Sunday of the Last Judgement

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
True Freedom in Love
Sunday of the Last Judgement
11 February, 2007
1 Corinthians 8:8-9:2 ; Matthew 25:31-46


In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

As we are about to enter Great Lent, let us remember the freedom that we have as Christians, about which the Apostle was just now speaking to us. Freedom comes with living in a relationship of love with Jesus Christ. As we are entering Great Lent, it is important for us to be careful how we observe the customs of Great Lent. Some people are tempted to turn the observance of Great Lent into a sort of “reign of terror”, one might say, where we are afraid everyday of breaking some rule about what we can or cannot eat.

The Apostle is speaking to us today about how we are supposed to be behaving because of peoples’ sensitivities as to what has been offered to idols, and what has not ; what it is right to eat, and what it is not right to eat. I have heard often enough in Vancouver in Chinese or Indian restaurants : “What is safe to eat ?” For a Christian, it is all safe to eat if we know what we are about and if we have our wits about us. When we invoke the Lord’s blessing upon the food, that food is offered to Him in thanksgiving. Our partaking of that food is in the context of Jesus Christ who is the Provider of that food. It is not the fault of the food if the people who are preparing it think that it has something to do with their idols. They are mistaken ; we are not. We have the freedom to partake of this food as long as we invoke the Lord’s blessing upon it. However, as the Apostle said, there are some people who simply do not quite “catch the drift” yet, and they are still bound with fear. They are afraid that something bad will happen if they eat food that has been offered to idols. For their sake, we do not eat that food, but not because we do not have the freedom to do so, and not because we could not eat it. However, because we are being sensitive to the fragility of our brothers and sisters, we do not eat it.

This is how it has to be, too, in Great Lent. Some people, because of health conditions, have recommendations from their doctors and the blessing of their clergy to eat things that are not strictly following the rules, because food is also in the category of medicine. For instance, if someone is a diabetic (and some people are severe diabetics), and does not eat according to the rules, that person could die. The doctors tell diabetics, for the sake of their life and their health, that they must eat certain things in certain ways. They are given a particular blessing to do whatever they are doing. Nevertheless, they have to pay attention to the sensitivities of their brothers and sisters who are trying to observe the fast and the abstinences correctly in accordance with the custom. The diabetics, for example, cannot go in front of everyone else and eat liberally whatever the doctors say they have to eat as though to say : “Ha ha ! Look at me !” If a person yields to the temptation to flaunt what they are able to eat because of an illness or a weakness, then the flaunting takes away the blessing, and the freedom can become shackles. The diabetic, or whoever it is, has to be sensitive to other people’s observances during Great Lent. This person should protect whatever weakness there might be in the brother or sister who is trying to observe the fast carefully so as not to lead them into temptation by eating what s/he must eat but which the others should not eat. All this is concerned with maturity in the love of Jesus Christ. Living as mature Christians, we have freedom in Christ.

On this Sunday of the Last Judgement, we are presented with what will happen at the end of all things when everything is gathered up by God into the Kingdom. What will happen then ? We live in a society which has all sorts of people being driven by fear about what might happen at the end, and about when this end will come. In their fear they try to be ready all the time for this. I remember since my childhood all sorts of stories about people who have heard from someone that the end of the world will come on this day or on that day. These people drive up onto the top of a mountain, and they wait and they wait and they wait. Nothing happens, and they go down disappointed. This still does happen ! These people seem to think that they can have an advantage because they have some sort of secret knowledge about the end of the world, and therefore they can more prepared than anyone else. Our Saviour Himself said : “‘Of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of Heaven, but My Father only’” (Matthew 24:36). It is no-one’s business when it will happen.

Our business is to live a Christian life that is filled with the love of Jesus Christ, and that is pleasing to Jesus Christ. Then we will have real confidence that everything will be well, and that we will have life in the Kingdom. As I have said before in many places, we are standing here today as we stand every Sunday, and at every Divine Liturgy, in the Temple of the Lord, in the presence of the Lord. We sometimes sing a tropar that says : “Standing in the Temple of Your glory, we think that we are in Heaven”. And we are. We are standing in the Temple of the Lord in Heaven right now in His Kingdom. This Table on which the Divine Liturgy is being served is the throne of God. From this throne Christ Himself will feed us. We are saying in our prayers that we are offering to Him everything, including the Second Coming (as though it had already happened). When we are standing here in the presence of the Lord, we are in the Kingdom, as it were, on the Last Day as though the end had already happened. We are standing eternally in the Kingdom, in the presence of the Lord of Life, the Lord who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

As we are here day by day, week by week, in the Temple of the Lord, it is important that we take confidence that His love for us is such that it does not matter when the actual end of everything will come. What matters is that we love Him now, and that we are faithful to Him now, and that this faithfulness will bring us into the Kingdom of Heaven because the Saviour loves us. As we say in other prayers, we acknowledge that He does not want us to perish. He wants us to be with Him, to live with Him in the Kingdom. He does everything He can in order to bring us there with Him.

With our hearts and our minds firmly fixed on the Saviour, let us live our lives in confidence in Him, offering our fasting and our abstinence and everything else to Him in love, because He is the Source of everything. He gives everything to us. Even if we work for it, He still gives it to us : it comes from Him. Let us glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.