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Grace, mercy and peace be to you …
In these final Sundays of the Pentecost season, our assigned readings remind us that we walk by faith, not by sight. What we see with our eyes is temporal, here today and gone tomorrow. But what we see with the eyes of faith is a world beyond this one … a New Creation… a world for which a redeemed mankind was truly destined.
That new world … or perhaps better, our portal into that new world is what our readings describe this Sunday and next as they admonish us to live with that event in mind … that coming of Christ at the end of time.
And so… the Scriptures speak of signs that will appear to assure us that that event is not far away….
Speaking of which, you couldn’t ignore those signs if you’d been living in the State of Oklahoma as of late. That State experienced it’s lowest ever recorded temperature this year, 31 degrees below zero. They also experienced their most consecutive days of 3-digit heat this past summer… Add to that, a slew of tornadoes this past spring and even more tornadoes just this past week, well into the month of November…
Add to that, huge thunderstorms… with hail … with the largest hail stone ever recorded locally at 6” in diameter. And to top all that off … a 5.6 magnitude earthquake.
Now, if you or I had gone through all that, we might take issue with the words we have from St. Paul for this morning about Jesus’ coming on the Last Day being like a thief in the night.
Thief in the night?? He’s coming with sirens wailing, bells ringing and fireworks. Hello? Wake up! The time is neigh! How many more signs in nature do you need?
Now, Jesus told His disciples that local signs like these will always be going on … They are reminders that a higher power than us exists in the universe… And that even as we try our hardest to be masters of our own fate … our life and our death is not as much under our control as we may like.
And that’s the underlying message in today’s reading in Paul’s Letter to the Thessalonians. St. Paul was talking about the Last Day, the Day of Judgment, coming like a thief in the night… unannounced … and also inevitable … like labor pains on a pregnant woman …
And so the subtle message is … that even as the Last Day of this creation will be unannounced and inevitable … so will be our own Last Day… if the Lord chooses to call us home before Jesus’ coming at the end of time. It will be unannounced and inevitable.
Now … God’s message of comfort through St. Paul this morning is only for Christians, because only Christians truly understand that their Lord will return … and when He does, He will bring Judgment upon the earth, and salvation to those who are His.
For the rest of the world, the times we live in today are not that different from the times recorded in Genesis, Chapter 6, where God, through Moses, describes the general condition of mankind prior to the Flood.
We hear there: “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways.” (6:11)
We need not spend a lot of time on the corruption we see today… from violent street-gang activity locally … to the New York Wall Street bailouts… to this week’s Missouri referendum allowing the voters to mandate that life does not begin at conception… And all this in a country that claims “in God we trust.” If we need say much more, just watch the evening news.
As for those days, again, before the flood … Jesus, God Himself, says in Matthew’s 24th chapter:
“For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.” (24:38-39)
Jesus speaks truth. As life went on before the Flood without any end in sight, so it does today, and so it will be when He comes again. The world is oblivious to that thing we Christians know will come … the unannounced and the inevitable … His return in judgment.
The world rejects the whole concept of a creator, much less a judge. You live, you die. You just try to be happy between the two. “Eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage.” Pretty well sums that up.
It will be a time of peace and security, St. Paul tells us … just like before the flood. A time when a watchman might slumber… with no war clouds on the horizon.
When the gulf war started back in 1991 … there were the folks on the radio making comparisons between certain middle-eastern countries and those recorded in visions of St. John in the Book of Revelation … and predicting that the end was at hand. Well the thief in the night is not much of one if He comes announcing his coming to the world on CNN, is he?
No, it would seem that the world will be asleep in its pursuit of worldly pleasures when the End Comes, which may well infer that the end will come unannounced in a time of relative world peace.
And so, those of us of faith are being encouraged not to fall into the world’s trap … but to keep alert. We notice that St. Paul speaks about being sober and awake by telling us to put on the breastplate of faith and love … and the helmet of the hope of Salvation.
Helmets and the breastplates are defensive pieces of armor … The breastplate… defending the heart … and the Helmet defending the mind.
One could well see that the conflicts envisioned by St. John in the Book of Revelation are not about armies going about trying to win earthly plunder or wealth or territory, but trying to capture the hearts and minds of God’s children.
And so, just as earthquakes and famines and other end-time signs have gone on throughout history, so also has the spiritual battle for the hearts and minds of mankind.
We might conclude, then, that Jesus’ Second Coming will not be heralded by a World War between earthly nations, but by a final desperate onslaught by Satan to capture the hearts and minds the saints on earth.
So, don’t fall prey to the world’s sleepy cocoon of carnal pleasure … but, above all, remain spiritually alert.
How do we do that? The neat thing is … God does that, we actually don’t. God’s gift to us is His church, where He meets us in our need to stay awake and sober through His means of grace … His Word and in His Sacraments … to build up our defenses … which are our faith and our hope and our love.
And so … if you were Satan … and you wanted to mess all that up … what would you do? Attack God’s church. Or even better, take that heart out of it … leave the building and the institution so that the people can still come and think their faith is still being fed and protected … but steal the Word…
and with the Word gone, destroy the effectiveness of God’s Sacraments … so what will be left?
Just a club… with lofty goals but without a true sense of faith, hope or love.
Without the Word of God, there is no means of grace. No path for the Holy Spirit to come and dwell in the hearts of men and women.
And so the admonition is to be alert. Not to look for World War three … or for earthquakes above 7.0 … or global warming … but for those who would come in sheep’s clothing and steal away the Word from your hearing.
Those who would compromise the message of salvation, those who would deny Jesus as the Christ, those who would, in fact, teach another gospel.
It’s not our job to sniff them out and bring them to task. That’s God’s job. Why? Because words and deed are not enough. Only God can read a person’s heart. And He is in the heart surgery business, not us.
And so … Be alert. Let your faith and love guard your heart, as God encourages you by His Spirit through His Word, and also as His Spirit encourages you through other believers as well.
And be alert … to what your mind is hearing as well. Our hope is based on a promise given to us by One whom we can trust. What we hope for, our salvation will come … unannounced and inevitable … and as certain as anything can be.
We hear in these words today that God will do this for us through His Word and through the encouragement and building up of others. And so, it’s all about His Church, isn’t it? Because that’s where all of that happens.
And so … whether Jesus chooses to call us home early, as it were… or if He comes again during our lifetime … our hope is certain in something which will come as unannounced as it is inevitable … His love coming to take us to our home with Him in heaven.
Until then … we find our faith and our hope and our love each day the Lord gives us as we live “All for Jesus”
In Him.
Amen.
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