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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. (Amen.)
As the end of the Church Year nears, today and next Sunday the appointed Readings and the other variable parts of the liturgy focus on what are usually called the Last Things. The Last Things were the general topic of our Sunday Adult Bible Class here at Pilgrim in the summer of 20-19; then, we considered the specific topics of temporal death, the intermediate state, the final coming of Christ, the bodily resurrection of the dead, the final judgment, the end of the world, eternal damnation, and eternal life. In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus foretold the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, and His disciples asked Him both when that would be and what would be the sign when it was about to take place. Jesus’s extended answer primarily dealt not only with the destruction of the Temple but also with His final coming. Since the Temple already has been destroyed as Jesus prophesied, we might think that just the part of His answer regarding His final coming is relevant to us, but that is not exactly the case. For, the destruction of the Temple and Jesus’s final coming in many ways are parallel, and the circumstances that the Christians faced both before and after the destruction of the Temple are essentially the circumstances that we face as we wait for Jesus’s final coming, or our own deaths, whichever come first. This morning we note well—after all the mentions of false Christs; wars and tumults; great earthquakes; famines and pestilences; terrors and great signs from heaven; arrests, persecution, betrayal, martyrdom, and hatred—we note well Jesus’s comforting encouragement that “Your redemption is drawing near”.
Yet, our redemption’s drawing near probably is not what we usually think about when we think about the end of the world. For example, a week before this past Tuesday’s election, a U-S Representative from South Carolina essentially equated the end of the world with losing the United States’ democracy (Fox News). We may similarly overstate the importance of far-lesser things, whether those things are in our society, our church, our families, or our individual lives. We may fear as “the end of the world” a nuclear war over Ukraine, an election-related insurrection, a shortage of diesel fuel’s leading to a shortage of food, and a resurgent pestilence of COVID-19. We may fear the congregation’s current financial situation, not enough people volunteering to fill official leadership positions, the deteriorating condition of the roof over the sanctuary and office area, and the lack of children in Sunday School. We may fear our household’s current financial situation, broken relationships between spouses, estranged children, and arrangements to care for sick or elderly family members. We may fear our own work or retirement situations, emotional struggles, physical decline, and who will care for us. None of those things are either the end of the world or reason for us to be afraid. Not even the true end of the world, with its judgment—or, if it comes first, our individual death, with its judgment—is reason for us to be afraid, not if we repent of our sins.
Although we are sinful by nature, fear things that we should not fear, sin in countless other—sometimes unspeakable—ways, and so deserve nothing but temporal death and eternal torment, God calls and thereby enables us to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust Him to forgive our sin, and to want to stop sinning. When we so repent, then God forgives us. God forgives our sinful nature, our fearing things that we should not fear, and all our other sin, whatever that sin might be. God forgives us for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ. And so, when that Son comes the final time, “Your redemption is drawing near”.
I have to tell you that, given the hair that I used to have, I think that more than one of the hairs of my head already have in some sense perished! Yet, Jesus’s promise in today’s Gospel Reading that not a hair of your head will perish eternally certainly remains true. First used in the Old Testament (1 Samuel 14:45; 2 Samuel 14:11; confer Acts 27:34), the proverbial expression, about not a hair of one’s head perishing, in a sense argues from the lesser hair to the greater whole self, and the expression emphasizes God’s providential protection of us unto eternal life (confer Matthew 10:30). That eternal life and the forgiveness of sins that makes that eternal life possible are our loving God’s free gifts to us that we receive through faith in Jesus Christ. None of the commands that Jesus gives us in the Gospel Reading indicate that we in any way can earn eternal life, but at least some of those commands seem to relate to the circumstances under which we receive eternal life as a free gift: for example, by not being led astray, not going after false Christs, and by enduring to gain our lives. Only Jesus is the true Christ, the Son of God and the Son of Man. In Jesus, God visits and redeems His people (Luke 1:68), for which redemption God’s faithful people were waiting before He was born (Luke 2:38) and in some sense are waiting still. Jesus’s death on the cross for all people, including you and me, paid for our freedom from sin, death, and the power of the devil, not with gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death.
Already now we receive that redemption, in the ways that God has given for us to receive that redemption. God’s Word is read and preached (confer Matthew 24:14; Mark 13:10). God’s Name is applied truly with water in Holy Baptism and with the pastor’s touch in Holy Absolution. And, bread and wine are Christ’s Body given for us and Blood shed for us in the Sacrament of the Altar, where those who feed on His flesh and drink His blood abide in Him and He in them and so live because of Him and have eternal life (John 6:56, 57, 54). Christ’s Body and Blood in the bread and wine are the food for the way through this life, as they strengthen and preserve us in body and soul to life everlasting.
As we receive our redemption in those ways, we confess the faith in those ways, and that confession leads to our being persecuted and so also to our confessing the faith in other ways, as we heard in the Gospel Reading, by giving an answer or “defense”, even before kings and governors. Yet, we do not have to meditate beforehand how to answer, for Jesus promises to give us a mouth and wisdom that none of our adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict. Again, Jesus’s commands are important: for us not to be led astray (even to what we may think of as a “Christian church”), not to go after false Christs, and by enduring to gain our lives. We pray, as we did in the Collect, for God the Father to rule and govern our hearts and minds by His Holy Spirit that we may live and abide forever in His Son. We are not terrified and do not faint with fear and foreboding. We may be hated, betrayed, arrested, and even killed, but not a hair of our head, much less the rest of us, will perish eternally. We straighten up and raise our heads, for our redemption—not only our being set free from sin but also the end of all of our afflictions—is drawing near.
“Your redemption is drawing near”. We who repent are forgiven already now and the end of all of our afflictions is coming. To be sure, as the Divinely-inspired St. Paul writes to the saints in Rome and to us, salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed (Romans 13:11). And, the fulfillment of Jesus’s prophecy regarding the destruction of the Temple can serve to assure us of the fulfillment of Jesus’s prophecy of His final coming. In the words of today’s Psalm (Psalm 98; antiphon: v.9b), Sing to the Lord a new song, for He has done marvelous things! He comes to judge the earth, and He will judge the world with righteousness and the people with equity.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +