Listen to the sermon with the player below, or, download the audio.
+ + + 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.)
The lead-up to the last federal election may have desensitized us with its hyperbole, but what we hear the Lord Jesus describe in today’s Gospel Reading is literally the end of the world. As we heard the Lord Jesus say, the sun will be darkened; the moon will not give its light; and the stars will be falling from the sky. As time comes to an end, the very things that God created on the fourth day that both served to separate day and night and were signs for seasons and years themselves come to an end (Genesis 1:14-19; confer Marcus, ad loc Mark 13:24-25, p.907). As we heard the Lord Jesus say, the Son of Man will come in clouds with great power and glory, and He will send His angels and gather His elect. There, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we should find ourselves, as those gathered from every direction: whether among those still alive on earth or among those already with the Lord in heaven, whose bodies then will be resurrected and with the bodies of the living finally be glorified. As we heard the Lord Jesus say, we can learn a lesson both from the fig tree and from the likeness of a doorkeeper’s staying awake until the master of the house comes back, and we do well both to know that the Son of Man is near and to be on guard and keep awake. But, ultimately our present and future comfort, peace, and joy are that not only in the future but also in some sense already now “The Son of Man sends His angels and gathers His elect”.
Today’s Gospel Reading is the final part of St. Mark’s Divinely‑inspired account of what is often called the “little apocalypse” or “little revelation” that Jesus gives about the end. In last Sunday’s Gospel Reading, we heard the initial part, as Jesus spoke to Peter and James and John and Andrew, when they asked Him privately when the Jerusalem Temple would be destroyed and what would be the sign when all those things were about to be accomplished (Mark 13:1-13). Our three‑year series of appointed Readings skips over the ten verses in between (Mark 13:14‑23), and, the way that we follow the series, today is the only Sunday in its three years that we hear any account of this portion of Jesus’s “little apocalypse”.
Of course, in this portion of the “little apocalypse”, Jesus does not say anything new in and of itself. For example, as He spoke of such things as the sun’s darkening and the moon’s not giving its light, Jesus made use of prophecy that God originally spoke through Isaiah (Isaiah 13:10; 34:4). And even in today’s Old Testament Reading from a different portion of Isaiah, we hear that the sky above will vanish like smoke, that the earth below will wear out like a garment, and that they who dwell in it will die in like manner (Isaiah 51:4-6). As St. Paul wrote to the Romans, creation was subjected to futility (Romans 8:20), as we were corrupted, by the first man and woman’s sin. Since then, the human race, this “generation”, if you will, has been, as Jesus describes elsewhere, evil and adulterous (Matthew 12:39; 16:4; confer Matthew 12:45; Luke 11:29); faithless and twisted (Matthew 17:17; Luke 9:41; confer Mark 9:19); sinful (Mark 8:38). Because of our sinful nature and all of our actual sin, we deserve nothing but temporal and eternal death. Yet, out of His great love and mercy, God calls and so enables us to repent: to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust Him to forgive our sin, and to want to do better than to keep sinning. And, while the Lord does wait patiently, not wishing that any should perish but that all should reach such repentance (2 Peter 3:9), His patience does not last forever: for some people the time to repent ends while they are alive, for other people the time to repent ends with their temporal deaths, and for still other people the time to repent will end with the end of the world. So, the time to repent is now!
In today’s Gospel Reading, we heard the Lord Jesus say that God the Son did not know the time of the end of the world. The all‑knowing Son of God in the human flesh of the man Jesus, during the time that He did not always or fully use His Divine attributes, had limited knowledge and was aware of His limited knowledge (Kilcrease, CLD II:152). Such is the mystery of the Incarnation for us and for our salvation! Yet, as in today’s Gospel Reading, the Lord Jesus at His trial before the Jewish Sanhedrin truly knew and said, in the words of God’s prophecy through Daniel (Daniel 7:13-14), that the council’s members would see the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven (Mark 14:62). They took that statement as blasphemy and sentenced Jesus to death, but Jesus died on the cross for us, in our place, the death that we deserved, and then He rose from the grave. Only in Jesus is the prophecy of today’s Old Testament Reading fulfilled that the Lord’s righteousness draws near and His salvation goes out, and, as prophesied, His salvation will be forever, and His righteousness will never be dismayed. When we trust God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake, then God does forgive us: God forgives our sinful nature and our actual sin; God forgives all our sin, whatever our sin might be.
As we faithfully receive God’s forgiveness through His Word and Sacraments, we know that we are among His elect, those He chose in Christ before the foundation of the world and predestined for salvation (Ephesians 1:4). So, the Son of Man has sent His “angels”, His “messengers”, His pastors, and, through their preaching His Gospel and their handing out His Sacraments, already now He calls and gathers His elect, in this case, into His Church, around those same Means of Grace, which are our objective evidence of God’s gracious will towards us. When we are adopted as God’s children through Holy Baptism (Ephesians 1:5), when we are privately forgiven in individual Holy Absolution (Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration XI:37‑38, with reference to the Apology of the Augsburg Confession XI:2), and when we receive the bread and the wine of the Holy Supper that are the Body and Blood of Christ given and shed for us, we are forgiven and we know that we are among the elect. As Jesus said in today’s Gospel Reading, His words will not pass away, or, as today’s Psalm put it, His decrees are very trustworthy (Psalm 93:1-5; antiphon: v.2).
When we consider our election to salvation, we do not try to investigate the secret counsel of God, asking why some and not others, but we stick to the words of God’s Gospel of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, not to His law that commands our obedience, nor to what our human reason has to say about it, otherwise we might end up either living reckless lives with a false sense of security or in despair. We know that the Son of Man is near, and, each with our own work, we are on guard and keep awake. As we did in the Collect of the Day, we pray that we persevere in faith and in holiness of living. In skipped verses just before today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus said that false christs and false prophets will arise and perform signs and wonders to lead astray, if possible, the elect (Mark 13:22), and Jesus said that the Lord shortened the days of the great tribulation for the sake of the elect (Mark 13:20). That we are elect is of great comfort when we are suffering, for, as St. Paul wrote to the Romans, all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose, even as we are justified now and on the Last Day will be glorified (Romans 8:28-30).
That the world is coming to an end is no hyperbole and no reason to be afraid. “The Son of Man sends His angels and gathers His elect”: already now His pastors gather us who are elect into His Church, and on the last day His heavenly creatures will gather us together into eternal life, under a new or restored sky, on a new or restored earth. For our election, we give glory only to God, as in today’s Epistle Reading: to Him Who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you 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 and now and forever (Jude 20-25).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +