The Judgment
(#5 in the Masterpieces for Lent series)
And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne,
and the books were opened. And another book was opened, the Book of Life.
And the dead were judged . . .
(Revelation 20:12a)
A sermon by Siegfried S. Johnson on the Fifth Sunday in Lent, April 2, 2017
(Volume 6 Number 34)
St. James United Methodist Church, 321 Pleasant Valley Drive, Little Rock, AR 72212
Inspired by some of Michelangelo’s best known works, my Masterpieces Lenten series has
brought us to this Fifth Sunday in Lent. The first sermon took us to the Sistine Chapel, as will
this fifth message. We began with The Creation of Adam, the most famous of Michelangelo’s
paintings adorning the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, unveiled to the world on All Saints Eve,
1512. Michelangelo was then only 37 years old, yet already known throughout Europe as a
master sculptor of marble. Yes, but could he be a painter? He could, and The Creation of Adam,
together with Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, are the two most recognized and replicated
paintings in the history of Christian art.
Michelangelo would return many years later to the Sistine
Chapel, and so will we in this 5th message of my
Masterpieces series. This time we won’t crane our necks
to look upward, but rather we look west, to what would
be the horizon of the setting sun were it not for an altar
and a wall. On that wall we behold one of
Michelangelo’s masterpieces, not just a setting of the sun,
but a view of the horizon of history itself, a massive work
known as the Last Judgment.
He spent five years painting the Last Judgment (1536 –
1541), and the apocalyptic masterpiece was unveiled to
the world on All Saints Eve 1541, 29 years to the day
after the ceiling had been unveiled. The artist was no
longer a youthful 37, but was now 66 years old.
Despite three decades passing between the ceiling and the altar wall, it is as if the master plan
had been laid out in Michelangelo’s mind before he ever began. If on the ceiling Michelangelo
told the story of Beginnings from Genesis, the wall would tell the story of the end of time from
Revelation, the Last Judgment portraying in a vast panorama the ultimate fate of the universe
whose birth he had rendered so powerfully on the ceiling.
Work in the Sistine Chapel began in April 1535, the chapel’s serenity disturbed once again by the
clang of hammers as workers erected the scaffolding, followed by plasterers sending up thick
clouds of dust that caught in the throats and settled on the silk vestments of dignitaries
assembling for daily mass. It would be a full year, April 1536, before Michelangelo began to
paint, beginning in the top right hand corner and working his way down the immense surface of
the 66 ft. high and 33 ft. wide wall, painting in alternating bands.
What he produced is a work of intentionally disorienting effect, the Apocalypse being the
moment all familiar landmarks are swept away so that even the laws of physics no longer apply.
For five years he worked over almost 2000 square feet, a remarkable pace for an artist now in his
60s. His health and energy were no longer what once they were, but his ambition was no less
titanic than at the beginning of his career. The one major interruption was in the summer of
1541, near the end, when he hurt his leg falling from the scaffolding. Art critics point to the
lesser quality of the lower left hand corner of the wall to attest to the only place where he was
aided by his loyal but less talented aides.
Michelangelo portrayed judgment as a moment when complexity collapses and the universe is
reduced to a simple formula of either/or. One is saved or lost forever with no longer any inbetweeness awaiting redemption. The work distills all of human history into a single moment of
the Last Day of which Jesus spoke, saying, “Of that day and hour no one knows, not the angels of
heaven nor the Son, but the Father only.” Gone are the pastel hues – lavender and turquoise,
mint and pale yellow – that had imparted a shimmering delicacy to the cosmic drama on the
ceiling. The limpid morning light of creation is now replaced by sunset hues, as if shafts of light
from a dying sun were struggling to provide their last illumination of human history.
The ceiling is didactic, a narrative laid out 3 by 3 by 3. Michelangelo could have divided the
wall into similar didactic sequences and tiers but chose not to do so, instead offering a single
flash, a burst, a singularity of vision. Creation unfolds in time, and the ceiling reveals that
unfolding. The Last Judgment compresses all of that unfolding into a singularity, full to bursting
as if the painting is ready to spill out into our space, rushing in toward the viewer as if invading
our space. There’s a “coming right at you” feel to this masterpiece of Michelangelo.
He envisioned a Last Judgment as a moment when human persons are no longer grounded, can
no longer find their place in Space or in Time, since both have ceased to exist. Hope and fear,
though, remain, exponentially so. Decorum is cast overboard as souls struggle like victims of a
shipwreck, clawing desperately for a place in lifeboat in a moment when mercy no longer
tempers justice, and forgiveness retreats in the face of divine rage. Here is the moment of the
harvest when the Lamb has become the Lion.
Once again Michelangelo strays from convention by not arranging an orderly Last Day scene
with the sheep and the goats in tiers, choosing instead to cram it all into a vast whirlpool of space
as clamorous and startling as the trumpet blast that awakes the dead. Jesus says in his Olivet
Discourse (Matthew 24-25). “As the lightning comes from the east and flashes as far as the west,
so shall the coming of the Son of Man be . . . they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds
of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call,
and they will gather his elect from the four winds. Keep
awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord
is coming.”
The portion of the painting here shows the angel blowing the
trumpet that awakens the dead. Paul mentioned the trumpet
in 1 Corinthians 15 as a sign of hope for those redeemed in
Christ, “For the trumpet will sound and the dead will be
raised imperishable,” and in 1 Thessalonians 4, “For the
Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s
call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from
heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first.”
Fear, though, is the mood of the angel’s trumpet in
Revelation 8:6, “Now the seven angels who had seven
trumpets made ready to blow them.”
On All Saints Eve 1541 assembled dignitaries gathered in the Sistine Chapel for a first glimpse
of the new masterpiece. Pope Paul III is said to have fallen on his knees when he first surveyed
the altar wall, the angel’s cheeks puffed with the blowing of the trumpet and the books opened to
record accurately our deeds, and prayed, “Lord, do not charge me with my sins when you come
on the day of judgment.”
I wanted our reading, just as does the wall, to straddle the lost and the saved. To this end, our
passage straddles Revelation 20 (scene of the Great White Throne Judgment) and 21 (scene of a
New Heaven and New Earth). Jesus offers the same contrast of Judgment/Redemption in
Matthew 13’s Parable of the Wheat and Tares.
This connection of harvest with judgment is the reason our final hymn will be a hymn of the
harvest. I’ll confess that when I first opened the bulletin mid-week and saw the hymn, my first
thought was, why are we singing a Thanksgiving song on a day in Lent when my theme is final
judgment? Then I read the hymn and recalled how our Director of Worship Arts, Tracy DePue,
had reminded me of the harvest of souls to which this hymn written by Henry Alford points.
The first stanza places us squarely in the fall harvest and is perfect for Thanksgiving:
Come, ye thankful people, come,
Raise the song of harvest home!
All is safely gathered in,
Ere the winter storms begin;
God, our Maker, doth provide
For our wants to be supplied;
Come to God's own temple, come;
Raise the song of harvest home!
With the second stanza, Alford brings us to a different harvest, that of human souls:
All the world God's own field,
Fruit as praise to God we yield;
Wheat and tares together sown
Are to joy or sorrow grown;
First the blade and then the ear,
Then the full corn shall appear;
Lord of harvest, grant that we
Wholesome grain and pure may be.
The third and fourth stanzas intensify the image of judgment:
For the Lord our God shall come,
And shall take the harvest home;
From the field shall in that day
All offenses purge away,
Giving angels charge at last
In the fire the tares to cast;
But the fruitful ears to store
In the garner evermore.
Even so, Lord, quickly come,
Bring thy final harvest home!
Gather thou thy people in,
Free from sorrow, free from sin,
There, forever purified,
In thy presence to abide;
Come, with all thine angels, come,
Raise the glorious harvest home!
Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly!