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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.
A poll earlier this year suggested that just more than one-quarter of Americans think that a nuclear war will be the most-likely cause of the end of the world. The next most-frequent response, from one of every five Americans, was that there will not be an end to the world. Next in the poll, climate change was tied with judgment day, each answered by 16 percent of survey respondents, with the remaining 20 percent answering that the end of the world would be caused by either a worldwide revolution, zombies, an alien invasion, or “something else”. (YouGov) For the faithful Christian Church, the end of the world is an article of faith. For example, in the Apostolic Creed already this morning we confessed that Jesus “will come to judge the living and the dead”, and in the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds we similarly confess that “He will come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead”. The Bible teaches and the true Church believes, teaches, and confesses that the world will end with Jesus’s return, the coming of the Son of Man, as we heard in the Gospel Reading for today, the Last Sunday of the Church Year. This morning we reflect on that Gospel Reading under the theme “The Coming of the Son of Man”. “The Coming of the Son of Man” is how the world will end, although perhaps we, like Jesus’s disciples, might be less interested in how the world will end and more interested in when.
As you may recall from last week’s Gospel Reading, four of Jesus’s disciples asked Him two questions—questions about when the Jerusalem Temple would be destroyed and about what the sign would be when such things would be accomplished. Those questions prompted Jesus’s teaching that we heard in last week’s Gospel Reading (Mark 13:1‑13), and today’s Gospel Reading gives us the Divinely-inspired St. Mark’s conclusion of that teaching (the verses in between are not used in our three-year series of readings, but you are welcome, at another time, to read them on your own). Today we heard Jesus, in words rich with Old Testament context, speak about the cosmic changes that will accompany His return, about how we will know that He is near (at the very gates), and, yet, about how only God knows precisely when the Son of Man is coming, so about how we are always on guard, being and staying awake, so that He does not find us sleeping spiritually.
My mother and I last month saw some beautiful fall colors in the Midwest, where there are more deciduous trees than here in East Texas, where more of the trees keep their leaves or needles year‑round and are ever‑green. The land where Jesus walked was more like East Texas, and so a tree such as a fig tree, which loses its leaves in the winter, is a good indicator of the season. Jesus says, “As soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves,” people know that summer is near. So also, Jesus says, when we have seen all the things taking place that we heard Him describe last week and that He describes in the verses following, such as the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple that happened in A-D 70 and other things that essentially have already happened—when we have seen all those things taking place, then we know that He is near, at the very gates. Or, at least we should know, and we should act accordingly. Perhaps the Coming of the Son of Man is “sudden” or “unexpected” only if we are not paying attention to the signs and acting accordingly.
To be sure, the 16 percent of Americans whom the poll I mentioned suggests do not think there will be an end to the world are not paying attention to the signs and acting accordingly. The same might be said of the other nearly two‑thirds of Americans who think the world will end by something other than the coming of the Son of Man. Those people may be easier to criticize, but what about us ourselves? Are we spiritually awake at all times, praying that we may have strength to escape all the things that are taking place and so to stand before the Son of Man (Luke 21:36)? Are we self‑controlled (1 Thessalonians 5:6)? Does our faith lead us to live our lives in the holy way God expects? Are we each doing the work He has given for us to do in the vocations He has given us, recognizing that it is His work, not ours? We realize that we are not as ready spiritually as we should be. According to our sinful human natures, we are very likely to fail to remember Jesus’s return (Pieper, III:516) and to act accordingly, just as we fail and sin in countless other ways. For our sinful human natures and for all our sin, apart from faith in Jesus, we deserve nothing but death now in time and eternal torment in hell. Yet, from our sinful human natures and from all our sin, God calls us to repent: to be sorry for them and to trust Him to forgive them for Jesus’s sake.
The poll I mentioned refers to the destruction of the world as “the apocalypse”, and we have given that word that sense, even though its Greek root word has more the sense of “revelation” or “disclosure”. The Bible also refers to the coming of the Son of Man as the “day” or the “hour” or the “time”. Jesus’s coming on that day will bring judgment, but we only need to fear that day if the judgment will not be in our favor. When we know and trust that, because of God’s grace to us on account of the life and death of Jesus Christ, the judgment will be in our favor, then we do not fear, but we take heart and rejoice (confer Luke 21:28).
God in human flesh, Jesus Christ truly is, as He Himself said, the Son of Man prophesied by Daniel (Daniel 7:13). Today’s Gospel Reading can lead us to reflect on the mystery of His incarnation, as it indicates that, while He as God in human flesh knows all things (for example, John 21:17), He as God in human flesh also has limited knowledge, not knowing, during the days of His life on earth, precisely when His final coming would be. In a number of ways, today’s Gospel Reading also points us to the events of Jesus’s suffering and death for us: His arrest, after He, the disciples’ Master, found them sleeping instead of watching and praying (Mark 14:32-42); His trial, when His confession to being the Christ, the prophesied Son of Man, led to His false conviction on the charge of blasphemy (Mark 14:61-64); and His denial, when Peter gave into temptation, denying Jesus three times before the rooster crowed twice (Mark 14:37-38, 66-72). Everything Jesus did and suffered, He did and suffered for you and for me, that we might have the forgiveness of sins, His righteousness, and His salvation. Truly does today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 51:4-6) say that God’s righteousness has drawn near and His salvation has gone out, that His salvation will be forever and His righteousness never dismayed. For, as Jesus said in the Gospel Reading, His words do not pass away—not in any of the forms with which He gives them to us.
The seasonal Gradual we have been using this month (Revelation 7:14b; Psalm 84:5) points us to two of the combinations of God’s Word with visible elements. We and all holy believers who come out of the great tribulation are washed in Holy Baptism, where water is included in God’s command and combined with God’s Word. So clothed, as it were, in white robes of Jesus’s righteousness, in Holy Communion we eat bread that is His Body given for us, and we drink wine that is His blood shed for us. Through these forms of His Word that do not pass away, and through preaching and through individual Holy Absolution, Jesus comes to and is present with us even now, and through all of these the Holy Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens, and makes holy the whole Christian Church on earth—making us, who do not reject Him and His means of grace, certain that we are among God’s elect (of the living and of the dead, whose remains may be in one place or be scattered abroad or lost) whom He by His angels will gather from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.
There is a rooster somewhere across the small lake outside my bedroom window, and I frequently hear it in the morning, though I am not sure whether it awakens me or whether I am already awake and so hear it. That cock-crow kept coming to my mind as I studied today’s Gospel Reading, with its mentions of the four Roman watches of the night, in preparation to preach this morning. Doorkeepers in Jesus’s day apparently had a reputation for sleeping on the job (Mann, ad loc Mk 13:32-37, 541), and so Jesus’s in the Gospel Reading mentioning the charge to the doorkeeper to stay awake and applying that charge spiritually to the disciples and to their successors makes sense. As pastor here for four years now, I endeavor to so stay awake spiritually, to watch and to warn all of us. We each have our work to do according to our vocations, and, when we fail in any way, with daily repentance and faith, we live together in the forgiveness of sins that we first receive from God and then extend to one another. We may not know precisely when the Son of Man will come the final time with great power and glory that all will see, or whether and when He might end our lives before then. Regardless, we look forward to the resurrection of the body and so to eternal life on, as we sang in the antiphon of today’s Introit (2 Peter 3:13b), the new (or restored) earth (or ground), under the new or restored heaven (or sky).
God being willing, we are not a representative sample that would yield poll results such as those I mentioned. God gathers here from all four directions believers who know and believe in Him. We thank Him for blessing us with the new members that we will receive today and for those who have been like members to whom we bid farewell and Godspeed. The Kingdom in which we are citizens by His blood cannot be shaken (Hebrews 12:26-27 with Bertram, TDNT 7:70). As we now receive blessings together, we know that, even if we are apart, we will continue to do so for eternity together. “The Coming of the Son of Man” is good news for us and brings forth our praise, as in the words of today’s Epistle Reading (Jude 20-25):
to Him who is able to keep [us] from stumbling and to present [us] blameless before the presence of His glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time, now, and forever.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +