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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
When I visit those from our congregation who are shut-in their homes, I usually read the Gospel Reading appointed for either the previous Sunday or the next Sunday. Friday, as I read this Sunday’s Gospel Reading, with its mention of “wars and rumors of wars”, one of the shut‑ins declared, “Sounds like today!” Indeed! This past week and even this very day, violence is escalating between the Israelis and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Truly there are wars and rumors of war. Not only do the so‑called “signs of the end times” listed by our Lord in the Gospel Reading fit our time today, but they also have fit every time since He first listed them. If, as is the case, the “signs” do not help us know the time of the end but only that we are in “the end times”, there must be something more-relevant for us in today’s Gospel Reading. And, in fact, there is something more‑relevant for us: the final half-verse of the Gospel Reading, which also was the antiphon for today’s Introit: “The one who endures to the end will be saved.” When the end comes, all those who have endured will be saved. So, the theme for this sermon is “Enduring to the End”.
Today’s Gospel Reading, as last week’s, tells of the events of the Tuesday of Holy Week. You may recall that Jesus was in the Temple courts being challenged by and defeating the various factions of the Judaism of His day and offering a pretty‑negative critique of Israel’s religious institutions. As He and His disciples came out of the Temple courts, one of those disciples in surprise exclaimed about the Temple’s stones and buildings. Some of the stones were as many as 37-feet long, 12-feet high, and 18-feet wide. Some of the buildings towered 180 feet over the Temple courts and were gilded with gold. The disciple seemed to ask, “How could such great buildings house such negative religious institutions?” Jesus responded to His disciple’s exclamation by predicting the destruction of the great buildings themselves, as God had prophesied and fulfilled once before in the Old Testament.
Later, as Jesus sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the Temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew were asking Him privately: when that destruction would be, and what would be the sign when all things were about to be accomplished. Jesus’s answer to their questions is the final nine verses of today’s Gospel Reading, the fourteen verses of next week’s Gospel Reading, and the ten verses in between (our lectionary series skips what some might consider to be the most‑intriguing part). From what we heard today, in short, the destruction of the Temple’s great buildings is only the beginning of the end: the war-torn history of the world and its more‑natural disasters, as well as the history of the persecuted church that lead to the Gospel being proclaimed to all nations—they all are the sign that points to the end, that is, to the coming of the Son of Man in power and glory to gather in His elect from all the earth, as we will hear next week. Since the disciples lived—and we are living now—through that sign, Jesus twice cautions against over‑anticipating the end, saying both “the end is not yet” and “these are but the beginning of the birth pains”. But Jesus also says that, when the end comes, all those who have endured will be saved.
How are you and I doing with “enduring to the end”? Though others may have, perhaps we personally have not had to endure such things as wars, earthquakes, and famines. Though others may have, perhaps we personally have not had to endure being turned over to councils, being beaten, and having to stand before rulers for Jesus’s sake. But how are we doing with enduring the things we do have to endure? Are we enduring as God wants when we complain, grow weary, become despondent, or grumble? Are we enduring as God wants when we cowardly give in to temptations that degrade us? Are we enduring as God wants when we try to resist by relying on ourselves? If you and I are honest, we will admit that we not only sin by not enduring as God wants, but we also sin in countless other ways and are even sinful by nature.
As the sicknesses we experience are reminders of the death we deserve on account of our sin, so earthquakes, famines, and other disorders the earth experiences are reminders of the end of the world and of the coming great Judgment. Since we do not know when either our individual deaths or that great Judgment will come, we ought to live our whole lives in repentance—with sorrow over our sin, with faith that God forgives our sin, and with the desire to do better. So, we repent—we repent of our sin of not enduring as God wants and of whatever else our sin might be. When we so repent, then God indeed forgives our sin. God forgives our sins for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ.
Sixteenth-century Lutheran pastor Batholomäus Ringwaldt is given as the author of our Hymn of the Day, “The Day Is Surely Drawing Near”. (In fact, he probably only revised an earlier anonymous German hymn, which itself was a free translation of the Latin medieval sequence hymn titled Dies irae, dies illa, in English “Day of wrath, that day”.) Pastor Ringwaldt’s version reportedly was later very popular and sung frequently amid the horrors of the Thirty Year’s War. One can imagine how—during that long, destructive war—those singing undoubtedly believed the hymn’s first line: “The day is surely drawing near”. We may be free of that war, but the hymn’s opening statement is no less true: “The day is surely drawing near”. As they needed God’s forgiveness and sang, so we need God’s forgiveness and sang in the third stanza:
May Christ our intercessor be / And through His blood and merit
Read from His book that we are free / With all who life inherit.
Jesus Christ indeed is “our intercessor”, and He truly sets us free from sin and death “through His blood and merit”. As today’s Epistle Reading put it, He offered for all time a single sacrifice for sin: Himself. For the Joy set before Him, Jesus endured the cross, in order to save us from our sins. Jesus suffered and was buried, and the third day He rose again for us and for our salvation. The Gospel of Jesus’s death and resurrection for us has been proclaimed to all nations (the Church already in the New Testament times saw that “sign” as fulfilled and Jesus’s return as imminent). Everyone has the opportunity to believe the Gospel and so both to have their sins forgiven and to endure all they face by waiting for God to deliver them in the end. Those who do not believe but reject the Gospel have their sins retained and are damned in the end.
Such a rejection of the Gospel led to the destruction of the Temple. What had once been the house of God and His Word was no longer. Now, we identify God’s House by the pure preaching of His Gospel and the right administration of His Sacraments, which are the very ways that those who believe the Gospel have their sins forgiven. In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus speaks of those come in His Name and of being hated for His Name’s sake. Holy Baptism is where you and I probably are first connected with the Name of God. With water and the Word, we are baptized in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Holy Baptism not only works forgiveness of sins, but at the Baptismal Font we are also given eternal salvation. So, there we receive the white robe of Christ’s righteousness, mentioned in our Gradual, and there our names are written in the Book of Life, mentioned in today’s Old Testament Reading. So baptized in the Triune Name, you and I continue our connection with that Name by making private confession and seeking individual Holy Absolution. In Holy Absolution, called ministers of Christ deal with us by His divine command. Those who repent of their sins and are willing to amend are absoleved in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. So baptized and absolved, you and I in the Sacrament of the Altar commune with Christ, His body in bread and His blood in wine, so that we are able not only to endure but also in the end to reign with Him.
Through Word and Sacrament, God does enable us to endure, to hold fast to Him with expectant hope, and thereby follow our Lord’s example of endurance. He suffered in agony of doubt and physical torment but believed there would be vindication in the end. Likewise, we suffer in agony of doubt and physical torment but believe there will be vindication in the end. What we have to endure is not up to us to decide but is imposed by God upon us for our good. As He promises to give one what to say as a witness to rulers, so He promises to give us sufficient grace to endure what He permits us to face. We know we are protected by Almighty God, Who is above and so rules the whole world. Whenever the end comes, He will establish justice and reward righteousness; we only have to wait for Him.
Jesus says “the one who endures to the end will be saved”. Our “enduring to the end” is not the cause of our salvation, nor is our being saved only in the future. We are already saved now, and we are saved now by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. As today’s Epistle Reading put it, by His single offering, He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. For now, as we remain in this world, that sanctification is a process. Some days we might endure better than other days when we might not endure at all. We live each day with contrition and faith, and so we live each day in the forgiveness of sins, both from God and with one another. As with the wars and rumors of wars, a deadly earthquake in Burma this past week and another earthquake in Mexico City remind us the end is coming, either as our own deaths or as Jesus’s return. The matter for us is not the timing of the end, but the matter for us is “enduring to the end”. For that final and complete endurance, we pray the Holy Spirit, as we will in our Closing Hymn, to “Support us in our final strife / And lead us out of death to life.”
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +