JUDGMENT DAY

The Season of Advent has begun and many expect a Christmas reading for Sunday. Matthew's passage is not. It's part of the Synoptic Gospels's mini Apocalypse (so, we find parallels in Mark and Luke). Scholars agree that the passage reflects traumatic memories from the Fall of Jerusalem around 70 CE.

A lot of people look forward to the End of Days or the Second Coming because it promises eternal rewards and punishment. Of course, there are millions of card-carrying Christians who expect that they will be rewarded, while so-called infidels--namely, anyone who has not accepted Jesus as their Personal Savior and Lord--will be punished. The "saved" will be taken away while the "damned" will be left behind.

Many others look forward to the day that God will make things right, especially for those who have been dispossessed, displaced, disenfranchised, discriminated, and dehumanized by prejudice, greed, injustice, and evil.

There are also those who dread the End of Days or the Second Coming because they know they have failed to do what Jesus, in his First Coming, commanded them to do: preach Good News to the Poor, feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, take care of the sick, visit the prisoners, clothe the naked, and welcome the stranger.

Judgment Day will come. Nobody knows which day or which hour, but it will happen. Like in the days of Noah. God's Day of Justice is coming. Jesus said so.

And it might come today.

*art, "Two Women at the Mill," (James Tissot, 1836-1902) from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives.