The Dividing Line

(Please forgive the occasional cough on the audio; I was recovering from a chest cold!)

Saint James Fordham • Proper 29a • Tobias Haller BSG

When the Son of Man comes in his glory… he will separate people from one another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

Someone once said that the world is divided into two sorts of people: the sorts of people who divide the world into two sorts of people, and those who don’t. Well, it would seem from today’s readings that the Son of Man, when he comes in power and great glory, will turn out to be exactly the sort of person who divides the world into two sorts of people: those who are blessed by his Father, and those who are accursed. There is no middle ground, no room for compromise, and no appeal. This is nothing other than the Last Judgment.

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When I was five years old I had my appendix out. This was in the days before HMOs, so I had a good long week in the hospital to recuperate, and I can tell you it was very boring after the first few days. The most boring thing was that although I had a coloring book, I had only two crayons: and they were green and yellow-green. And however much I tried to get those two crayons to express other colors, all I was left with was green and yellow-green, darker or lighter, but still green without relief.

In today’s Gospel, everything is similarly monochromatic, tinged with the sharp and angry tone of the wrath of the Son of Man, without any hint of relief, any hint of anything other than his bright green judgment, clear and cutting, as sharp as the edge of a crisp blade of grass, or the fine green edge of a palm branch. There is no variation of shade, no warm autumnal reds or golds to take the edge off the kryptonite-like, piercing green judgment of the just judge.

The Son of Man is the final judge, seated in the last court from whom there is no appeal. Everyone, from the day laborer on up to the President will stand before him. And each one who stands there, and that includes each and every one of us too, will receive either a complete acquittal and reward, or a death sentence.

This is not the world of “both / and” but most definitely and finally “either / or.” Either each of us will find ourselves among the blessed, or we won’t.

This judgment is so terrible and terrifying that when we hear about it we must wonder what can be the cause for such a great reward, or merit such a final punishment. Surely the punishment must fit the crime and the reward fit the good behavior. It seems so unfair, so merciless, for God to consign people to the burning rubbish-heap for having failed to do such trivial tasks, such simple actions. Surely such punishment is for the wicked tyrants, the stereotypical Hitlers and the Stalins, for the mass-murderers and terrorists.

But Jesus is unflinching in his judgment. Consigned to the flames along with mass murderers and torturers, is the store owner who didn’t give a piece of bread to a homeless man; the man who was too busy to visit his sister when she was in the hospital; the woman who wouldn’t visit her son as he lay dying of aids; the lady who kept her closets full of clothes she never had the time to wear instead of giving some of them to the thrift shop; and countless, countless others; and maybe you, and maybe me. It just doesn’t seem fair to consign people to the destructive fire for such trivial reasons, for failing to do such simple things, things we would have done if only we’d known.

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If only we’d known. Hmmm, but we do know, don’t we? And that is why God’s judgment is fair, after all. It is not as if we have not been told that whatever we do to the least of God’s children we do to our Lord. It is not as if we have not been told exactly what God wants us to do for each other: to do as we would be done by. And that is why God’s judgement is fair, and that is also why in the long run it is also merciful.

It is merciful because the way to avoid the death sentence is so easy. That is the good news in our Gospel today. What it takes to get into the kingdom of heaven is to do as we would be done by. God has told us and assured us that he will reward with the kingdom of heaven those who simply feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, give drink to the thirsty, visit the sick and the prisoners, and clothe the naked. We don’t have to walk around the world at the equator on burning coals. We don’t have to climb a holy mountain and fast for forty days on bread and water. We don’t have to whip ourselves with knotted cords and wallow in repentance. All we have to do is treat with dignity and charity those whom God places in our path, not turning aside from those in need, but meeting their need with outstretched hands and open hearts.

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God’s judgment is terrible, but it is fair, it is just, and it is merciful. That is the good news. God has told us what he expects of us. This passage in Matthew was meant to warn the nations — that is, us — to give us fair warning that Jesus’ brothers and sisters were coming to visit, to bring the good news, and it was in how they and us treated those ambassadors of Christ that they would establish their future — joining the blessed in eternal joy, or departing into the flames of destruction. The warning was simple: treat others as you would yourself be treated.

