Back to Sermon List

I have a friend who was a minister in Chicago when we lived there, he married Laura and I actually, Bob Lee, who received a letter from a parishioner that was entitled "Thoughts and Questions while shaving". It read something like this, "What has become of the last judgement? - Do we not, by stressing the idea of acceptance and forgiveness, tend to relegate our sins to the category of minor peccadilloes? (minor offenses). I'm not in favor of a return to the hell fire and damnation school of theology - but - What has become of the last judgement?"

This is a question that must have occurred to many Christians who have been listening to sermons from preachers like me. There's lots of talk about the love of God, acceptance and forgiveness - but not much about judgment, hell and damnation. Why is that? Are we just avoiding it? The last judgement figures into the New Testament pretty heavily and the Gospel writers record even Jesus mentioning it. I have mentioned to some of you, and to the fellow who wrote that article about me in the newspaper that I am a Christian Universalist. What does that mean?

I couldn't avoid the topic this week, though I tried. It just kept coming back to haunt me. It started with the scriptures. In I Thessalonians Paul is writing to the people of Thessalonica that Jesus was coming soon. They didn't know the day or the hour. He told them not to be afraid, and not to worry about their fellow Christians who had already died, but tells them to have hope and not grieve, as the pagans do who have no hope in the Resurrection. Then he tells them to keep busy doing good work, for we don't know how long it will be, but Christ will return. Christ will come the way rich Romans came into important gatherings, with a trumpet to announce them and their name called out. Then we will meet Christ in the clouds with all those who have died. It's easy to see how fundamentalist Christians can take this literally and expect the end of the world with Jesus descending and all of them rising up, leaving their cars with no drivers, and the rest of us unsaved sinners to face the judgement.

Then in Matthew 25 there are several references to the return of Christ. The ten virgins or unmarried maidens are waiting with their lamps burning for the return of the Bridegroom. In this parable Jesus tells of his return. The maidens here are acting out a Middle Eastern custom that is still alive today - of unmarried women meeting the Groom at weddings. The wise maidens are prepared and have extra oil. The foolish maidens bring no oil except what is in their lamps. The wait is long and they fall asleep and their lamps burn low. Suddenly awakened the wise maidens refill their lamps but have none to share with the foolish women or else their will be no lamps to greet the bridegroom. By the time the foolish maidens return with more oil, the Bridegroom has come and entered the feast and they missed it. The lesson here I interpret to be that we need to be prepared for the coming of Christ, letting our lives shine with the light of Christ. We are to keep living the way Christ taught prepared and awake, even though the wait is long.

The rest of Matthew 25 is about the last judgment as well. There are the servants who are given talents to await the return of the master, and must use them well or face losing them. And then there is the separating of the sheep from the goats before the throne of God - when some are saved who have served Christ in other people, and some are lost who have not served Christ in the least of these our brothers and sisters. Universalism in a nutshell is the rejection of these ideas common in the early church that God was coming in judgement. Charles Chauncy was a pastor in Boston during the Great Awakening, a revival movement in New England in the early 1700's. Jonathan Edwards was the famous revival preacher of the time. He sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", still had power to chill me when I read it in seminary. He painted a vivid picture of an angry God sending sinners to eternal flames and torment. Chaucy, however, took refuge in the love of God. He wrote, "tis not easy to conceive, that (God) should bring mankind into existence, unless God intended to make them finally happy. And if this was God's intention, it cannot well be supposed, as God is infinitely intelligent and wise, that God should be unable to project, or carry into execution, a scheme that would be effectual to secure, sooner or later, the certain accomplishment of it." Chauncy, it must be noted, believed that those who were grievous sinners (making many bad choices), like Hitler, for example, would need to spend some time in a kind of Purgatory before being brought back into God's benevolence. But all would eventually be saved: he called this universal salvation.

There have been many versions of universalist ideas since Chauncy. It is interesting that it has reemerged in our time when once again we face a split in Christianity between the hellfire and damnation folks in the Evangelical camp on one side and the liberals on the other. But it makes sense to me. Like Chauncy, I take my stand on the love of God. Why would the loving God that Jesus revealed have no plan for redeeming people who made wrong choices, and who had never heard the name of Jesus. Why would a God-fearing, obedient and loving Muslim be damned for doing what Jesus taught, because she followed a different path? But even harder, why would a murderer be damned though his actions were the result of the events of his life and his mental illness?