[Malachi 4:1-6 / Romans 15:4-13 / Luke 21:25-36]
So what’s hope? You hear it incorrectly if you hear overtones of “wouldn’t it be nice, wouldn’t it be lovely?" Such is NOT what the Sacred Scriptures mean by hope. In today’s Epistle, St. Paul called our God, a God of hope who fills His people with all joy and peace in believing so that by the power of the Holy Spirit they may abound in hope. That’s not so they would abound in “wouldn’t it be nice, wouldn’t it be lovely!” Or hope is not so frilly as that. Our hope is rock solid. It does not waver. It is founded upon the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and His promise to appear in glory at the Last Day when He will bring in an Age where all that is loveless, joyless, painfilled, and sorrowful in our lives will be done away. Our hope rests in this coming Age where Love reigns over all and in all.
And we know it’s no pipe dream, because our Lord has already risen into it. Where the Head is, the body soon must follow. In fact, we get to live from it already now. Already in this age that is coming to an end, we as the people of God are called to live from the certain joy, the expectant hope, of the age that is coming. If you’ve never thought of our parish as a colony from the future, you’ve not thought of it as God does. If you’ve never thought of yourself as a colonist from the future, you’ve not thought of yourself as God does.
We look toward that day, and we seek to live toward that day, to order our lives toward the realities that we know are true and lasting - all that we’ve seen and known in Jesus Christ, our Lord.
We know that not everyone will welcome that day. There are those whose hearts are tied tightly to THIS world and its pleasures and joys, its worries and distractions. Advent reminds us that we can’t live that was as God’s holy people. If your heart is tied to life in this world, then when that Day comes, you’ll experience it the way Malachi described it: a burning oven, devouring all the arrogant and evildoers, setting them ablaze.
But for the people in whom the Holy Spirit has planted His joy and peace - we know that this world cannot be our final home, and that its pleasures and its passions cannot give to us what we long for. Yes, we still live in the flesh, and there’s no one so perfect that they don’t have to struggle still against desires that would tie down and tangle up. Advent is the call of the Church to keep on struggling, to keep on fighting the darkness of this age and its bitterness, resentments and anger, with light of our certain hope, our future with Christ.
You see the struggle will not go on forever! For you who fear my name, says the Lord, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall! The Day when our certain hope arrives, the Day when Christ stands again unveiled in His glory upon this earth - that is the day when He transforms the flesh, the sinful nature, the old Adam. It’s the day He heals you forever from the old passions that keep seeking to trap and trip you up. It’s the day you get to say goodbye and good riddance to your foul temper, to your lying tongue, to your wanting to cherish resentments and all such. The Light of that day burns away everything that is not the love in your life!
Any wonder that the people of God ACHE for that day? That they pray for it unceasingly: “Our Lord, come! Maranatha!” Come, and bring us Your healing! Come, and take the darkness from our lives! Come, and make us wholly Yours, forever!
In today’s Gospel, our Lord says that when the time comes and all things around us are shaken and people all around are fainting from fear of what’s happening to their world - then, says He, is the time for His people to “straighten up and raise our heads.” Because that’s when our redemption is drawing near.
Redemption? I thought that happened back on Calvary, back when our Lord shed His blood to blot out the record of our sins, of the world’s sin! How can the Lord speak of redemption as future?
Actually, in Scripture, redemption usually refers to the Second Coming. Because that is where He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. That’s where the healing that has begun in your life through your Baptism will be finished. That’s where the foretaste of the Supper ends and the Feast that never ends begins. That's where the life we've received a teasing taste of in the Church becomes the very fabric of our being.
And so the Lord doesn’t ever say to you in His Scripture: “You’re saved. Don’t worry about it. You’ve got your get-into-heaven free ticket.” No. Constantly in Scripture your Lord warns you: “Watch yourselves.”
You CAN fall away from grace. You CAN fall into unbelief in the future though now you are a believer. Once saved, always saved? It’s a lie. Don’t believe it. What our Lord says is that He who endures to the end will be saved.
And so in today’s Gospel He warns: “Keep watch over yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly as a trap.” Which is to say, keep watch over yourself that you never say in your heart: “Lord, don’t come quite yet. I’m having a rather good time at the moment getting plastered, getting wasted, enjoying this or that pleasure and I really don’t want to freed from my sin quite yet. I LIKE it and want to keep it for the time being. Make me holy but do it LATER.”
Against such evil in our hearts, the Lord warns and tells us to stay awake and pray. An awake heart says: “Lord, have mercy on me. You see how much I am drawn to this sin, to this pleasure, to this worry. Forgive me, Lord, heal me, cleanse me. Take away my sin, wash me from my iniquity.”
Do you see the difference? I pray you do. It is the difference between those who will experience His coming as terror and those who experience it as joy. As Dr. Luther once preached, the person who longs to be freed from his sin has nothing to fear from the coming of that Day.
During holy Advent, then, the Church calls for us to repent. To turn from hearts weighed down with the pleasure or the frettings of this world, and beg Christ for healing. We pray during these Advent Days that He would fill us with all joy and peace in believing His certain hope, so that our lives come to truly reflect the age that is coming in all we think, speak, or do. Then to Christ alone, our victorious and returning Lord, be all glory and honor with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
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