The problem is that most people would rather think that God has impossible expectations for us, that God expects us to be perfect and never do anything wrong, but that God will be merciful when we fail and forgive us and let us into heaven.

But that simply is not the Gospel — or at least not the whole Gospel — as our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has delivered it to us, through his ambassadors, through our many fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters in the faith. Although it is quite true that God would rather that we not sin, and that God will forgive us when we do sin, when it comes right down to it the Gospel isn’t primarily about our sin and God’s forgiveness. That has been dealt with — Jesus took care of that for us — remember? when he forgave even those who crucified him? — he did it on the cross, a full, perfect, and sufficient oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world: and as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

But what kind of life? That’s the question. The Gospel isn’t about our sin and God’s forgiveness so much as it is about what we do with our lives once we sinners have been forgiven. Having been made alive, what do we do with our lives? How do we set our hearts, as the hymn says, “to finish God’s salvation?”

Rather than set us impossible tasks and then have mercy on us when we fail, God has been merciful to us beforehand, and set us a simple task from the start. How much simpler can you get than, “Do unto others as you would be done by”?

It is our response to this command from God that will determine our final place with the sheep or with the goats. We have all been forgiven, saved through the great work of Christ accomplished on the cross; but the second part of the work of salvation, our finishing of salvation, lies in our hands, and most especially in what we do with our lives in relation to each other.

We have been forgiven our sins, but do we forgive others who sin against us? We have been provided with daily bread, but do we give food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty, however inconvenient their asking, and however frequently they ask? We have been given the blessings of hearth and home and nation, but do we welcome the stranger and make those most unlike us feel comfortable and at home in our presence? We have been protected and clothed and warmed, but do we provide clothing for those who lack it? We have been comforted by the visits of friends and strangers, but do we visit the sick and those in prison, or sit at home browsing the Internet or answering our e-mail, or drowsing in front of the TV or caught up in a video game? These are such simple things, my sisters and brothers, such simple things to gain or lose heaven by.

The judgment of God is terrible, but it is fair, and just, and it is merciful. It is terrible in its finality, as the world is divided into the blessed and the damned. But it is fair and just in that we have been asked to do no more than we would be done by. And it is merciful in that we have been given ample warning. Oh that today we would hearken to his voice!

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As those who have no hope

St James Fordham • Proper 27a • Tobias Haller BSG

We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.+

Out in the hot, dry, Arizona desert, there are 27 dead people waiting for resurrection. They aren’t the inhabitants of a Christian cemetery, waiting as all the faithful departed do for the coming of that great day when the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible. No, these are 27 people who have had themselves put into a deep-freeze of liquid nitrogen in the hope that science will one day find a cure for whatever it was that ailed them, as well as a way to restore their frozen tissue without irreparable damage.

Such is their hope. And the cost? They’ve paid a pretty penny for this deep-freeze, $120,000 each — except for a few of them who decided to save a bit, and took the option, for a mere $50,000, to have had only their heads frozen. Talk about cut-rate pricing! If I want a brain freeze I can just drink a Mickey D milkshake too fast. I suppose these particular blockheads — I think it’s no insult to call them that now, is it? — I suppose they were the most optimistic among the “frozen people” since they expect science will be able to grow them new bodies or build them one like Robocop.

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Saint Paul wrote to the church at Thessalonica, “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” Now, the frozen people in Arizona clearly had hope before they died and were deposited into their giant Thermos flasks. They had the hope that they would one day be thawed, healed or repaired, and live again.

But what a foolish hope, and what a pointless promise. Even if they could be thawed, reanimated, and healed, how much longer do they imagine they could live after that? Bodies may live a long time, but they don’t preserve the vigor of youth. However well we care for our bodies, they weaken and fail. There’s a lesson in the fable of the man who was granted his wish of eternal life but forgot to add eternal youth and was cursed to become a dried up husk of a creature scuttling about the passageways of his great-great-grandchildren’s palace. Until, the legend tells us, the gods took pity on him and transformed him: and that’s where the grasshopper came from! A long life without the health to enjoy it is not a blessing, but a curse.

And even beyond that, even if these newly thawed-out bodies could be kept young forever, what does “forever” mean? After all, the world is going to end someday! And I don’t just mean in a biblical sense based on ancient prophecy, but in cold simple scientific fact. Some day our sun, and every sun that shines in every corner of the universe will either explode or cool down to a cinder. Some day billions of years in the distant future, science assures us, the whole universe will die in the cold embrace of entropy, as all energy drains away and even the atoms that make up everything in the physical universe collapse from sheer exhaustion and decay into the virtual nothingness of a cold, absolute zero. Those who hope for immortality in the physical world through science are cheated of eternal life by that very science: they may live a long, long time, but not for ever. Nothing physical lasts forever — all matter is corruptible, and all flesh is as the grass of the field — and flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven — and those whose hope for immortality is based simply on the survival of their physical bodies are doomed in their ignorance. Haven’t they ever seen a zombie movie — dead bodies walking, but falling apart even as they walk?

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Saint Paul counsels us, “We do not want you to be uninformed about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” Our hope, hope for ourselves as well as all our beloved who have died before us, our hope does not rest upon the some-day maybe-if-we’re-lucky promises of science but on the eternal, absolute and make-no-mistake-about-it assurance of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. What does the old song say? “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness!” The one we hope in doesn’t wear a white lab-coat, but a crown of thorns, and Jesus Christ doesn’t just offer us opinions and options and possibilities but a sure and certain hope — and all other grounds are sinking sand.

Jesus Christ is our secure hope. Because he’s been there. Jesus descended to the dead and rose again the third day. He knows what it is like to feel life drain from him, with the blood he shed on Calvary. This was no near-death experience. Jesus didn’t just come near death. He died! He was buried, and lay in the tomb for a sabbath rest, until by God’s power he was raised from the dead.

Because we share in his death through Baptism, we will also share with him in his resurrection; which is not the reanimation of a corpse, but a whole new creation in the resurrection body, the body that is more than flesh, full of the eternal power of the Spirit, alive with the life that comes from above.

Saint Paul describes the scenario, and whether it happens next week, next year, in a hundred or a thousand or a billion years, this is how it will happen. The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, and the trumpet shall sound, and those who have died in Christ will rise, and those who are alive will join them, caught up into the mystery of the new life, transformed into his likeness without ever even having had to leave the old one behind.

“The Lord will descend with a cry of command.” And do you know what his command will be? Can you guess? Don’t you think it will be, “WAKE UP!” Christ will call to life all those who have died, and call those who live to new life in him. “Wake up!” will be the watchword, and the trumpet blast and the cry of his voice will be loud enough to wake the dead, literally! As was said to me recently, “On that great day there’s gonna be a whole lot of earth turned up at Woodlawn!”

“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” Our hope as Christians is not that we will simply be thawed out, simply be mended to walk about as reanimated corpses, but that we will be given new spiritual bodies, spiritual bodies that can live for eternity long after the merely physical universe decays into the thin gray neutrino soup that scientists foresee billions of years from now. Long after this universe has dissolved, what is eternal shall remain, God and his children, wakened at the sound of the trumpet, and at the call of his Son, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.

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Winston Churchill saw his nation through the terrible war years when he was at an age at which most people are happily retired. In addition to being a statesman and world leader and amateur oil-painter, he was also a devoted churchman and staunch believer in the promises of our faith. There is a persistent unverified rumor — which I have done nothing to discourage! — that his mother, Jennie Jerome, whose father used to live across the road now known as Jerome Avenue in his memory, was baptized here at Saint James Church!

