CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…
 
JUDGMENT DAY
 
According to Father Guido Sarducci, and who should know better about heaven than a faux-Italian faux-priest, when you get to heaven you have to wait 8 and ½ years for your judgment appointment with God because He is so busy with running the universe and other such “acts of God.” The good news is that you get to stay in heaven that whole time, but the bad news is that because of the time crunch, you are in a judgment group with 10 thousand other people.
 
This set me to worrying. I have never even considered the possibility of group judgment. What if I’m put into a group with a bunch of… well, people like me?  
 
Eight and ½ years is plenty of time for the seraphim to pore over the records and find ten thousand people just like me, which would make group judgment simpler. But I definitely don’t want to be in THAT group on judgment day!
 
The seraphim have better things to do, of course, like flying around singing # 64, “Holy, Holy, Holy,” [I assume that for the sake of convenience in judging Methodists, they use the 1989 version of The United Methodist Hymnal.], and so if the above plan were ever considered, I’m sure the seraphim nixed it in favor of the time-of-death plan: your ten thousand will be the ones who died at the same time you did. I can hear the heavenly operators say, “Your death will be answered in the order in which it was received,” and then you hear “Stairway to Heaven” on the Muzak as you wait.
 
I’m not at all sure I want to get the same judgment as 9,999 other Methodists, even though some were probably young enough when they died that they didn’t have enough time to sin as much as much as most of us… But wait!
 
Yes, wait! The time-of-death plan means I’ll be judged not just with other Methodists, but all sorts of people—Muslims, Tea Partyers, Yankees fans, tax collectors, lawyers, gays…
 
It would be okay if they’re all sheep, but what if some are goats? That’s the way Jesus said God actually does the judgment, when She finally gets around to it, separating the sheep from the goats. Apparently God doesn’t care if you’re a Methodist or a gay Muslim Tea Party Yankee-fan lawyer, just if you’re a sheep or a goat.
 
Because of that judgment backlog, separation into judgment groups has to be done as efficiently as possible, so the only plumb line the Seraphim use for sheep and goats: Did you give drink to the thirsty and food to the hungry and clothing to the naked and visit the sick and imprisoned? [2]
 
Almost everyone knows that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Younger folk may not know, though, that the standard method of conveyance on said road is a hand basket. Apparently everyone has one. Most of us fill them with complaints about younger people and technology and those who disagree with us. But Jesus said that we’re supposed to turn those baskets upside down and dump all that stuff out and fill them with water and food and clothing and medicine and songs and stories and jokes and ballots and prayers [3], and then go out to the highways and byways where the thirsty and hungry and naked and sick and imprisoned are waiting for us, and strew the contents of those baskets like rose petals, a different kind of pavement for the road to forever.
 
JRMcF
 
1] Matthew 25:31-46.
 
2] Jesus often cured the sick, and bade his disciples do the same when possible, but he knew that healing was even more important than cure. There is healing in “visiting” the sick, being at one with them, taking away the dis-ease of loneliness even if the disease of sickness cannot be removed.
 
3] You can always visit the sick and imprisoned through prayer even if you’re too puny and feeble to do it in person.
 
The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!
 
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{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, butoccasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}