Every Day is Judgment Day

The gospel lesson for today is St. Luke 12:49-56.  Admittedly, not the easiest of lessons to preach, although it also strikes me that this is also not the easiest of lessons to hear!  Coming towards the end of a chapter filled with reminders that (1) life is short, (2) so live it for Christ, (3) because one day, we'll meet him in judgment, the closing verses summerize the whole chapter by reminding us that the way we live our lives matter.  And the time to realize that is right now.    "...why do you not know how to interpret the present time?", Jesus asks in verse 56.  In other words, the time for doing things God's way is now.  In the entire context of this chapter, you can hear Jesus saying, "Oh, and by the way, it doesn't just matter now, it matters forever!"

Obviously, much in this chapter points to the Second Coming, when as we say in the Apostles' Creed, "He will come again to judge the living and the dead."  But before we lapse off into the kind of thinking that dismisses that day as non-existent or something so far off as not to matter, let us remember that when that day comes (and it shall), it is what we have done or not done, believed or not believed, lived out or not lived out that will count.  In this sense, the great poet Emerson was right when he said (and this is a paraphrase), "One of the great illusions of humankind is our thinking that how we live today doesn't matter.  To the contrary, the wise person will understand that every day is judgment day."

The great Christian writer and lay theologian C.S. Lewis echoed this thought when he wrote, "Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God... or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God.... To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state of the other."

“Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other,” Lewis said. “Every day is judgment day,” Emerson said. What profound statements they are! Because they remind us that everything we do or don't do—every choice we make or don't make—is added to the ultimate equation. It's good Wesleyan theology, this. For we're either going on to perfection—being made more and more like Christ with every action and every choice—or we're not.

So yes, it matters. It all matters. And everything counts. Every action or inaction, the things we do and the things we neglect to do. Every word we say, or neglect to say. Every time we make a racist comment, or tell a joke at another person's expense. Every time we hold a grudge and refuse to forgive. Every time we pass along gossip, or act selfishly. Every time we close our hearts, our minds, our doors to people who are different but who, like us, were created in the image of God. Every time we curse those in prison rather than visiting them. Every time we pretend not to see the poor. Every time we ignore the homeless, overlook the hungry, refuse to care for the sick and needy in our midst. Every time we fail or refuse to love. Every time we choose golf or football, the beach or the lake over church. Every time we choose anything over Jesus. It matters. It all matters.  Both now and forever.

And I'm pretty sure this is the message in today's gospel lesson Jesus wants us to hear.