This sermon was originally preached at Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Sherman, Texas, on Sunday, December 8, 2024.
Texts: Song of Songs 2:8-14, Psalm 50, Luke 21:25-33
Advent is a time when we remember and celebrate the coming of Christ into the world— but which coming?
For many Christians, it is the first coming of Christ into the world, when the Holy Child is born of the Blessed Virgin Mary. And so, Advent is a time to remember Mary and her pregnancy— to prayerfully await the joy of Christmas, the birth of Emmanuel.
But for others, this emphasis is too sentimental, and the stress is instead laid on the second coming of Christ, when he returns in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead. Advent, then, is a time of repentance, of preparing for the judgment we all must face.
To focus on both at once may create for us a sense of dissonance in this season. We may ask ourselves, What is it we’re really getting ready for?
But the wisdom of the Church in ordering the church year this way is revealed when we realize that we cannot understand either coming of Christ except in relation to the other. We cannot understand the Last Judgment unless we truly understand the miracle of the Incarnation.
For the One who judges us is the One who was born for us.
Our understanding of the Judgment Day must be grounded in who Christ is, in who he has revealed himself to be as the incarnate Word of God, the Son of Mary. Otherwise, every Scripture about judgment can become distorted and turned into something of an anti-Gospel.
And there are many passages of Scripture about God’s fearful judgment of the world at the end of time. We have two of them in our readings:
In Psalm 50: The LORD shall call the heaven from above, and the earth, that he may judge his people. “Gather my saints together unto me…” And the heavens shall declare his righteousness; For God himself is Judge.
And in our Gospel, Our Lord speaks of his return to judge the world at the end of the age: “And there will be signs in the sun and moon and stars, and upon the earth distress of nations in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.”
These scenes of the fearful return of Christ and of his coming to judge the world have inspired some ghastly images in the history of Christian art— images of condemnation and terror, of fright and despair.
One of the most memorable scenes of the Russian film Andrei Rublev is when the titular character, the great painter-monk, admits that he is utterly unable to complete his assignment: to paint a fresco of The Day of Judgment, with the requisite images of sinners being cast into the flames while monstrous demons breathe smoke out of their nostrils.
For the saintly artist, this is unbearable. He cannot paint such a spectacle, because however much it might bewilder and unsettle his audience, to him, it doesn’t speak the truth about who Christ is— it does not fit with his idea of the lovingkindness of the merciful God.
(And in real life, the fresco he ended up painting is quite subdued— he doesn’t depict the condemned or any demons, but only the righteous).1
If our idea of Judgment has no trace of love in it, if Christ the Judge is seen as vindictive and sadistic— in other words, if Judgment Day has been disconnected from Christmas— then something of the heart of the Gospel has been ignored.
Our Judge is the One who loves us. The Judge before whom we will stand on Judgment Day is the One who came as a Babe, laid in the manger. The Judge of the living and the dead is the One who took flesh of the Blessed Virgin Mary: the One who became human, who became like us in all ways but sin, who lived a human life, who faced temptation and sorrow, who longs for the salvation of all, and who died on the Cross and rose from the dead to defeat those infernal powers which constrain his beloved creatures.
The character of Christ does not change between his earthly life and his Return. He is who he is.
And one of the great miracles of the Incarnation is that the Judge of all has become one of us. God now has a human face— and not simply so that He may look upon us, but that we may look upon him. On the Last Day, we shall see our Judge face to face. We shall behold him who is our Life.
And if we have truly understood who Christ is, and if we are truly living as his disciples, his return and his judgment are not fearsome but something to be welcomed. “When you see these things taking place, look up and lift your heads, for your redemption is drawing near.”
When the celestial powers are shaken, and there are signs in the sun and the moon and the stars, and the Son of Man comes on a cloud with power and great glory, most of the people on earth will bow their heads in fear, but we will look up to behold our Savior. For we know that the One who comes into the world once more is not just the fearful Judge, but the Desire of every nation, the Joy for which every heart longs.
We look for Christ with the same eagerness the Bride looks for the Groom in the Song of Songs. “The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved says to me, ‘Arise my love, for the winter is past and the spring is here. The fig tree puts forth its fruit and the flowers blossom.’”
On that Last Day, the Lover of Humankind will bound forth to meet us. Jesus will look at us with his eyes of compassion, and we will raise our eyes to meet his, to behold that holy face. The Judgment Day is the revelation of the Beauty of Christ, whom we long to see and whose countenance delights us.
We want to meet him, we want him to judge us, to reveal to us who we are and who he is. We long for him to set all things right in us, to destroy all that is false in us so that what is truly real can endure. And it may be painful for us on that Day to see who we really are and how we’ve actually lived. The Truth is painful, sometimes. And Christ, for us, is Absolute Truth come to save us and heal us. The process will be difficult, yet it’s what is needed for us to enter the joy of our Lord.
And this process begins here and now, as we continually look to the Lord, repenting of our sins and falsehoods, so that we may become more and more the persons God has made us to be.
May we all see the Face of the Beloved, the Face of the One who loves us, the Holy Child and the Merciful Judge, the twice-Adventing Lord of Lords.
Come, Lord Jesus, and look on us even now in judgment and in love. And we shall behold thy face and be radiant, unto the ages of ages. Amen.
1 Rublev’s fresco of the Last Judgment can be viewed here: https://www.wikiart.org/en/andrei-rublev/the-last-judgement-1408
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