Text: Matthew 25:31-46

One Friday night some friends and I had been to see our school’s basketball team play. When the game was over, we got into the car, and headed off for an all-night coffee shop at a gas station by the highway. I swung the car into the parking lot, and one of my friends said, "There’s no-one here. Let’s go to the bowling alley,"—just up the highway. Without stopping, I turned back onto the highway, and immediately the flashing lights came on behind me. It was my bad luck to enter a highway without stopping—right in front of a police cruiser!

The RCMP Constable was obviously disappointed not to be able to charge me with anything more than a minor traffic infraction, so instead of writing me a ticket, he gave me a summons to appear in court in a few days’ time.

When I went to court, the magistrate seemed annoyed that I was there facing such a trivial charge. He wasted no time, fined me $5 + $2.50 court costs, and told me to go back to school. But the memory has stuck with me, of standing before a person who represented Authority and then submitting to his judgement.

That was the only time I was a defendant in court. By the grace of God, I pray it will remain the only time.

I suspect that most of us don’t enjoy being judged by others, not even when we have asked for it, or paid for the privilege. Just ask a University student around exam time! Whether it’s a University exam or a court appearance or a job interview, any situation where one is the object of another person’s judgment can raise fears of "not measuring up." We may rightly fear the consequences of "failure."

Therefore, we might be excused for finding today’s Gospel a little unsettling, because it tells us that "all the nations" will be judged. The judge will not be a traffic court magistrate, but Christ himself, sitting in glory upon the throne of divine kingship. It can be hard to reconcile this image of our Saviour with "gentle Jesus, meek and mild." Nonetheless, it is a side of Jesus that we can not ignore.

We will be judged, standing before the throne for Jesus’ recognition of us as those who have done his Father’s will.

If we proclaim the faith that "Jesus is Lord," we must also live that faith. Living that faith means living as Jesus did, not motivated by our own purposes or needs, but by the needs of others. Those who find themselves at Jesus’ right hand (the place of honour in Hebrew thought) are those who have served the needs of others without thought for themselves.

The call to discipleship, sounded here for the last time in Matthew’s Gospel, is a call to relationship with God’s people, a relationship founded in service: diakonia, the Greek word from which we get the title "Deacon." We are called to service to all of God’s people, not because it will win us salvation (that dehumanizes them, reducing them to means for our ends), but because serving their needs is God’s will. Very simply, it is the right thing to do.

The life of faith, this life that we call discipleship, is a life that looks outward. It is so easy to look inward, to our own needs as individuals or a congregation, and to say, "We have to look after our own first." But very clearly, our primary calling is to look outwards. Looking inwards will inevitably drain all of our spiritual energy, all of our resources, everything that God has given us, leaving nothing for the mission Christ has entrusted to us.

Speaking to the Anglican Congress in 1963, Archbishop Michael Ramsey said, "The Church that lives to itself dies to itself." (see, e.g. http://www.st-petersweb.org/lesson28.html) Every parish and diocese, including St. Matthew’s Cathedral, ought to remind itself of this message periodically. When the church is truly being the church—living for others, prepared like Jesus to give our all for others in humble service—then I believe matters of church growth and finances will become moot. When we turn inwards, concerning ourselves primarily with our own homegrown issues, we present little or nothing to attract others or to commend our fellowship to their attention.

Let us, then, be vigilant in keeping our eyes on the needs of the world around us, ready to stand before Christ our King and to receive the gracious judgment of him who died for the needs of the whole world.