Rev. Shemwell
Revelation 22 10/01/23 Homily for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “‘Behold, I am coming soon, bringing My reward with Me, to repay each one for what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.’ And it is also said: Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter into the city by the gates… And the Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’ So let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who so desires take the water of life without price.” Dear brothers and sisters in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, our Lord, Christ the King, He is coming. The liturgical season of Advent is on the horizon, of course, only three short months out now. And I know that’s a time of year we all eagerly await, right? If for no other reason than the fact that Christmas follows it, arguably our favorite church holiday. But more importantly than all that, for us faithful believers, our Lord’s final advent, His second coming, His ultimate return on the clouds in glory, His descending from the heavens above just as He once ascended to them, this most momentous advent of all remains forever on the figurative horizon, no matter the time of year. And we know that to be true because our Savior tells us as much in our reading this morning. I ended my sermon last week with these words that we hear again today – Jesus, the King, promises: “Surely I am coming soon!” – Put otherwise: “Don’t worry, little flock, My advent, it is coming very shortly.” Now the holy Christian church has waited many centuries for this advent, millennia even. Our ancestors in the faith, all the faithful departed who preceded us for two thousand years, they once waited like we now wait. In years past, theirs was our present wait, it was no different for them then than it is for us now. They waited patiently, though no doubt with keen expectation. They, the millions if not billions of sinner-saints from every generation, longed for Christ Jesus to return and bring them home, just like we do. And it goes without saying that it has so far been quite a long and protracted anticipation, hasn’t it? Again, two whole millennia. That’s something of a wait, wouldn’t you say? 2 Probably the longest wait in all of human history. But no matter how long that wait continues to last, our Lord’s parting words to His church, recorded in St. John’s apocalyptic revelation, these words are no less true. For as St. Peter tells us in his second epistle, with God, one day is a thousand years and a thousand years is like one day. Our Lord is surely coming soon, and that promise is perfectly kept today, just as it was yesterday and as it will be tomorrow. That is why the church’s chief prayer is “Come quickly, Lord Jesus!” – the closing words of Holy Scripture, mind you, with which we are invited to pray ceaselessly. Jesus’ promise to us is only perfected and made more trustworthy with the passage of time, as paradoxical as that may seem – and so our chief prayer begging for His hastened arrival is mostly a helpful reminder to ourselves of that fact, a reminder of the reliability of His return and the reality that it draws nearer with every blink of the eye and with every new spoken prayer. It is closer with each and every subsequent breath. Closer now … and now … and closer now … But in this growing wait though, in this drawn-out longing for our dear Lord, from this day forth until the very last day of all, we have to remain watchful always and as vigilant as ever, like all those saints who fell asleep before us. Let us never once become like those foolish virgins in the biblical parable whose oil ran out during the night-watch for the Bridegroom. Remember that story? I think it comes up in a month or so in the lectionary. And a funny story about that story: when I was England a few years back, in a gorgeous Anglican or Anglo-Catholic church, there was this remarkable statuary depicting the parable of the foolish and wise virgins. And one of the foolish virgins depicted there, in a striking pose, looked like this – [face palm] – with a face palm felt for eternity and memorialized in marble. It was such a funny yet profound sight. You could feel the concrete regret. So no, let us never be like that, like them, like the foolish virgins. But friends, let us instead be like the wise virgins and let us be found properly prepared when Jesus does return. Let us be greeted by the Groom with robes all washed and readied. Let us, the bride of the church, be composed, well-dressed, attired and adorned for a heavenly matrimony, in a state befitting the holy Bridegroom Himself. 