Every Day Is Judgment Day
Matthew 24:36-44
Ho! Ho! Ho! ’Tis the season…for judgment! The Gospel reading for the first Sunday of Advent never fails to disappoint. All around us Christmas lights have gone up, Christmas music fills the airwaves, Christmas displays adorn every retailer, and yet Jesus, who knows a thing or two about Christmas, is talking about judgment day. He likens his second coming to a cataclysmic flood that destroyed all human life save for one family, and then, just for good measure, to a thief who breaks into a home under cover of darkness. Merry Christmas, everyone!
Advent, I will confess, is my favorite season of the church year. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy Christmas and all the festivity that accompanies it—sacred and secular. But Advent sets the church apart. While Christmas has been absorbed into the broader culture, such that many who celebrate it do so without any connection to Jesus, Advent still belongs to the church…for the most part, anyway.
Recently, however, I have noticed an alarming uptick in the number of commercial Advent “calendars.” They’re not actually calendars. They’re boxed sets of product samples, usually twenty-four in number, one for each day of Advent. You can find Advent calendars featuring coffee, tea, chocolates, whiskey, even cosmetics. The encroach of consumerism into all aspects of the sacred seasons of the church is like trying to hold back the ocean’s tide. Nonetheless, I will position myself on the beach.
Speaking of which, when I was serving the church in South Korea, I posted a sign on the wall of my cubicle that read “Keep Church Weird.” I don’t remember where I found it, but it was love at first sight. The way I interpreted those words—keep church weird—was as a celebration of the ways in which the church is set apart from the world even as it exists for the sake of the world.
The paradox of the church is that we are set apart from the world even as we exist for the sake of the world.
For example, we follow the teachings of a man who, by every worldly measure, was an abject failure. A man who was rejected by the religious establishment, scorned by the general public, abandoned by his closest followers, and executed as a criminal. We engage in a ritual meal in which, in some sense, we proclaim that the bread and wine we consume are his body and blood, and that by our partaking in this meal he lives in us. We hold that this man was fully human but at the same time fully divine. He wasn’t merely a prophet of God but actually God in the flesh.
I have news for you. That’s all pretty weird! And another thing that is gloriously and wonderfully weird is Advent. The word itself comes from the Latin word adventus, meaning “arrival” or “coming.” There’s nothing odd about that. During Advent we commemorate how God comes to us in Jesus of Nazareth, who Luke’s Gospel tells us was born in Bethlehem of Judea some 2,000 years ago. Every Advent calendar, both sacred and secular—even those selling chocolates or whiskey—acknowledges in its 24-day design the anticipated arrival of the Christ child.
But there is a second side to Advent that is virtually unknown outside the church. Whereas one side of Advent looks to the past and the birth of the Messiah, the other side of Advent looks ahead to his second coming when he will return to render judgment upon all the world. This shadow side of Advent, which is not at all conducive to selling chocolate or whiskey, is highlighted in our reading today.
Having finished our journey through the Gospel of Luke, for the four weeks of Advent we’re going to jump around the Gospel of Matthew. We begin today with a reading that comes close to the end of Matthew’s Gospel. Chronologically speaking, we’re at the same point in time here in Matthew that we were in Luke just two weeks ago. Jesus and the disciples are in the temple in Jerusalem. Jesus has just told them that as impressive as it is, the temple is not long for this world. Every stone will come tumbling down upon another.
Now he speaks to them not only of the end of temple but of the end of days, of the day when the Son of Man will return to judge the nations and to establish justice and righteousness for all time, bringing an end to history and the consummation of his eternal reign of peace. “About that day and hour no one knows,” Jesus tells his disciples, “neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”
In other words, Jesus does not give us a date that we can mark on our calendars. His return might be next Tuesday. Or it might be next millennium. Or after the next ice age. Nobody knows. Our task, therefore, is not to make preparations but to be prepared. By that I mean that we are not to run around in a frenzy checking off boxes on our to-do list before Jesus returns. I can imagine the clickbait headline on AOL’s homepage: “Ten Things to Do Before Jesus Returns: You’ll Never Guess Number 8.”
Making preparations, i.e., focusing on what we must do, puts the focus precisely where it does not belong—on us. In making preparations, everything depends on what we do. But instead of making frenzied preparations, Jesus simply calls us to be prepared. That has nothing to do with completing checklists and everything to do with living each day as though this is the day that Jesus is coming. It’s to live as if every day is judgment day.
“Oh my gosh!” you’re thinking. “That sounds awful. And besides, isn’t Advent about making preparations to welcome Jesus, like bringing out the Advent wreath and lighting Advent candles? What do they stand for again? Hope, peace, joy, love? What’s with all this talk about judgment?”
Indeed, hope, peace, joy, and love have come to be associated with the four Advent candles, but that association is a relatively modern one. A much older tradition of the church, long predating even the use of Advent wreaths, is to use the four Sundays of Advent to speak of the so-called four last things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell. They were presented in that order, meaning that on the Sunday before Christmas Eve a congregation would hear a sermon on the topic of hell. Again, Merry Christmas, everyone!
The Episcopal priest and author Fleming Rutledge, who lives across the river in Rye Brook next to the Connecticut border, famously said that “Advent begins in the dark.” While Christmas is a season of light, Advent, she says, “begins in the dark and moves toward the light.” The darkness she’s referring to is the sin of the world—mine, yours, your neighbor’s, and the sins that arise whenever human beings gather together, whether in governments that order the murder of foreign civilians in fishing boats, or corporations who employ algorithms designed to spark our outrage and therefore engagement, or even in the social structures we create, like an economic system that favors the wealthy and powerful and victimizes the poor and powerless. Advent is a time to reckon with the darkness that afflicts the human condition within and without.
Listen, it’s totally understandable that even within the church many of us prefer the light of Christmas to the darkness of Advent. But the paradox of the church, as I’ve already mentioned, is that we are set apart from the world even as we exist for the sake of the world. Part of our being set apart is a willingness to acknowledge the darkness.
Now, have no fear. I’m not about to do a four-part sermon series on death, judgment, heaven, and hell (although the idea of preaching on hell the Sunday before Christmas Eve does have some appeal). But I do want to home in, for today at least, on the concept of judgment because that is clearly the predominant theme in today’s reading. Jesus references the story of Noah and the Flood, a story in which, as a sign of God’s judgment upon human sin, storm clouds saturated with rain obscure the light of the sun for forty days.
If we live as though every day is judgment day, then judgment is not something to be feared but rather welcomed
Another passage from the Old Testament, Isaiah 9:2, declares that “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness, on them light has shined.” As in the days of Noah, we live in a land of deep darkness, not geographically but spiritually. A land where a construction company’s cutting corners causes a high rise fire that kills hundreds. A land where a college student returning home to surprise her parents for Thanksgiving is deported to a country that she left when she was a child. A land where a soldier not old enough to order a beer is murdered in cold blood in retaliation for a war that she had nothing to do with. A land where our own sins may not make the headlines but could nevertheless fill an entire newspaper. This world is ripe for judgment.
I said a moment ago that we are to live each day as if it is judgment day. Now, before you sense a whiff of brimstone in the air, let me say that to live each day as if it’s judgment day does not mean living in fear but rather living in faith, in hope, and in love. It means living each day trusting in Christ alone for your salvation, not in your good works or your good reputation or in anything other than the cross of Jesus Christ. It means living each day rejoicing in the hope of things unseen, even when what you see all around you is darkness. It means living each day reaching out to seek the good of your neighbor rather than turning away in fear, indifference, or self-centeredness.
If we live as though every day is judgment day, then judgment is not something to be feared but rather welcomed because the one who comes to judge us is the same one who offered himself up to judgment in our place. Our judge is our redeemer. We know the light only in relation to darkness, and so we know mercy only in relation to judgment. The good news is that everyone who is in Christ is not subject to judgment but has already received mercy.
Just as Advent simultaneously looks back to Christ’s first coming even as it looks forward to his second coming, so judgment day does not just wait for the future but in another sense has already occurred. Judgment day happened some 2,000 years ago on a hill known as Calvary. There Jesus Christ received judgment for your sake, for my sake, and for the sake of the world. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. May the light of Jesus Christ guide you through whatever shadows darken your days.