“THE JUDGE SHALL ASCEND YOU TO HIS SIDE”
Saint Matthew 25. 31-46
2nd Last Sunday: 13 November Anno Domini 2011
Father Jay Watson SSP
Praise the Lord that He is the Son of Man! Christ is the second Adam. Give thanksgiving that your God is a Man. Christ is the perfect Adam. No Cecil B. DeMille mysterious green smoke slithering through the streets at the "end of days" but Christ Jesus the God/Man coming in His glory. His glory is His flesh and blood, His incarnation is now forever glorified and freely using His omnipotent divinity. The day is surely drawing near!
He's coming for you and He's bringing his angels with Him. It's going to be big and joyous and celebratory!
He will sit on His throne of glory on The Father's right hand and He will place all of you on His own beloved right hand. That blessed palm bearing the scars and indentations of your daily sin, will gently beckon you to draw near to receive your eternal reward of kinship and coronation.
The angry, wrathful, judgmental, God of the Final Advent will not be seen or experienced by any of you. The God that punishes sins, sin, and your daily inexcusable trespasses already did all that. At 3 pm two-thousand years ago He hung His head for you and finished it! What He completed for you He now gives to you freely and abundantly. You were damned, drained, defiled, and darkened on Golgotha's skull shaped crest when Jesus stepped into your shoes, your place, and your skin, and substituted His obedience, Holiness, innocence and perfect goodness for your law-breaking, sinfulness, guilt and old-Adam badness.
No, you, as you, deserve to be placed on the left with the goats. Your old fallen nature daily despises God and man. Your sinful self loves only one thing, yourself-ego loves ego. You don't feed those you should (and could) feed, but you pharisaically pontificate nonsense about "teaching a man how to fish" (which you don't do either). You don't help the stranger because you don't even like strangers-those different from you who threaten your "way/will" of doing things. You may give the poor, needy and naked your "cast-offs" once a year but you rarely cover your naked (guilty and crushed) brother's falleness with the real garments of forgiveness and restoration. Obedience is too hard for your stubborn independence, and love is way too difficult for someone always demanding justice! Love was 33 years hard, disciplined, focused and measured. Christ did the loving that obeyed the Father, loved the unlovable, and suffered and died for the selfish.
You are a lamb because the God/Man says you are. You are on His right side, and safe in His pasture, because He brought you there as He has brought you here-the pasture connected to His pasture. At the Holy + Font He found the little lost and dirty lamb and picked it up (picked you up) and carried it home on His shoulders! The goats are not goats because they have sinned worse than you or because they have done less than you. The damned are only taken into everlasting punishment because they have rejected Jesus. No one goes to hell because they didn't perfectly feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit the prisoner-else all of mankind would burn in the lake of fire. Only the ones who did not believe in Jesus as their RIGHTEOUS SUBSTITUE AND SAVIOR will be lost. By having your trust in Christ, all that Christ is belongs to you.
Wrapped in His robes you are clothed and clean. Wrapped inside His flesh you are in the Rock of Ages for all ages. Covered in His Blood you bear the supernal scent of Easter Lilies and Redeemed Royalty.
The stranger that you may (or may not) have helped may have been a stranger-and that would have been a "good work" done in faith, believing in Christ Jesus. But it is Jesus Himself Who was the stranger, the foreigner, the One with questioned paternity. It was Jesus Who left His heavenly home to come and tabernacle with wandering Hebrews, slow-witted Galilean fisherman, tax-collectors, prostitutes, cripples, zealots, and sinners such as you. As you received faith by the Holy Ghost to believe in this God/Man you received all the gifts of His Grace.
By believing in the Nazarene stranger you have all His merits of Law Keeping and Loving; of Sentence-Satisfying and Loving; attributed to you.
Yes the Judge Jesus will sit on the Throne of Judgment, fire flashing in His infinite eyes, the Sword of the Word proceeding from His mouth, piercing to the very marrow to cut the goats from the flock. He will be awesome and terrifying to the demons and their devil-goats-but not to you; not for you!
For you, there will be no such vision or reality. Jesus comes not as your Judge at the Final Trump but as your Messiah, your Christ, your Redeemer and your Friend. The Master returns for you, no longer His servants. The Master returns as your Brother reuniting with you in tears of joy and peace and togetherness again even as Viceroy Joseph reunited with His brothers, the sons of Israel. For you dear Saints are Israel even as Jesus is Israel in the Flesh.
He comes to lift you up to His table set just for you. His bloody cross is tipped over to be the table top of the grandest banquet ever prepared. He is smiling at you with tenderness and love for you bear His very Name on your forehead and breast. You carry Him in your hearts by way of your ears and your tongues.
O Zion, O Augsburg, come up into this high mountain; O Jerusalem, O Augsburg, lift up thy voice with strength, be not afraid, behold your God!
Come now you His flock and be fed by Him your Good Shepherd. Be gathered into His arm and carried in His bosom.
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost