﻿Hey everybody, this is Steve, and we’re all in this together.
We continue to prepare for Great Lent with a dramatic reading for a day with a rather
ominous-sounding name: Judgment Sunday. It’s the last day we’ll eat meat until we
celebrate the Resurrection, as we gradually ramp up for Great Lent,
the most significant fast of the year. So it’s no surprise that we hear a bit about food
in this Sunday’s readings. The Epistle reading starts with a few verses about eating: which
makes perfect sense for a fasting season. But, as you can probably guess, we’re talking
about a lot more than food this week. We’re talking about judgment.
And this isn’t a private judgment, something that only concerns us as individuals. No,
this judgment is probably the most public and social thing that will ever happen because
it reflects how we interact with each other and all of Creation.
We proclaim the public nature of the Final Judgement in one of the hymns we sing this Sunday:
“O God, when You come upon the earth in glory, the whole world will tremble. A river of fire
will bring all before Your Judgment Seat and the books will be opened, and everything in secret
will become public.” [a] That sounds...fun.
The Final Judgment will be public and social, not just because everything secret will be revealed.
The Judgment itself is grounded in our connection.
In this Sunday’s Gospel reading, Jesus offers a prophetic word on the Day of Judgment when,
as we proclaim in the Creed, He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
This isn’t merely a parable; a fictional story used to communicate a more profound point.
No, this is more like the vision that Old Testament prophets sometimes had:
a glimpse into a reality to which we don’t always have access. It’s a look at what
will happen when this life passes away, and we stand face-to-face with the Lord.
When that happens, Jesus tells us that He’ll divide people into two groups:
the sheep at His right hand and the goats at His left. He explains that where you end up depends,
at least according to the reading itself, exclusively on how you treated others.
The sheep fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick, welcomed the stranger.
While the goats...didn’t do any of these things.
As we dig deeper, we realize that salvation and judgment
aren’t merely about rules and commandments. It’s not merely that the sheep *followed* a rule
and that the goats *broke* a rule. Because, when the sheep fed the hungry
and welcomed the stranger, something far deeper was going on beneath the surface.
Something of which the sheep themselves weren’t even aware.
As the Lord tells us, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren,
you did it to me.” (Matthew 25:40) Jesus surprises the sheep,
telling them that all of their acts of love and caring were done *for* Him.
And He surprises the goats, telling them that all of their acts of indifference and
callousness were committed *against* Him. To feed a hungry person is to feed Jesus.
To ignore a person alone in prison is to *ignore* Jesus.
The Lord is doing something shocking here: He’s identifying, not with the ones who care for the
poor, but with the poor themselves. Not with the ones who visit the sick,
but with the sick themselves. Jesus--the King of Kings, the Lord
of Lords--is identifying with the lowly, the humble, the marginalized, the forgotten.
Of course, if anyone should identify with the kind and righteous it’s Christ, who is so good
and loving that He is beyond goodness and love. So the Lord’s choice to identify Himself with
the lowest in society changes everything. Saint Paul shows one aspect of these monumental
implications in this week’s Epistle, where he tells the Corinthians to avoid doing something
that may cause others to stumble. He frames this conversation around food,
which is why we read this passage in the lead-up to Great Lent.
But even though we’re about to get super concerned with dietary choices, it’s not for our own sake.
The actual lesson is about caring for those who might see the way we eat and stumble.
One of the challenges early Christians had to deal with was how to find food they could eat.
In the ancient world, there was no division between church and state. The food available
in the marketplace came from sacrifices offered in pagan temples (which Christians avoided).
We’re not going to get too deep into idolatry right now, or why Christians avoided meat
sacrificed to demons. (Though we might be getting to
that in a future episode with our friends on the “Lord of Spirits” podcasts.)
For now, let’s just point out that some Christians in Corinth thought it actually wasn’t a big deal
to eat food sacrificed to demons. So Paul’s response is to look at the problem
a different way, “Ok, you don’t think eating this food affects you. But what
about the effect it has on others?” Because some Christians might see their
brothers and sisters eating food offered to idols and be confused,
even scandalized. And maybe even led back to the demons that most of the city worshipped.
Paul is telling the Corinthians that, even if they’re right (which they’re not),
even if eating meat sacrificed to idols won’t hurt them, it’s still something they should avoid
because of the way it can hurt others. Because right and wrong is about more than
what’s right or wrong for you. That’s why Paul writes, “Therefore,
if food is a cause of my brother's falling, I will never eat meat, lest I cause my brother
to fall.” (1 Corinthians 8:13) And this controversy in Corinth leads us
back to the bigger picture: that Judgement Day is not about whether we did what was right or wrong,
acceptable or unacceptable, in some internal sense. Judgement
Day is about the way we treat others. Paul knew this. So he taught the Corinthians that
their way of life shouldn’t be guided by some abstract sense of what is “right and wrong”
for them but by their love for each other. And this is a teaching that applies no less to us
today, whether we’re talking about what we eat or how we act in the world as Christians.
If someone sees us eating a hamburger on a fasting day, for example,
they might grow angry or disappointed. They might fall into negative thoughts,
and think poorly about us or the Church or maybe even God Himself.
And this is terrible because Christ didn’t come to be a stumbling block for the weak;
He came to free them. He didn’t come to ignore the sick
and imprisoned; He came to visit them. He didn’t come to destroy the humble and
meek and lowly; He came to give them life. And He did this by fully identifying with them.
By standing alongside them and embracing their suffering as His own.
St Silouan the Athonite, an incredible 20th century saint,
once said that “my brother is my life.”
And in this week’s Gospel and Epistle readings, we see exactly this:
That our ability to receive eternal life is fundamentally rooted in the way we treat
our fellow human beings, especially those whom the world considers “the least of these.”
That God passes judgment on us when we cause others to stumble, when we add to the pain
and isolation and death that our brothers and sisters are already experiencing.
Because we aren’t just ignoring the poor or the sick or those who might be scandalized by our
self-centered ways; we’re ignoring Jesus. Which we may not realize. And those who avoid
this judgment, those who raise up rather than tear down their brothers and sisters,
have no idea what they’re doing either. When they feed the hungry or visit prisoners,
they think they’re simply helping out other people.
They don’t know that they’re doing this kindness for Christ Himself.
This is something we’ve seen again and again the last few episodes--in the Pharisee,
in the Older Brother. That what people thought they knew wasn’t quite right. That there was
more to the story that they were missing. We may think that salvation is simply between
us and God, but we’re actually more connected than we think.
We may think that our actions don’t matter, but they do. Our conduct in
the world--the way we treat others--is how we serve (or fail to serve) Christ Himself.
And one of the consequences of that connection, as we see in this Gospel reading, is that
our normal ideas of philanthropy and charity get turned upside down.
We tend to believe that we are the ones who are serving, that we are the ones who are helping,
that we are the ones who are saving our brothers and sisters in need.
That we are the good guys. The saviors. Which, if you think about it,
is probably how the Pharisee from episode 165 would think about his philanthropy.
But in this week’s Gospel reading Jesus, the Savior of humankind,
isn’t identifying with the ones who offer help. He identifies with the poor who receive it.
And I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of a time I ever rescued Jesus.
Because I don’t save Jesus; He’s the one who saves me.
And when I recognize Him in the face of the oppressed, in the face of the afflicted, in the
face of the needy, then, according to this Gospel reading, I should actually see myself as the one
who desperately needs to be saved through my own care for my brothers and sisters in need.
They save me. Not vice versa. And this is a mystery that should cause us
deep and never-ending reflection and awe...and gratitude.
We may think that we have right and wrong figured out, but guiding our lives based on
our own rightness can lead us to do something very wrong: to ignore our brothers and sisters.
To scandalize and hurt them. To lead them into an unholy life.
We once again become consumed by our own holiness, our own righteousness, our own sense of what is
right and good. A trap that we saw the Pharisee fall into just a couple of weeks ago.
St. Paul captures this idea perfectly in this Sunday’s Epistle when he warns, “And so by your
knowledge this weak man is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died.” (1 Corinthians 8:11)
We should pay attention to this warning because when we cause others to fall into sin,
lack of faith, and unrighteousness, it’s actually we who fall the most.
The only cure for this is to step out of our self-preoccupation,
and even self-obsession, and instead make others the primary focus of our lives.
Because the readings for Judgment Sunday warn us that we will be judged
by the orientation of our hearts. An orientation that we need to shift away
from the self and out towards God and neighbor. Towards Christ, who is in our midst in the poor
and the oppressed. We need this reminder here,
at the doorstep of Great Lent, as we prepare for forty days of struggle and work.
Forty days of ascetic labor that will grind at our hearts, chip away at the sin and selfishness and
spiritual blindness that builds up within us. Forty days of repentance, and grace,
and fervently reaching out to the Lord. Forty days of pushing myself to realize that
no one needs God’s grace and mercy more than I need it.
The practices and struggle of Great Lent are part of the ascetic battle we fight every
day of the year. The struggle to develop the kind of heart that will be drawn to the Lord
even when times are tough. Even when those around us are in sin.
And especially when those around us need love and care.
This is the struggle to develop a heart that will seek out the Lord in the humble and meek,
a heart that will serve the Lord even when we can’t see Him,
even when we’re not sure that He’s there. A heart that would never cause anyone to stumble
but seeks only the salvation of all. So let's Be the Bee and live our
lives by caring for others. Be the bee and live Orthodoxy.
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