Churchill’s faith and hope were reflected in the funeral service he planned for himself. It took place in Saint Paul’s Cathedral, which had stood throughout the Battle of Britain and the Blitz as a testimony to the church’s presence in a world gone mad, its great dome rising above London’s flames and smoke, defying Hitler’s bombers and rockets. Churchill, as befits a military man, arranged that as his funeral neared its end, a lone bugler high in the dome of the cathedra would begin to play the universal signal for day’s end, the tune we know as “Taps.” I’m sure that melody brought tears to many eyes that day, as it has in so many other places and times.

But old Sir Winston had a more profound message to convey in his funeral. Before the last notes of Taps had faded, another bugler at the opposite side of the dome began another tune, another melody with a very different message: the other bugler played “Reveille”!

“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” Our hope, and the hope of countless Christians who have gone before us, all the saints, prophets, apostles and martyrs, all our dear beloved friends and family in Christ, our hope is that at the end the last melody will not be Taps. It will be Reveille! Those who have fallen asleep will wake at the trumpet blast. Those who have died will rise. And, as Saint Paul wrote, those “who are left will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever.”

When He shall come with trumpet sound,
O may I then in Him be found;
Dressed in His righteousness alone
Faultless to stand before His throne.
On Christ the solid Rock I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand —
All other ground is sinking sand. +

Varieties of Service

Proper 26a & All Saints’ Sunday • Tobias Haller BSG
Jesus said, the greatest among you will be your servant.

All our readings today address the theme of service, and it is fitting to reflect on that theme, in light of our annual celebration of the lives of the Saints — both the great historic saints of the church, and our own more personal saints, whose lives had such a great impact on our own. This impact, historical or personal, resonates down the years — from lives of those who touched so many other lives. And this resonance, this impact, is due to how these saints served.

What does it mean to be a servant? For it is in being a servant, in serving, that people leave a mark for the good on all whom they encounter, and all whom they serve. How people of the church’s past, or of its present — around the world or in this parish — serve their neighbors and their Lord, will determine the future of our world, and the future of this parish, both their immediate future, and how they will stand fifty or a hundred or a thousand years from now.

The problem with the word servant is that for most of us these days it is just that, a word. There was a time when almost every household among the well-to-do had live-in servants. And even among the middle class it wasn’t unusual to have what they used to call “help” or “someone to do” once or twice a week. But nowadays about the only place you see servants, even on TV, is on Masterpiece Theater. The world of maids in starched aprons and butlers in tail-coats is far from us.

However, there is one kind of servant with which we are familiar, and it goes back long before butlers and chambermaids. These servants stood at their masters’ tables, served them their meals, filled their empty goblets, and cleared away the dishes after each course. This most ancient kind of servant is still with us, though today we call them waiters. And since we’ve all experienced good and bad waiters, it seems appropriate to look at the servants in today’s readings in that light.

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The prophet Micah starts us off with the portrait of the kind of waiter who is only interested in the tip. If you’ve ever had a terrible waiter and left a small tip on that account, you’ve probably encountered the sort of waiter who as Micah says, “declares war against those who put nothing in their mouths.” These servants only work for their pay — they have no devotion, no vision, no vocation or calling. It’s just a job as far as they’re concerned. And if they can get away with substandard work, they will. Probably the less said about waiters like this the better; and so let’s move on to the next sort.

The gospel takes us from the ungrateful waiter to the haughty maitre d’. Don’t the Pharisees and scribes of today’s gospel sound an awful lot like a snooty waiter? They are unwilling to lift a finger, they do everything for show, and are all dressed up and placed in the position of honor, to be greeted respectfully.

It may seem odd that a servant would be in a position to look down on a patron, but that is the odd circumstance one finds in certain posh dining establishments, like the one I described a few weeks ago where “proper attire” is required and the maitre d’ is the guardian of gentility. He is the one who has the power to admit only those deemed worthy to dine, looking down his nose at anyone who doesn’t show him proper respect, but groveling before the rich and famous. Unlike the first sort of bad waiters, who couldn’t care less about the job as long as they get a good tip, this kind seem to care more about the appearance of the job, the perks and titles, and honors and esteem, the fancy suit and the stylish boutonniere, than they do about actually seating the guests and seeing that their meals are served. Their focus isn’t upon those whom they serve; it’s on the whole role-play of importance and appearances, what Shakespeare called “the game of who’s in, who’s out, who’s up, who’s down.”

Finally, though, we turn to Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians. And here we find at last a servant whose attention is properly directed. All Paul cares about is those whom he serves. It is their happiness and their joy that is important. This sort of waiter is always there when needed, not someone whose attention is impossible to attract. You will find this kind of waiter filling your glass before you even notice it is empty; offering suggestions on what is a particularly good dish; ready to serve and eager to make you comfortable. And not because there’s a big tip to be looked forward to, but because the waiter simply enjoys seeing you enjoy yourself.

This is the kind of service one rarely encounters. It’s the kind of service loving parents provide for their children. And Saint Paul uses such imagery, family imagery, in describing his work among the people of Thessalonica, his brothers and sisters for whom he toiled so hard, and who, when he was separated from them, he missed as an orphan misses his parents.

This is the kind of service to which our Lord calls us all: service not for profit or gain, except the profit and gain of our brothers and sisters as they reap the fruits of the Spirit. It is not service for show, for honors and titles, but service that lifts up others without thinking about itself.

This is the service of the saints — the big important famous ones from church history, as well as those personal saints who touched our own lives with their immediate presence. Such saintly service finds its end in the happiness and joy and well-being of those who are served; such a servant finds glory and joy in the act of service, and in knowing that the service was rendered to a good end, that it has done some good.

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I want to close with a remembrance of such a servant — not a saint of the church, but of the world. He has touched all of our lives though we may not think about it. But if you ever drink a glass of milk, you should give thanks to the man who gave his name to the process that made it safe to drink: Louis Pasteur.

Pasteur was one of the greatest scientists of all time. He was numbered among the top 100 most influential persons of the last millennium. He was among the first who championed the notion that germs cause disease, and developed treatments for scourges such as anthrax. As I alluded to, he invented the process we now know by his name, pasteurization, by which beverages are kept safe and healthful for our tables — and though we think first of milk, the process was originally applied to beer and wine, which the French considered far more important!

Pasteur also discovered the first successful treatment for rabies, which in his day was a deadly affliction that killed thousands every year. He had worked on the vaccine for some time, and was about to try an experiment on himself, when a young boy of nine, Joseph Meister, was savagely bitten by a rabid dog. Joseph’s mother begged Pasteur to try the new and untested vaccine on her son, who would surely die in agony otherwise. Pasteur, a patient servant, administered the vaccine for the next ten days, in progressively stronger doses. His experiment worked, and young Joseph Meister lived. Not only did he live, but he continued in a form of service himself — working first as a janitor and later for decades as a tour guide in the Pasteur Institute, completed just a few years before Pasteur died.

For Pasteur was already old when he saved Joseph Meister’s life. After years of people saying he was crazy, he had finally become a national hero, with the great Pasteur Institute just completed, funded by contributions from all over the world. As a new national hero in old age, public plans were being made for his tomb. (You know the French love to build fabulous tombs for people whom they dissed for most of their lives!) Pasteur was asked what he would like to have as an epitaph: some acknowledgment of pasteurization, that saved the French brewing industry? A few words to serve notice that this was the tomb of the man who proved that germs do after all cause disease, and who found a way to combat some of the most deadly? What would be a fitting epitaph for this great man?

Pasteur said that if it were up to him, there would just be three words engraved on his tomb, three words that would sum up what his mission had been about, three words that summarized the service he had rendered: “Joseph Meister lived.”

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For a servant can focus only on his wages; a servant can focus only on his prestige and office; or a servant can focus on those whom he serves. I know what kind of servant I hope to be; I know the kind of servants whom we remember as saints in the church and saints in our own hearts and homes. May God give each of us the strength to serve in humility and humbleness ofheart, that we may one day be remembered not for who we were, but for who and how we served; through Jesus Christ our Lord.+

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