3 He is surely coming soon, so we must not delay in this our preparation or lose watch or vigilance for even the slightest second. And that warning right there, that admonition toward readiness and diligence you just heard from my thirty-three-year-old lips, that’s what these closing Sundays of this current liturgical season are really all about. Preparation. So how? How do we make ourselves ready? How do we make sure we are ready? How do we anticipate our Lord with patience yet prudence? Christ could come back at any moment. Or frankly, dear faithful, we could fall asleep and meet Him first at any moment. This earthly life is fleeting. Our existence is very fragile. Youth, it is no guarantee against that regrettable reality. None of us here are invincible, none of us can escape our fate, and none of us can outrun the hour of our end. So how do we prepare ourselves either for His triumphant return or for our own jubilant journey home? For the end to our wait or for the end to our lives? Well, consider this: the Lord’s angel once showed St. John in his vision a glimpse of the New Jerusalem, with the river of the water of life, clear as crystal, running through a grove of sheer vitality, through the midst of the tree of life with its many healing leaves – and the angel as well showed him the eternal sunshine of the Almighty God’s undying and undiminished radiance, the radiant brilliance of God’s beautiful, incandescent face. But we are not yet there, obviously. That was but a glimpse for one man seen centuries ago and recorded for us latter-day believers to give us hope. But here and now, in 2023, on this wrecked and sin-ravaged earth, instead of a river of life there is rather a great deal of drought all around, often apparent in the ground beneath our feet, like with the sad Colorado river out west, but just as much is there drought present and altogether apparent in the withered and parched hearts of men and women. Sin and its consequences infect and corrupt all creation. Which is why creation remains so devastated today. Look around: there are trees right now ready for their death, a white witch’s winter soon approaching, both in nature with its seasons of discontentment and its misuse and abuse by greedy and careless men, and more importantly there is persistent winter and disease in the souls of the unbelieving world out there, too, whose superficially ripened fruits all spoil in eternity. And there is plenty of darkness, both physical and spiritual. We know that painfully well. 4 It is dark for lengthy periods of time – we ourselves are soon to endure longer hours of darkness. And that darkness is equally as actual in the wicked ways of the world. Evil goes on for days these days. No, as is evident to all with eyes wide to see, we are not yet home. This devastated world is not our true home, we are but pilgrims here. Yet the Bridegroom is nevertheless coming soon, to carry us over the threshold, to hurry us there, to hasten us home, where all things will be made new, where a fresh creation awaits us. Therefore, we must be found ready, at any time. So how? How do we make ourselves ready? How do retain the oil in our spiritual lanterns and keep our robes pure and white? We all want so much to enter into the holy city of the New Jerusalem by the gates someday and to have a right to that tree of life at its center once again. So how do we do that? What do we have to do? What can we do? Our Lord Himself says that He will bring with Him His reward, His recompense, and that He shall repay each according to what he has done. For us, we will be ready for that reward and that holy recompense if we wash our robes and keep them clean – we are assured of this. But how? How do we do that exactly? That’s the important question. Well, put simply, beloved: you do so by staying put. By being still. By being passive and receptive. You are already where you need to be. You are already in the true church on earth, the Church militant, you are in the house of God, you are where robes are washed weekly and where lanterns are kept continually supplied with a sanctifying oil and are perpetually lit. But outside, in the hopeless dark out there, in the lamp-less night beyond these walls, “outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood,” as Jesus and St. John warn us. Now, some of us here have also fallen into sexual immorality at some point, most of us here are idolaters in some way, shape, or form, we all harbor anger and resentment against our neighbor, murdering him or her in our own hearts, according to Christ in St. Matthew’s gospel chapter five, and truth be told, we are all mangy dogs, just like that Canaanite woman begging for the scraps from the master’s table we heard about some weeks ago. 5 However, these particular sins mentioned outside, these unfortunate failings, though grievous and shameful they are, regardless, they are forgivable; and insofar as you’ve repented and confessed them to God the Father, they are thusly truly absolved. You are forgiven them. Your robes washed clean again. It is that easy. Yet what we cannot ever let ourselves become is lovers of falsehood. That is a completely different story. And that is what staying put and holding fast to the true church and her true teachings prevents and precludes. That is why it is so important to be here, within these walls at Bethlehem, in God’s company and in the fellowship of His saints. Sin is forgiven freely wherever there is repentance and faith, full stop. No sin whatsoever is unforgivable or unpardonable, except the sin against the Holy Spirit. But falsehood, faith and falsehood can never coexist. They have nothing to do with