Sunday, November 24, Last Sunday of the Church Year
“Saving Sinners from the Fire”
Psalm 99:1-9; Isaiah 51:4-6; Jude 20-25; Mark 13:24-37
Order of Vespers, p. 229
Hymns: #850 “God of Grace and God of Glory”; #880 “Now Rest Beneath Night’s Shadow”; #877 “Now the Light Has Gone Away”; #934 “My Soul Now Magnifies the Lord”; #919 “Abide, O Dearest Jesus”
Dear Friends in Christ,
We begin this morning as St. Jude began his letter: “To those who have been called, who are loved by God the Father and kept by Jesus Christ: Mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance.” Amen.
There’s an old story about a man named Bob, whose house had a leak in the roof. A neighbor of his was there on a rainy day, watching as Bob put pots, pans, and kettles under the drips. The neighbor asked, “Bob, what don’t you get up there and fix your roof?” And Bob answered, “I can’t get up there today because it’s raining.” The neighbor asked, “Well then, why don’t you fix it when the sun is out?” And he answered, “It doesn’t leak then.”
My mother had a neighbor once who had the pump burn out on his well. The obvious thing was to get out there, dig a hole down to the pump, and replace the burned-out motor. Instead, being a religious kind of fellow, he gathered all his friends in a circle around the wellhead and led them in fervent prayer for the Lord’s help and aid with the well. Then he stuck a shovel in the ground, and they all went inside to drink beer and watch football. In the morning, the shovel was still there stuck in the ground, and the hole was still yet to be dug. So he decided it wasn’t in God’s will that the well should be repaired!
God’s Church is so often lacking a sense of urgency. Time is short. Jesus is coming back soon. His coming is “nearer now than when we first believed,” St. Paul says. God says in Isaiah, “My righteousness draws near speedily, and My salvation is on the way.” And while we wait and hesitate and make silly excuses for not doing what we should, people all around us are leaving this world without knowing Christ. The old pastor Charles Spurgeon wrote (and I have this written in the front of my Bible): “Preach as a dying man to dying people. It may be the last sermon you ever preach, or the last sermon someone might ever hear.” How much time do we have before Jesus comes? I don’t know; nobody does. How many years do I have left to work for God in this world? I don’t know that either. All of which makes it all the more important not to waste a minute or an hour or a day.
Jesus, in Mark’s Gospel, had been telling His disciples about how things would be in the world, in the time between His Resurrection and Ascension and the day He comes again. The wars and rumors of wars, the trials and tribulations, the earthquakes and famines, the persecution of God’s Church and His people; all of it, Jesus says, will happen, and lead up to a time of stress and distress like the world has never seen before and will never see again.
And following that time of distress, says Jesus, the end will come. (But not an end, really, but a new beginning). What Jesus is talking about is Judgment Day, the Last Day, His Second Coming. We humans, we “sons of Adam,” won’t go on forever. We can’t go on forever. We’re not “evolving into better people,” but getting worse as time goes on. We’re not evolving, but devolving. The weapons we use to destroy each other are getting more terrible and deadly as the years go on. The war in Ukraine has killed over a million souls, death by drones and remote control. God in His mercy isn’t going to allow us to exterminate ourselves as a human race, but it’s going to be close. In Genesis 9, after the Flood, God made a covenant with “all the living creatures on the earth” that such a thing would never happen again. If I’m reading the book of Revelation correctly, Christ will come to intervene at a time when the fingers are on the button and the missiles are in the air.
When we’re at the height of our human arrogance and foolishness and pride and sin, when our eyes are glued to the news and to our screens and smartphones instead of looking up to God – then, Jesus says, “The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light. The stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.” That’s the final removal of everything we think of as permanent. That’s the ground giving way beneath our feet, and the sky above our heads rolling up like a scroll. It will be the sudden, terrible realization that the sky and the stars and the firmament were never anything but a backdrop, and the God who made us has always been there behind the veil. It will be the moment those of us who love and trust God will “stand up and lift up our heads,” and those who do not will look in vain for a place to hide.
“At that time,” says Jesus, “all men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with power and glory.” That’s how Jesus always said He would come; like lightning across the sky. When Jesus was on trial, the night before they crucified Him, the High Priest asked Him directly, “Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?” And Jesus answered, ‘I Am; and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.” The disciples, at Jesus’ Ascension, were staring up into the sky as the clouds hid Him from their sight, and an angel appeared and told them, “This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen Him go into heaven.” And in our Gospel, here He is, glorious and powerful and inescapably real, for all the world to see.
