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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.)
The other day, Pilgrim member Ben Ford and I were lamenting our respective losses of heads of hair. Perhaps you know someone else who has lost hair, or perhaps you yourself have lost hair. In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus tells His disciples that not a hair of their head will perish (confer Matthew 10:30), which is clearly not a promise that we will never lose any literal hair, but rather it is a proverbial promise about God’s ultimately protecting us (confer 1 Samuel 14:45; 2 Samuel 14:11; Acts 27:34). In the midst of the lengthy Gospel Reading about the Last Things, that promise about God’s protection is one of several especially comforting statements, along with Jesus’s saying that by our endurance we will gain our lives, that we should straighten up and raise our heads because our redemption is drawing near, and that we should pray that we may have strength both to escape all the things that are going to take place and to stand before the Son of Man (confer Rengstorf, TDNT 7:236 n.252). The Divinely‑inspired St. Luke’s account of Jesus’s teaching about the Last Things uniquely reports that particular comforting statement about “Standing before the Son of Man”. So, this morning, considering primarily today’s Gospel Reading, with the help of the Holy Spirit, we consider the theme, “Standing before the Son of Man”.
From last Sunday’s Gospel Reading, in which Jesus publicly told the Sadducees that the dead are raised (Luke 20:27-40), our series of appointed Readings has skipped over eleven verses to today’s Gospel Reading, in which Jesus privately teaches His disciples (confer Matthew 24:3; Mark 13:3-4) about persecution, the destruction of both the Temple and Jerusalem, and the coming of the Son of Man. If last Sunday’s Gospel Reading was about the Last Things of the Intermediate State and the Bodily Resurrection of the Dead, then we might say that today’s Gospel Reading is about the Last Thing of the Final Judgment, including our redemption.
Of course, by nature we deserve for far more than a single hair of our heads to perish! Already this morning, in Divine‑Service Setting‑Four’s rite of preparation, we rhetorically asked, in the words of Psalm 130:3 (NIV), “If You, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand?” (Lutheran Service Book 203). That psalm is not the only Scripture passage that makes clear our inability as sinners to stand in the presence of our Holy God at any time, much less on the Day of Judgment. For example, Psalm 76:7 similarly asks of the Lord, “Who can stand before you when once your anger is roused?” (ESV). Nahum 1:6 similarly asks, “Who can stand before [the Lord’s] indignation? Who can endure the heat of his anger? His wrath is poured out like fire, and the rocks are broken into pieces by him” (ESV). A few verses before today’s Old Testament Reading, Malachi 3:2 similarly asks, “Who can endure the day of [his messenger’s] coming, and who can stand when he appears?” (ESV). Then, there is today’s Old Testament Reading’s warning, “For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch” (Malachi 4:1-6).
But, as Malachi also makes clear in today’s Old Testament Reading, for those who fear the Lord’s Name, the Sun of Righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. Truly, for those who follow the Holy Spirit’s leading to turn in sorrow from their sins and to trust God to forgive them for Jesus’s sake, with the Lord, as Psalm 130 and Divine‑Service Setting‑Four’s rite of preparation go on to say, there is forgiveness.
By nature we deserve to perish completely, but God showed His love for the world by giving His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). Today’s Gospel Reading is Jesus’s last teaching before His suffering and death on the cross for us and for our salvation. The Son of God in human flesh, Jesus was betrayed by a close friend, had hands laid on Him in His arrest, and was brought before a governor and a king for our sake. By His endurance of all of His suffering, we gain our lives. When we are sorry for our sins and trust God to forgive us for Jesus’s sake, then God does forgive us; God forgives our sinful nature and all our actual sin, whatever our actual sin might be. Unrepentant unbelievers may faint with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world, but we should straighten up and raise our heads for our redemption is drawing near. For whether we are judged at our deaths or when Christ comes with power and great glory, we who repent and believe are declared righteous, forgiven, effectively not guilty.
In today’s Gospel Reading, the disciples ask and Jesus answers at length about seeing signs and knowing what is happening when they see the signs. For us Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution, and the Holy Supper are the signs so that we can know what God is doing to and for us and when He is doing it. God’s Word with water in Holy Baptism puts His Triune Name upon us and rescues us from death and the devil. God’s Word with touch in Holy Absolution forgives us in that same Triune Name as validly and certainly, even in heaven, as if Christ our dear Lord dealt with us Himself. And, God’s Word with bread and wine that are the Body of Christ given for us and the Blood of Christ shed for us in the Holy Supper administered in that same Name give us the forgiveness of sins and so also life and salvation. Heaven and earth will pass away, but our Lord’s words in all of their forms—and their benefits for us, like the Lord Himself—will not pass away.
In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus says that, because of His Name’s sake, all people will hate us and lead us to government officials. Betrayal by parents and brothers and sisters and other relatives and friends sounds and is horrible, but Jesus says that such can be an opportunity to bear witness, and during these so-called “times of the Gentiles”, the Church is about Her Lord’s work (confer Stephenson, CLD XIII:98)! Our Lord tells us beforehand that such things will happen, and so we are not surprised when they do happen. He also helps us get through whatever He in His wisdom permits us to face. His words that by our endurance we will gain our lives, that we should straighten up and raise our heads, and that we should pray to have strength both to escape all these things that are going to happen and to stand before the Son of Man would be of little comfort if we had to do them all on our own! Far from it! The Lord by His Word and Sacraments strengthens us so that we can endure—opposing evil and waiting patiently—that we can straighten up and raise up our heads, that we can escape and that we can stand before Him. Indeed, as St. Paul writes to the Romans, the Lord is able to make us stand (Romans 14:4; confer Grundmann, TDNT 7:648-649). As we heard in the Epistle Reading (2 Thessalonians 3:1-13), the Lord is faithful and will establish us and guard us against the evil one. And, as we prayed in the Collect of the Day, we live and abide forever in Him.
We do not know the answer to the foolish question of whether or not our resurrected bodies will have the kind of hair that we once had (1 Corinthians 15:35-36), but, far more importantly, we do know that, on the Last Day, by God’s grace we will be “Standing before the Son of Man”. In the weekly rhythm of departing from and returning to the Divine Service, as we sang in the Introit (Psalm 121:1-2, 5, 7-8; antiphon: Luke 21:33), the Lord will keep our going out and our coming in, from this time forth and forevermore.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Amen.)
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +