Christ the Logos at the Beginning and End
Anyone who reads even a page of the Gospels will know that Jesus often confronted popular Jewish beliefs – especially among the Pharisees and other religious figures. After centuries of suffering under foreign domination, it is understandable that at the time of Jesus most Jews believed that at the end of time God would vindicate the Jewish people against the nations and restore Israel and temple worship. And this way of thinking has been adopted by evangelical Christians who are obsessively focused on Israel, and what they call the Rapture and the Tribulation. But there is no such message in the Parable of the Last Judgment (Matthew 25:31-46).
Almost all Orthodox, Catholic and mainline Protestant (but not Evangelical) interpreters read the parable plainly as Jesus told it. To place it in a particular context and limit ‘the least’ of Christ’s ‘brethren’ in the parable to the Jews in a hypothetical post-Rapture Tribulation period is simply beyond anything that I can read in the parable. But it is very much at the core of the scandalous self-serving Scripture-distorting fantasies of American Evangelicals. Who are the least of Christ’s brethren in the parable? Exactly the ones Christ identifies: the hungry, the naked, the prisoners, the sick, the foreigners. In other words, the very people that the Pharisees and the religious leaders usually separated and ignored! And in return, separation is exactly what the Son of Man does at the judgment! Like a shepherd who separates his goats and sheep. The Judgment is separation!
6th century Byzantine mosaic in Ravenna, Italy
Note, the goats and the sheep are under one shepherd’s ownership! And when the Son of Man separates the nations, the peoples of the world, he separates like the shepherd does. Because the Son of Man has authority over all peoples and nations. The Father gave him that authority: “The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son. . . and has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of man” (John 5: 22 & 27).
The shepherd has both sheep and goats. In chapter 13 of Matthew we read a parable with a similar message:
Another parable he put before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the householder came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then has it weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said, ‘No; lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’
The weeds and the wheat co-exist, side by side. God allows them to co-exist – until the harvest, which is a symbol of the Judgment. So God allows people to co-exist in the church, even if some are put in the church or controlled by the enemy of God. There are sheep and goats among all Christians. And they will be separated and will be judged.
But there are deeper truths in today’s parable. In John’s Gospel we read:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Magnificent statement of faith, right? Everything was created by God – by God whose name is the Word. Now that sounds a little strange. Until we read a couple paragraphs further down: And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only-begotten Son from the Father.
Ah, so the Word is the Son of God. Yes, and then to finish the identification of the Word: For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.
So John’s Gospel tells us that this Jesus in whom we believe is the Son of God, and he is also the Word of God through whom EVERYTHING – no exceptions – was made. When was everything made? In Genesis chapter 1.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.
And God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
And God said, “Let there be a firmament…
And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered…
And God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation…
And God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament…
And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures…
And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures…
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…
And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.Are you hearing it? Are you getting it? God said, God spoke, and everything was created. God the Word created everything. And John takes us to the heart of who God is, and who Jesus Christ is, and tells us in his Gospel that in the beginning was the Word, the Logos, and everything was created by the Logos, and the Logos became flesh and lived among us. He pitched his tent among us – that is the literal translation of John 1:14, καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν. Paul tells us in his letter to the Philippians (2:6-8) that though he was in the form of God, he did not consider equality with God as something to be grasped, to be held on, but he emptied himself and appeared in the form of man. Same image as the one John paints for us.
So when God says in Genesis “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…” and if it is the Logos, the Word, that is speaking, we are made in the image of the Logos, of the Word who became flesh. We are in the image of Jesus Christ. And that is why Jesus is able to say, Inasmuch as we do it to one of the least we are doing it to him. His form is permanently fixed in our midst.
There is a beginning and there is an end. And God the Word, the Son of Man, is at the center of both beginning and end!
The Orthodox Church reads the entire Bible holistically. We read all of it! And so when Orthodox iconographers depict the creation of the universe in Genesis, they show Jesus standing in the midst of creation, on the shore of a sea, in fields of grass. And finally, Jesus is shown breathing into the lump of earth that is called Adam. Someone said – I can’t remember who – The saints are a mosaic in which the face of Christ emerges.
God became flesh. The Word of God who created us, became one of us – fully, completely one of us, in every way. And not only that, but he humbled himself, even as to a servant, even unto death on the Cross. Therefore God so highly exalted him, that at the name of Jesus every living being in heaven and on earth will bow in worship and adoration, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:10-11). Amen.
Text Version of Sermon delivered on Sunday of the Last Judgment, 10 March 2024