Posts tagged “Judgment”

Apocalyptic focus of the church year

Posted on November 12th, 2012

The apocalyptic emphasis of the church’s year reminds us to be prepared for the final judgment. Msgr Elliot writes: With the prospect that “he will come again to judge the living and the dead”, we are reminded of a series of challenging truths revealed in Jesus Christ: We are responsible beings; our actions in time have eternal repercussions; each of us is taken seriously by a personal God who loves us; our life span and all time bear his purpose. Therefore we will be called to give an account of our temporal lives when we return to our Creator. -Peter J. Elliott, Ceremonies Of The Liturgical Year

Categories: Theology

Tagged: Judgment, Judgment Day, Peter J. Elliott

Sermo Dei: Trinity 10

Posted on August 13th, 2012

“From thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.” Thus the Apostles’ Creed summarizes the teaching of God’s Word on the end of days, the end of the world, the Day of Judgment. Be not deceived: The judgment of Jesus is coming. On that day, your deeds will be judged. The things done in darkness will be brought to light; there is nothing secret that will not be exposed. In today’s Gospel, as He approaches Jerusalem, Jesus anticipates the coming judgment on that city. In less than four decades, the city would be burned, the stones toppled, the temple looted and razed, blood running through the streets as water. Jesus’ prophecy came to pass in the year 70 when Titus conquered…

Categories: Sermons

Tagged: Apostles' Creed, Atheism, Baptism, Cleansing of the Temple, Jerusalem, Jerusalem Temple, Judgment, Judgment Day, Mitt Romney, Obama, Time, Trinity 10

Sermo Dei: The Eighth Sunday after Trinity

Posted on July 30th, 2012

A blessed death is not dying quickly or painlessly or inexpensively. As beneficial as these might be, they are not what we ask for when we pray God for a blessed end. A blessed end, a good death, is to die in the confession of the Christian Faith. To have opportunity to confess your sins and hear the Word of Forgiveness, to receive the body and blood of Christ, to commend your soul to God in prayer – all these are part of a blessed end. Thus sometimes a prolonged death, while painful and costly, can be a blessing. It’s good for people to have a chance to say good-bye, but it’s particularly good to hear and receive the Gospel. A blessed end, a…

Categories: Sermons

Tagged: Baptism, Blessed death, Blessed end, Conscience, Judgment, Trinity 8

Sermo Dei: Cantate 2012

Posted on May 8th, 2012

Teetering on the edge of insanity, Edvard Munch painted his most famous work The Scream of Nature, later known simply as The Scream. The Scream sold this past week for nearly $120,000,000, becoming the most expensive piece of art ever sold. I suppose paying that much money for a painting is its own form of insanity. The painting is a study of the human soul, the universal anxiety of man; among other things, the painting expressed his feeling that he could never love again. Isn’t it fascinating that the costliest piece of art in human history is of a man screaming in pain, painted by a man trembling with anxiety, sensing “an infinite scream passing through nature”? I find it not only fascinating…

Categories: Sermons

Tagged: Cantate, Edvard Munch, Holy Spirit, Judgment, Justin Bieber, Righteousness, sin, The Scream

“You will pay”: Lesbian judges priest who judged her

Posted on February 29th, 2012

The trouble with playing the Judgment Card is that you have to make a judgment yourself to play it. Here’s a story from the Washington Post about a lesbian denied communion at her mother’s funeral: “You brought your politics, not your God into that Church yesterday, and you will pay dearly on the day of judgment for judging me,” she wrote in a letter to Guarnizo. “I will pray for your soul, but first I will do everything in my power to see that you are removed from parish life so that you will not be permitted to harm any more families.” Late Tuesday, Johnson received a letter of apology from the Rev. Barry Knestout, one of the archdiocese’s highest-ranking administrators, who said the lack of…

Categories: Liturgy, Religion

Tagged: Closed Communion, Homosexuality, Judgment, Judgment Day, Lesbian, Roman Catholicism

