It’s Judgment Sunday: Put On Your Tin Foil Hat!

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A few years ago, a sci-fi horror movie called Signs was released. It was directed by M. Night Shyamalan, who is famous for surprise endings.

The movie tells the story of a former minister named Graham Hess who lives on a farm in rural Pennsylvania with his two children and his brother. When aliens invade Earth, Graham confronts his family about how to stay safe. Upon entering the room, he finds all three of them wearing tin foil hats.

Tin foil hats are usually worn by people who believe in conspiracy theories. They believe that the hats will prevent others from reading their thoughts. Of course, no sane person would buy into such a theory, but Graham’s brother believes in all sorts of things, from political conspiracies to alien conspiracies. And, when aliens are invading Earth, a tin hat may not seem so ridiculous after all.

Perhaps, reality is not what it seems.

This is the point of today’s gospel reading. Reality is not what it seems. The values of the secular world are actually misleading us, and today’s Gospel reading is trying to open our eyes to a truer reality, one in which Christ is becoming king. A reality in which we live by the Christ’s standards, not the world’s.

To fully grasp and understand The Parable of the Last Judgment, we need to look at the parable that comes just before it.

The Parable of the Talents.

In this one, a master decides to leave on a journey. While he is away, he entrusts three of his slaves with his wealth. Jesus tells us that he gave five talents to the first slave, two talents to the second slave, and one talent to the third slave. A talent, by the way, is an ancient form of currency.

After a long time, the master returns. He finds that the first two slaves had invested the talents entrusted to them, and, as a result, they had increased the master’s wealth. In response, the master rewards them.

The third slave, however, buried the one talent he was given. So when the master returned, he found that his wealth had not increased with the third slave. This upsets the master, who calls his slave a “wicked and lazy person” and throws him into the “outer darkness” where there is “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

As Americans, we hear this story and believe that the point is that we should be like the first two slaves rather than the third. We apply our American values to the story to figure out the point. We value increasing our wealth and being good stewards of what we’ve been given. So when the first two slaves do this, we cheer them on.

In fact, many preachers preach that we, as Christians, should be like the first two slaves. They say that we’ve been entrusted with the gospel, and we are called to be good stewards of it by preaching it to everyone, everywhere. So when people flock to the church, we believe we are being just like the first two stewards, doing the will of our master.

While it is true that we are called to preach the gospel, and it may be a good idea to be a good steward of the resources given to us, that is not the point of THIS parable. In fact, everything we think we know about this passage is actually wrong.

You have to know that the ancient world was a “limited goods” society.

This means that they believed that all the wealth in the world was limited, similar to the game Monopoly; there’s only so much cash to go around.

In addition to this being a limited-good society, the ancients also believed that God had placed people in a particular social order, and they didn’t believe that someone could move up or down in society as we do.

So, if this was a limited-good society and your place in society was set by God, when someone increased their wealth, to ancient people, this was akin to stealing. They were taking a piece of the pie that belonged to someone else.

Now you can see that it was a problem when the first two slaves increased their master’s wealth. Whereas we praise the first two slaves, the original hearers of this parable would have seen them as thieves. Whereas we think of the master as a good boss, the original hearers would have been disgusted by him.

In the original context, it was the last slave who actually did what was right. He preserved the one talent so the master received back what was his, and only his.

You’re probably confused now. If the last slave, the one who was thrown into the outer darkness, is the one we should be rooting for, what’s the point of the story? Good question.

The point of the story is that the world will continue to cheat and live by the world’s values, and we should expect nothing less.

Even if we do the right thing—as the third slave had—the world will hate us and throw us to the wolves.

In other words, the world will not appreciate it when we live by the standards of the Gospel. They want us to live by the standards of the world, and when we don’t, we’ll have to learn to pick up our crosses and continue to follow Christ.

This parable, when we leave it at that, sounds pretty grim. It’s a story that basically says if you’re a Christian, you’re doomed.

But here comes the good news… it’s the next parable, the one we heard today: The Parable of the Last Judgment.

In this parable, we hear about “sheep” who did live their lives according to the standards of Christ’s Kingdom. They didn’t care what the world thought of them. They lived by love.

The Last Judgment shows us that it’s Christ who has the last word. When we live by the standard of the Kingdom, the King will invite us in. We will not be thrown into the outer darkness. 

And those who lived by the world’s standards, those who lived like the first two slaves, well … they will be separated out as “goats.” The King will throw them into the eternal fire.

Do you see the reversal?

Whereas the world threw the Christ-following third slave into the outer darkness, in the end, it’s those who live by the standards of the world who are thrown out.

This is the good news of today’s message: it doesn’t matter what the world thinks of us. It doesn’t matter what they think of our lifestyle. It doesn’t matter if we don’t measure up to their standards.

By following Christ, the world may think we’re wearing tin hats, but we’ve seen how it all ends, and we know what true reality is. We have a kingdom that’s been prepared for us since the beginning of time. Amen.