A taxi driver and a priest died at the same time. St. Peter welcomed both with open arms at the reception desk, then took them for a tour of heaven.

At some point, they arrived in front of a big, beautiful mansion.

“This is your place to live,” Peter told the taxi driver as he pointed out the mansion to him.

“Wow!”  the taxi driver exclaimed with delight. “That mansion belongs to me?’

“Yes,” Peter replied. “That is your reward for what you did on earth.”

“If a taxi driver gets a mansion, I probably will get a golden palace or something like that,” the priest thought. “I have spent my whole life doing good things on earth. I have preached many sermons in my life.” The priest was excited at the prospect of a great reward coming to him.

The tour proceeded after Peter dropped the taxi driver at the mansion.

Eventually he and the priest arrived at a small grass hut at the corner of heaven.

“Father, this is your place to live. This is your reward for what you have done on earth,” Peter told the priest.

“Wait a minute, Peter. This must be a mistake. I was pastor of a big church in a big city and this is all I get for my whole priestly life?” the priest said in disgust.

Peter explained, “Father, final judgement is result- based. When people rode on the taxi, they prayed. When you preached, most people fell asleep.”

If you are offended, please forgive me. It is only a joke.

But the judgement day that Jesus speaks about in Scripture is not a joke.

Judgement day is like a final exam at school.

At first, I thought that giving a list of final exam questions at the start of a course was strange. But later it made sense to me.

On the first day of one of my classes at Ohio State University, a professor gave us students questions he would ask in the final exam.

I was not used to that practice. In the Philippines, where I grew up, questions for final exams were kept in locked drawers until the exam day. Knowing the questions before the exam was considered cheating.

I discovered later that practice of giving the questions for the final on the first day of class was a good incentive for learning the materials covered in the course.

Jesus is a good professor. He has let us know the questions for our final exam – our final judgement.

At the end of our lives, we will hear two pronouncements from our loving and just judge,

our Lord Jesus Christ.

He will say either “Come, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” or “Depart from Me” (Matthew 25:31-43).

We know that we are going to die, but we do not know when.

It could be tonight or it could be many years from now.

When we die, we face our judge. This should not scare us, but we should pay attention to it.

When Jesus talks about judgement, He wants to shake us up.

Jesus wants us to wake up from the illusions that death is something we should not think about or that judgement is not real or that it is not a big deal.

Jesus reminds us that life is short, that death is certain, that judgement is real, that eternity is long.

Everything is at stake on our judgement day. Like the Ohio State professor who gave us the questions for our final exam at the beginning of the course, Jesus is telling us of the things we will be judged on.

Jesus did not judge the sheep and goats on what they had done. Those on the left were there because of what they did not do.

Those on the left did nothing. That was the problem.

Jesus did not rebuke them for the terrible things they had done.

They were rebuked for having never loved.

They were blind. They did not see the faces of their brothers and sisters who needed their help.

When Jesus talks about judgement, He wants us to wake up so we may live rightly and prepare for our death.

Jesus knows that our life will not make sense unless we make sense of death; that life has meaning only through the lens of death; that once we make sense of death, we will know how to live.

In talking about judgement, He wants us to make sense of our lives.

“I am going to judge you on love,” Jesus tells us.

He wants us to wake up more and more to the reality that His face is in each one of us, even in those whom we do not like to be with, and that every person is Christ, and thus deserving of our love.

I have a hard time seeing Christ is some people. But Christ wants me to recognize Him in them.

Christ wants to remind us that we are going to be judged on how we love one another.