Last week, we heard Jesus teaching about God’s judgment in the parable of the talents, and I asked you to take away one idea in particular: Since God’s essential nature is love, God’s love judges everything in this world that goes against love. Love is the limit and the measure of God’s justice and judgment, which is why Jesus can teach that all the law and the prophets, the entire history of God’s dealings with the people of Israel, hang on the two great commandments: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. That’s what God really cares about: do you love him, and do you love each other? The parable of the talents teaches us the consequences of our failure to love God; the failure to respond to the love that God has shown us. If we do not have love, if we do not invite the God who is love itself into our lives, then we have nothing; without love, our lives are empty and anguished.
But Jesus also teaches us that it’s not enough for all of us to run around loving God all by ourselves. We were not made to be discrete individuals captivated by the brilliance of our creator, with no mind for anything else; we were made to be social animals who share the love for our maker with each other, and in doing so, showing love to each other as well. Love is meant to bind us together, to knit us together into a great body in which all are cared for and valued. In fact, God is clear that unless we love one another, we can’t really say that we love him with any honesty, because we aren’t obeying his instructions to care for each other! God’s history with the people of Israel in the Old Testament is a long saga of God saying, “What good are your sacrifices and your religious observances and your claims that you love me when you ignore the plight of the poor, and the widows and the orphans?” God is always asking us, “How can you say you love me if you do not love the people I love?” God especially loves the weakest, the most helpless, and even the most useless people in the eyes of the world! God loves the starving children of Haiti; God loves the soldiers and the civilians in Iraq who have lost limbs and hands and feet in the war; God loves the homeless of Boston and God loves the men and women who have lost their minds in nursing homes, who need other people to feed and clothe them. God loves the people who are easiest for us to ignore, and God asks us to love them, too.
The Gospel we have heard today ties all of these things together: love of God, love of neighbor, God’s love for those the world would rather not love, and of course, judgment. All of them are brought together in Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, who is both our God and our neighbor—God and man together—and who will be our judge when he comes as the King of all the nations and peoples of the world. In the scene of Christ separating the sheep from the goats, the righteous from the accursed, we see and hear the judgment of love. Christ tells us that when we clothe the naked, or feed the hungry; when we welcome the stranger, or tend the sick, or visit the prisoner, we are doing all of those things for him, for the King of all creation. The righteous perform these acts of love, not because they seek to curry favor with their God and king, but because love has become part of their nature—loving those who need their love is just what they do.
The goats, the ones who are condemned to eternal punishment, are bewildered. When the King accuses them of neglect, they ask “Lord when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked, or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?” Of course, if they had seen the King in his glory, they would have done anything for him, but not out of love. If the goats knew what love was, if they had love in their hearts, they would already have given aid to the needy that Christ the King condemns them for neglecting. Godly love, the kind of love that God shows to us, and asks us to give to each other, does not take status or privilege or rank into account—it is indiscriminate, impartial. Godly love goes where it is needed, and we all need love.
And that’s the truth of this Gospel: the righteous sheep at Christ’s right hand, the ones who will inherit the kingdom of heaven, love the people who are in need and the King of glory at the same time. So, it’s not that God loves the poor and the needy more than everyone else; God loves them because God loves everything and everyone, and if God has a special love for those the world prefers not to love, well that’s because God’s love may be the only love they know. We are commanded to have love for everyone, not just the poor and the forgotten in the world. Our neighbor is anyone who crosses our path, including the actual neighbor who lives next door and blows leaves onto our lawn, the family members who insist that you travel 500 miles every year for Thanksgiving Dinner, the really annoying people in the supermarket who roll their carts down the middle of the aisles, instead of keeping to one side. More seriously, we are asked to love the people who have hurt us, the people who have rejected us, the people in whom we don’t see the possibility of love. We are asked to make love a way of life—that’s the righteousness that the King of Glory rewards in his judgment. And that’s one reason why we need to love God, because without God’s endless and boundless love helping us to live a life of love, we just don’t have the strength to love the people we’re supposed to love.
How are we to learn this depth of love? How can we possibly hope to love the way God wants us to love? Well, maybe we should start by learning from the one who will judge our efforts in the end. Jesus came to us teaching the law of love, healing the sick and helping the poor—living the life of love that God asks of all of us. And instead of being received by the world, acclaimed and hailed as a great teacher and miracle worker, he was met with fear, and suspicion, and ultimately hatred. The world rejected him, at first; some were drawn to the love and kindness he showed, but more were afraid of it, afraid of what it might mean for their power and privilege. And so they put Christ’s love on trial, the powers of the world stood in judgment over him, and they condemned him to die. And the people Jesus had loved, the ones he had shown his divine love to, most of them were too afraid to stay with him. The Son of God, the fullness of God’s love, was judged by humankind, and condemned, and nailed to a cross to die, abandoned by his friends. And what words did he have for his tormentors? “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” The life of love is the way of the cross; there is no thanks or reward for it in this life—the way of love is its own reward.
The King that we are waiting for has been a prisoner, has been naked and thirsty. The Judge that we are waiting for knows what it means to be judged unjustly. Christ the King is Christ the Crucified; Jesus the Judge is Jesus the good shepherd; the God and Lord who will come to judge the living and the dead is also the child of Mary, who was born in a stable, on that first Christmas. God’s judgment has already been made—it is the judgment of love and forgiveness. We are guilty, all of us, of being unloving, but we can rely on the judge’s mercy: he has already forgiven us—all that is left is for us to come to him—again and again—to confess our guilt, and to ask for his assistance in living better, trying to follow him in the way of love. Come Lord Jesus, come O King of Love, and reign in our hearts.
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