“And He will send his angels and gather His elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens,” Jesus says in our Gospel. The elect, or the chosen ones, is everyone from every time and place who has ever lived and died with faith in Christ. The “four winds” is a term that encompasses everything; from the four corners of the earth, from every time, from every era, no one is going to be forgotten. Prophet Isaiah says God will bring His people home “from everywhere they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness.” And God promises in Isaiah, “Do not be afraid, for I Am with you; I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west. I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’ Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth – everyone who is called by My name, whom I created for My glory, whom I formed and made.”
Now here’s where it becomes so important that we make the best use of the time we have, and that this Church of His has a sense of urgency, as far as our mission in this place goes. Jesus tells His disciples, “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near.” It’s about reading the signs of the times. It’s about “opening your eyes and looking at the fields.” It's about watching what’s going on in the world, and understanding from God’s Word that things are going just the way God always said they would go. It’s about getting to know our neighbors, and understanding the time we have to reach out to them may be short. “When you see these things happening,” Jesus says, “you know that it is near, right at the door.”
“I tell you the truth,” Jesus tells His disciples, “this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” “This generation” is first of all a reference to the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 AD, which apostle John, and others who knew Jesus during His life on earth, would have still been alive to see. But Jesus, seeing far into the future, was also talking about this Holy Church of His, and what His people would have to endure for the next 2000 years and more. “This generation” is the entire generation of Christians, the whole Christian era and time of the Christian Church. When the end finally comes, the promise is that we’ll still be here, doing what we do and saying what we’ve been given to say. The devil and the powers-that-be in this world have been trying to harass and abuse and starve God’s Church out of existence for all these years, but the promise is that they’ll never succeed, and that we’re not going anywhere. “Heaven and earth will pass away,” says Jesus, “but My words will never pass away.”
So, time is short, and - “Amen, come Lord Jesus!” - our Savior is coming soon. “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father,” says Jesus. “Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come.” Could be today, could be tomorrow, might not be until many years from now; the “when” is up to God. That being the case, the only option we have is to live every day like it might be our last, and to live every day obedient and watchful and faithful.
That’s the point of Jesus’ little story about “a man going away.” Jesus has been raised from the dead and ascended into Heaven; He’s not here on earth in body today. He’s sent us His good Holy Spirit, to lead us and guide us and help us, but He Himself we cannot see. He’s left these servants of His in charge, and given each of us an assigned task – work to do for Him, places He wants us to go, people He wants us to talk to, in whatever place in life He assigns to us. I guess maybe I’m the one at the door keeping watch, trying to keep everyone else awake.
So, as we began with a word from St. Jude, we’ll end with Him as well: “You, my dear friends - my loved ones, my dear ones, my agapatoi - “build up yourselves in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit.” Open your Bibles and read them. Come to worship, feed on the Sacrament, come to a Bible study, and pray like there’s no tomorrow. “Keep yourselves in God's love,” Jude says, “as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.”
“And be merciful to those who doubt,” Jude says. We’re not here to harangue people, or condemn them, or beat them down or break their spirits. Quite the opposite; we’re here to show mercy, and give mercy, and to let them know where the answer for their doubts can be found, to help them find hope and peace with God.
“Snatch others from the fire and save them,” Jude says, “and to others show mercy, mixed with fear, hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.” The Greek word for “snatch” is harpadzo. The word means literally “to seize or catch up by force or by violence.” This is where we get our English word “harpoon!” Isn’t that an interesting take on evangelism? Not that we should go around harpooning people; but if someone’s in the fire, if someone is hurting or suffering or on the verge of giving up, someone has to do something, say something, throw them a lifeline. There’s even a time when we should “butt in”, do a little “spiritual intervention,” if that’s what the situation calls for. That might make someone mad, at least for a little while; but anything is better than the fire.
That means we have to be, as the saying goes, “in the world, but not of the world.” “Live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear,” St. Paul says. That means living in the world, but not letting the things of the world have a home in us. It means hating what the world does, but loving the people the world is doing it to, enough to want to save them; that’s what God has put us here for.
“Now to him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy - to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore!” In Jesus’ name; Amen.