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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.
Nearly two-thousand years after Jesus spoke it, we may find what we heard in today’s Gospel Reading to be disconcerting, His words foreign to our way of thinking and speaking, His images naïve and fantastic (Nocent, 4:285-287). Yet, the passage of nearly two-thousand years does not change either the unchanging nature or the absolute truthfulness of His words, as Jesus Himself said in the Gospel Reading itself. Many may doubt that Jesus will fulfill all of His words, but we can believe and so be certain that He will fulfill all of His words. In fact, as we consider the Gospel Reading this morning, we realize especially that, both now and on the Last Day, “The Son of Man gathers His elect”.
You may recall that, coming out of the Temple complex, Jesus had spoken about its destruction, which happened within a generation of His speaking, and that, as Jesus sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the Temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked Him privately when that would happen and what would be the sign when all such things were about to be accomplished. As we heard in last week’s Gospel Reading (Mark 13:1-13), Jesus answered by speaking about false teachings, wars, earthquakes, famines, and persecutions, from both outside of the Church and within families, all of which, He said, occur in the time leading up to the end. Then, as we heard in today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus also spoke about the Last Day, including His gathering His elect, and about how, while we should be able to tell that the Last Day is near, we do not know precisely when it will come, so we should always be ready for it.
On the Last Day, apparently related to the end of time itself (Marcus, ad loc Mark 13:2425, p.907), Jesus said that the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, that the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Perhaps those heavenly powers personified but certainly the eyes of at least every human alive at the time (Revelation 1:7) will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with greater power and glory. Jesus’s description draws on a rich Old Testament background of earlier prophecies of the end, many of which images, like the leafless fig tree that Jesus mentioned next, have to do with God’s judgment. All of those people alive at the time will be judged then, and their judgment, along the judgment of those people whose earthly lives ended previously, will be made known to all.
In some sense, what we heard in today’s Gospel Reading should be disconcerting—unnerving, upsetting, or unsettling. Unless we are shaped by the Holy Spirit working through Holy Scripture, Jesus’s words are foreign to our way of thinking and speaking. We may misjudge the images Jesus uses as naïve and fantastic in part because we may want to dismiss them, denying that there will be such a day of reckoning. We may care more about fig trees themselves than about learning their “lesson” (or “parable”) and so concluding that the Son of Man is very near, at the very “gates” (or “doors”). Nearly two-thousand years of His not yet coming a final time may have lulled us into the sleep of thinking that there is a lot of time left before He will come a final time, or that He will never come a final time, or that we may never face judgment. And so, we may not be on our guard, “staying awake” (or “watching”).
From those sins, as from all our sins and from our sinful natures themselves, God calls and so enables us to repent: to turn in sorrow from them, to trust Him to forgive them, and to want to do better than them. When we so repent, then God forgives our sinful natures and our actual sin—our sin related to the Last Day and all our sin, whatever our sin might be. God forgives our sin for the sake of the Son of Man, God Himself mysteriously incarnate in the human flesh of the man Jesus, the Christ.
As we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 51:4-6), the Lord’s salvation has gone out, and His salvation is forever, His righteousness is never dismayed. Those who trust God to forgive their sins for the sake of Jesus’s death on the cross are forgiven! Those who so believe really have no reason to be disconcerted at today’s Gospel Reading but instead should be comforted by Jesus’s promise that “The Son of Man gathers His elect”. Not because of anything in or about them, but, in a way that He has not fully revealed to us, God, out of His love, mercy, and grace for the sake of the crucified Jesus, elects (or chooses) some to be saved, and so He also foreknows, predestines, calls, justifies, and ultimately will glorify them (Romans 8:29-30). No one, not even Satan the accuser, can bring any charge against God’s elect, for God the Father Himself justifies them, and the Son and the Holy Spirit are interceding for them (Romans 8:3334, 26).
You do not have to wonder like some Jehovah’s Witness whether or not you are among the elect! If you want to know whether or not you are elect, look to God’s objective Means of Grace, His Word and Sacraments. Not only do Jesus’s words not pass away, unlike the current earth and sky, but Jesus’s words, in all of their forms, also carry out God’s work of new or recreation (Marcus, ad loc Mark 13:30-31, p.917). Already now the Holy Spirit by the Gospel is calling, gathering, enlightening, and sanctifying the whole Christian Church on earth (Small Catechism II:6), and the Holy Spirit is applying that Gospel to one believer at a time, through Holy Baptism, individual Holy Absolution, and Holy Communion. With the Gospel Reading’s mentioning both the Son of Man’s being at the “gates” (or “doors”) and the Lord’s giving authority to the doorkeeper, we might especially think of His coming here to eat with us and us with Him (Revelation 3:20) and of the pastor’s responsibility to admit some and exclude others. For, Christ’s Body in the bread and His Blood in the wine are intended for our benefit but can be received to our harm (1 Corinthians 11:29-32).
As we wait for the end, we all certainly have good works to do according to our respective vocations (or callings) in life. And, to some extent, keeping or staying “awake” (or “watchful”) for the Last Day is included for all of us. Also included for all of us is daily repentance in order for us who continue to sin to live in the forgiveness of sins that we receive from God and in turn to extend our own and God’s forgiveness to those who sin against us. There neither is nor will there ever be a sinless, happy interval of onethousand or any other number of years of Christ’s reigning in this world before the end (Kretzmann, ad loc Mark 13:24-27, p.238; John 18:36). In this world, we experience the various tribulations that Jesus described, but we also take heart, for Jesus has overcome the world (John 16:33). Such tribulation will cease, not with a secret “rapture” but with either our earthly deaths or the final coming of the Son of Man visible to all, whichever comes first. And, when the Son of Man comes that final time, He will send out His angels and so gather His elect: those living from the ends of the earth, and those whose earthly lives ended previously from the ends of heaven. Souls will be reunited with resurrected and glorified bodies, freed from the suffering and afflictions of this life, purged of sin, and so prepared for the eternal life to come.
We may find what we heard in today’s Gospel Reading to be disconcerting, His words foreign to our way of thinking and speaking, His images naïve and fantastic, but, nevertheless, both now and on the Last Day, “The Son of Man gathers His elect”. As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (Jude 20-25), the only God, our Savior, is able to keep us from stumbling and to present us blameless before the presence of His glory with great joy; to Him, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +