My favorite children’s version of the Bible is Desmond Tutu’s marvelous Children of God Storybook Bible. The words sparkle with the liveliness and joy of Tutu’s own personality, and the illustrations are superb. There is hardly a living person I would trust more than Archbishop Tutu to tell stories from the Bible to children.
You can be certain that his own retelling of the salvation story will not be cheap, especially given his courageous commitment to dismantling apartheid in South Africa and his leadership of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And while Archbishop Tutu always emphasizes God’s boundless love, mercy, and compassion, he also does not shy away from conveying the demands of real Christian commitment. Tutu’s own life of struggle would not sit well with an easy and flabby Christianity.
This past week during children’s summer camp, I found myself telling the version of Matthew 25 from the Children’s Storybook Bible. If you recall this story, Jesus teaches his disciples that when the Son of Man comes again in glory at the end of time, God will gather everyone together, separating the sheep from the goats. As Tutu puts it, those who have “helped God’s dream come true,” the ones who were “generous” will sit on the right hand, and those who were not generous will sit on the left.
In Matthew 25, walking the way of Christ is feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the lonely in prison, and giving water to the thirsty. Doing these practical but lifegiving things is also doing them for God himself. The image of God is to be found in the faces of “the least of his children.”[1]
In Archbishop Tutu’s rendering of this sobering story, he does not mince words. Those on the side of the goats come to God and say, “Hey, wait a minute, God! If we had realized that it was you, we would have helped too.”[2] But as Tutu poignantly puts it, “God’s tears will fall as he says, ‘It is too late. Every time you turned away from one of my children, you turned away from me.”[3]
Now, I am not one to hide difficult things from children, but it struck me how this phrase caught the attention of the children. “It is too late.” I could see in their eyes that they were bothered, even disturbed, by this. I, of course, understood that this judgment scene was intended to grab our attention and express the deep demands of the Christian life and the reality of judgment. But I also knew that I needed to flesh out the phrase “it’s too late” for the children. I knew that if I didn’t unpack this phrase a bit more, these children would simply take away a message of fear, and this would ultimately do nothing to increase their faith and motivate them to true Christian service.
It’s a sad fact that many Christians live in abject fear. These days, I see far too many professed Christians perpetrating heinous acts in the name of God because they are terrified of what they will lose. Trying to please someone, most especially God, out of fear, is the quickest road away from true love.
Such fear leads to a distortion of the words that we hear in the Letter to the Ephesians today, where the author tells us that “the days are evil.” It’s a strong statement, and there’s truth to the fact that the days are evil. There is sin and darkness among us, make no mistake about it. There are cosmic forces trying to pull us away from Christ.
But just because the days are evil, does not mean that we are supposed to adopt an escapist mentality of the world. It also doesn’t mean that it’s too late to do something. There are Christians who care nothing for the environment because they think its destruction will hasten the Second Coming. For some, living in a state of holiness means shunning the world, denying the beauty of our earthly existence, and longing to be taken out of this world. A modern-day dualism, pitting the evil ways of the world against the good ways of the spiritual has dredged up old heresies. And we are no better for it.
But if you look closely at the text, the author of Ephesians is saying precisely the opposite of what we might be tempted to think. The author is telling us to live, not to escape from it. He is telling us to walk with our two feet firmly on the ground, and to make the most of it. He is saying, it’s not too late. He is advocating for a practical, action-oriented Christianity. And in the words of the King James Version of the Bible, the author is saying that living wisely is a way of redeeming the time. Each moment of our earthly existence is a chance to squeeze as much life as we can out of it.
And yet instead of summoning as much as they can from each pregnant moment of our existence, many simply discard countless minutes as if they were disposable waste products, littering the pathways of life. Each day has become a monotony of the same old thing, the same old job, the same old routine, the same old means of making the most amount of money as quickly as possible.
Every needy person we ignore and every failed act of kindness and grace is a missed opportunity to redeem the time. Every instance in which we look to our own perceived right instead of the good of the community, we throw away a priceless minute. Every person we fail to forgive because our resentment is so satisfying is a forsaken moment to redeem the time.
And this brings us back to Desmond Tutu’s memorable, if slightly chilling phrase, from the Children’s Storybook Bible. It’s too late. Every time we neglect to reach out our hands in love or fail to check our caustic tongues is another moment closer to hearing those awful words: it’s too late. If we are so obsessed with getting as fast as we can to heaven, we might be surprised when we stand before God and hear him say it’s too late. On the road behind you were countless opportunities to see me in the faces of the thousands of people you met in your earthly life. It’s too late.
But there is more to this story. What I imagine Desmond Tutu would preach and what I taught the children this past week is that, in the story, when we hear that it’s too late, we are at the end of time looking back. But now, we are in the middle of time, so to speak, looking forward. As I explained to the children during storytime in the Lady Chapel, the good news of Jesus tells us that while it may be too late to alter the past, while we are still on this earth, the future is always ahead of us. And that is very good news.
Here in the present, with the future before our eyes, we are being called by Jesus to redeem the time. Jesus teaches us that every single moment of our lives is a moment to learn from what has happened. Every second is a golden opportunity to choose, from this point on, to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and love the forsaken. Every moment is a now that is saturated with the possibility of repentance and turning again to see God’s dream for the world.
I don’t believe that God’s dream for the world is for us to live in fear of being too late to the party as a motivation for doing good. And yet, perhaps the thought of being too late to do some act of kindness to God himself can teach us to embrace the present with joy. We can embrace it with joy because every moment of our lives is a chance to reform our ways and orient our lives to Christ. Every moment is a chance to accept that in this life, it’s really never too late. Time can be redeemed.
For now is precisely the moment to accept that living wisely is to put our feet firmly on the ground and let God redeem our time. What we’ve done in the past is too late, but the future is ahead of us. God has sent us the gift of the Holy Spirit to work towards redeeming this time, so that with God’s help, we will do the greatest of works in his Name. And no matter what we’ve done, where we’ve been, or how many regrets we have, in this life, with God’s help, it’s never too late.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
August 15, 2021
[1] All quotations are from Desmond Tutu, Children of God Storybook Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010), 100.