A Fire That Sets Things Right

Lessons: Eze 34:11-20; Ps 95; 1 Cor 8:8–9:2; Mt 25:31-46

This is the Sunday of the Last Judgment. That title alone is enough to make people uneasy. The lectionary does not soften the blow. It confronts us.

And it does so on purpose.

In this season of Proetoimasía, the Church is preparing us. We are not dropped into Lent without warning. We are walked there. Slowly. Intentionally. First humility. Then repentance. Then forgiveness. Then fasting.

Judgment Sunday stands where it does because we need it.

Next week we will stand in Forgiveness Sunday. We will bow before one another. We will hear and speak words of mercy. But today the Church reminds us why we need mercy at all. We are forgiven, yes. But we are still sinners. We are still capable of cruelty, indifference, and blindness.

God is love. God will reconcile all things. But there is no cheap grace in the Kingdom.

Grace heals. Grace restores. But grace also calls us to repentance. It calls us to humility. It calls us to cooperation with the Spirit who is slowly transfiguring us into the likeness of Christ. The fathers called this theosis. Becoming by grace what Christ is by nature.

So what is judgment?

Scripture does not let us reduce it to a courtroom scene in the sky.

The psalms speak of God judging the nations in righteousness. Proverbs tells us that doing what is right and fair pleases the Lord more than sacrifice. The prophets return to the same theme over and over. God judges societies that devour the poor. God judges nations that exploit the weak. God judges people who cheat workers, neglect widows, and forget the foreigner.

Judgment and justice are intertwined.

In older translations, the same Hebrew word can be rendered as judgment or justice. When God judges, God sets things right. He exposes what is crooked. He defends those who cannot defend themselves.

Yes, there are passages that sound severe. Isaiah speaks of fire. Revelation echoes the plagues of Egypt. Empires fall. Babylon falls. Rome falls. Every power that builds itself on oppression eventually collapses under the weight of its own sin.

History confirms what Scripture proclaims. Injustice always carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction.

But the Gospel for the Last Judgment does something even more unsettling. It brings the focus from empires to us.

“I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

Judgment is not abstract. It is relational.

Christ identifies himself with the least. The prisoner. The immigrant. The poor. The sick. The forgotten. The one we would rather not see.

If Christ were to stand in our midst today, how would we fare?

We live in a culture where religion is often reduced to performance. We gather. We sing. We pray. And then we go home unchanged. Or worse, we support policies and practices that crush the very people Christ names as his own.

Take prisons as one example. The very word penitentiary comes from penitence. The original vision was rehabilitation. Restoration. A return to community. Yet we have turned incarceration into vengeance. We brand people for life. We deny them work, dignity, and hope. And then we wonder why the cycle repeats.

Or consider our long history with immigrants. In the nineteenth century, Irish and Italian Catholics were treated as threats. Foreign. Untrustworthy. Not truly American. Protestant identity hardened itself in opposition to them. Fear reshaped theology.

The irony is painful. Many of those who now resist newcomers descend from those once despised.

Scripture commands care for the foreigner. Not because foreigners are convenient. But because Israel was once a foreigner in Egypt. Because we remember our own story.

Judgment exposes hypocrisy.

But there are two temptations in the Church.

The first is open hostility. A faith twisted into a weapon. Religion used to justify cruelty.

The second is quiet comfort. A tidy, polite Christianity that asks nothing. A Sunday refuge that demands no sacrifice and risks no confrontation. A spiritual country club.

Both stand under judgment.

To hate the vulnerable is sin. To ignore them is also sin.

The Sunday of the Last Judgment is not meant to crush us. It is meant to awaken us. We are heading toward Forgiveness Sunday. Toward the healing embrace of Christ. But forgiveness is not anesthesia. It is empowerment.

General William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, once said, “While women weep, as they do now, I’ll fight. While little children go hungry, as they do now, I’ll fight. While men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now, I’ll fight… I’ll fight to the very end.”

That is not the language of hatred. It is the language of love refusing to remain passive.

Christ does not call us to be angry mobs. He calls us to be faithful servants. Soldiers of mercy. People who feed, clothe, visit, welcome, and advocate.

And we do not do this by our own strength.

The Spirit is already at work. The Spirit convicts. The Spirit empowers. The Spirit transfigures.

Judgment is real. God is not indifferent. But neither is God cruel. His judgment is the fire that burns away falsehood so that truth can live. It is the light that exposes injustice so that justice can flourish.

As we move toward Forgiveness Sunday and then into Great Lent, let us not turn away from what we have heard.

Let us examine ourselves honestly. Let us repent without despair. Let us receive forgiveness deeply. And then let us go out and live differently.

For Christ is already among the hungry, the prisoner, the stranger.

And in meeting them, we meet him.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.