I’d love to know what you did in response to make the world more peaceful, safer? How did you seek to rid the world of evil, and do good? How did you bring hope to those who had none—the proverbial widows and orphans in your day? Who did you rescue from oppression? That’s what I want to know. Not your ritual offerings, but the offering of your life, that’s what I’m interested in,” God says.
Look, by now, I know most of you well enough to know that we are fans of justice, we think it’s a good thing, we’re all for it. But taking the responsibility for its establishment and implementation is more than just believing in its value, it is committing to fighting for it. But where does one begin when seeking justice, rescuing the oppressed, defending the orphan, pleading for the widow? And frankly, who has the time? Or the energy? I know the feeling. It’s enough just to make it through each day usually—the grind of daily living saps us to the point where, at the end of the night, I don’t want to call my senator and take up the fight for equality, I just want to watch TV and go to bed. We’ve all got lives full enough of their own concerns to keep us completely occupied, and exhausted, which is hardly a fit state to battle the evils that bedevil our society and keep it unjust.
But, (and here’s my attempt at some honest truth-telling, and I say it to myself as much as I say it to you) that’s just not good enough. Justice cannot be some ancillary endeavor undertaken in one’s spare time. As Christians, it’s not an extra-curricular activity, it’s a core class required to graduate. It is the central concern of our faith. And frankly, it’s a privilege not to have to worry about our safety, or our livelihood, or our opportunities in life, but so long as others do worry about those things and we do not help them, then our faith rings hollow.
We need to find a way for the work of justice to be at the center of our lives not on the periphery. And not our “lives of faith,” but our lives, period. For this is what we are made for; our purpose as people, and our calling as Christians—building up a kingdom of fairness, equality, peace, and goodness on earth as it is in heaven. Occasionally, when we sat in that darkened locker room reviewing the previous day’s game film there would come a play where everything worked, where every job was done and the field opened up and we as a team would rejoice in our collective success. That’s how it’s supposed to be, this world. Each of us doing our part to bring about justice so that all of us can rejoice. Each of us finding ways for the faith, the hope and the love that are in us to be activated and engaged, so that this world may be a little better for us all. If we can do that, then when the knock comes, when the truth of our life is told, when our particular judgment day arrives, we can open that door with confidence not fear, because we’d know, in our heart of hearts, that we were ready.