Populus Zion (Advent II) sermon: Christ the Judge

Posted on December 4th, 2011

Gospel: Luke 21.25-36 Second in a Four-Part Advent Series: 1) Christ the King; 2) Christ the Judge; 3) Christ the Scandal; 4) Christ the Sacrifice Miss Gaffer, our wonderful new JK teacher in our school, has a saying: “You get what you get, so don’t throw a fit.” I think it has something to do with crayons and not complaining about what colors you do or don’t have. But it might be something altogether different. Honestly, that world is a bit of a mystery to me. “You get what you deserve” is an English variant on the idea of karma – that what goes around comes around, and in the end good works will be rewarded and bad deeds punished. That encapsulates religion for…

Categories: Sermons

Tagged: Christ the Judge, Jennifer Gaffer, Judgment, Judgment Day

The Resurrection of the Body

Posted on August 16th, 2011

A parishioner forwarded to me an email from a relative asking questions about heaven, hell, and the resurrection. The particular problem here is a belief that there is no resurrection of the body, but just a spiritual existence after death. I’m going to address this in a midweek Bible study which this particular parishioner attends. Here are some of my notes (excluding the email, which I haven’t obtained permission to share). These are the questions raised by the email (or, assumptions made that need to be addressed): When the body dies, does the soul/spirit go to heaven or hell? The questioner does not find Scriptural reference to “body” in hell (although thinks it may be implied by “fire”). The questioner cannot find Scriptural reference…

Categories: Theology

Tagged: Hades, Heaven, Hell, Judgment, Judgment Day, New Jerusalem, Resurrection, Revelation of St. John, Sheol, The intermediate state

Cantate sermon 2011

Posted on June 1st, 2011

May 22, 2011 +++ John 16:5-15 Well, we’re still here. Turns out the Bible didn’t guarantee the rapture would be on May 21. It’s not just that Harold Camping got the date wrong – again. The Bible nowhere teaches a rapture. The Bible does teach—all the prophets and apostles warn about—the Day of Judgment, which will come at an hour that no one expects. I want to talk with you about Judgment Day this morning, but a very different one than has been in the news the last few days. I will not reveal to you any secret code for understanding the Bible, nor any complex mathematical formulas. There is, however, a key to understanding the Scriptures, from Genesis to Revelation. That key, the…

Categories: Sermons

Tagged: Cantate, Harold Camping, Holy Spirit, Judgment, Judgment Day

Trinity 27 sermon

Posted on November 22nd, 2010

Gospel for Trinity 27 (Last Sunday of the Church Year): Matthew 25.1-13 Discovering that using the social-networking website Facebook was facilitating adulterous relationships within his congregation, a pastor in New Jersey has gotten his fifteen minutes of fame by requiring all of the married leaders in his church to delete their Facebook accounts. That is a legalistic and very wrong solution to a very real problem that transcends adultery. In an essay entitled “The Acceleration of Addictiveness,” Paul Graham observes that when new drugs or technologies were developed at a slower rate, culture was able to counteract the worst addictions by developing customs that discouraged harmful behaviors. With the rapid pace of change today, addictions are accelerating, among them a widespread addiction to the…

Categories: Sermons

Tagged: Addiction, Facebook, Ivan Illich, Judgment, Parousia, Return of Christ, Trinity 27, Twitter

The modern man's conception of God, compared to Luther's

Posted on October 24th, 2009

The God of Kant, Schleiermacher, and Ritschl is no longer a consuming fire. If the modern man believes in God at all, he believes in him as the guarantor of his happiness. And so the thought of the existence of God has become, since the eighteenth century, a comforting thought. For Luther it was a most disturbing one. In bitter moments of grave temptation he often wished that God did not exist. For if God exists, and if he really is God, then man is lost. Created to do God’s will, and incapable of its fulfillment, he is guilty of the judgment [of God]. And how can man hope to stand before the God of heaven and his unerring judgment? –Hermann Sasse, from “Luther…

Categories: Theology

Tagged: Hermann Sasse, Judgment, Luther, Reformation