one another. One is of the true God and the other of Lucifer. Falsehood, wherever it perpetuates itself in impenitence is unpardonable – and in truth, it is the sin against the Holy Spirit, it is akin to blasphemy – because it is a rejection of the true faith. Our Lord, when He returns in glory, He will repay us for what we have done. But what we have done, what we do now, whatever good is wrought and worked by our feeble human hands, it is not actually even ours to claim, now is it? We went through this a few weeks back. Instead, it is all the work of the Holy Spirit within us, sanctifying us and others through us, as mere vessels of God’s good and gracious will – this work is nothing more than the fruit of our faith, the evidence of our belief – and it doesn’t even belong to us – it belongs to God alone, Who works faith and belief. Our entrance into the holy city someday, it has little at all to do with what we are capable of accomplishing by ourselves. We are sinners, and on our own, we are nothing at all. We would be eternally helpless were it not for the grace of God. And before that grace, as Luther once scribbled on a deathbed note, we are all beggars. 6 No, our passageway into paradise depends solely on faith, it is predicated, based and contingent on faith alone, on faith in the Son of God worked by the Holy Spirit for the sake of the Father’s grace – again, the water of life is offered without price, as our reading promises. We don’t owe anything, because Christ already paid everything. Our hope for the kingdom rests in belief alone – belief in the truth, belief in Christ, not in falsehood, never in falsehood nor false teaching. Belief and falsehood are diametrically opposed, the one only ever diminishes the other. The robes of our bodies and souls were washed clean long ago in Holy Baptism and they are daily rinsed when we cling to our baptismal faith and when we drown the old Adam in us in those cleansing waters. Our sin is pardoned every single Sunday when we walk through those doors there and make our confession collectively as a church – all our sin, the dirt and the filth are bathed away week by week. Those sins great and small that so burden your poor souls, they become nothing at all in the eyes of God – they are forgotten entirely in eternity – the Father solely sees the Son’s sacrifice. And our lamps, dear friends, our lamps are kept lit, kept oiled, kept readied by the Word proclaimed, spoken from the lectern and preached from the pulpit. The pulpit and lectern put oil in your lantern. Think of it that way. So how do you make yourself ready for the King’s coming? You don’t. You simply stay put and you receive what is graciously given to you with thanksgiving. You remain in the bosom of the church; that’s what you should do. You abide precisely where robes and lanterns are so well cared-for. Right here. You cling to the truth rather than to those falsehoods and false teachings out there in the world that tug on the sickly souls of sinners, urging them to abandon the sure certainty they have here in their salvation. There aren’t just dogs outside, but moreover there are wolves, even wolves in sheep’s clothing. They may try to tempt you away from the church, or they may lie to you, to your face, and tell you that you can do something more, that you can add something, that you can do a little bit extra to ready yourself for the final judgment, or that you can even save yourself in the end. But they only ever lie. The wolves and the self-righteous hypocrites and legalists are one in the same. The serpents and the Pharisees are no different, which is why our Lord once called them a brood of vipers. And they and their falsehoods have no place in the coming kingdom. 7 Falsehood and faith are sworn enemies. So don’t be carried away by the god of this world and by the seduction of untruth and false doctrine. Only untruth is unforgiveable. All else is pardoned by Christ’s bloodshed. Never lose sight of that fact. You, friends, are saved by grace through faith. You know this. Truth and faith, faith in the truth, faith in the truth incarnate at Bethlehem and then hung naked on a tree to die twenty centuries ago, these are what prepare the bride of the church for the coming of the Bridegroom. So stay put in these, keep steady in the Word and Sacraments, hold still in pure doctrine and pure practice. Don’t budge and don’t give in – ever. Don’t compromise with untruth and falsehood. We don’t do that. Our Lord certainly never did. Read your bible, at least a few verses each day. I’m serious: I implore you to do that without fail, make it your habit and don’t let yourself break it. Hold yourself accountable. Or have others hold you accountable. And do the same with your catechism while you’re at it. Always say your prayers with a willing heart – and even when your heart is unwilling, say your prayers anyways. Just move your mouth and go through the motions. A willing heart will come with time. And give thanks to God every morning and night. That is a given. And tell the people in your life that you are grateful to God for them too. They might appreciate hearing it spoken out loud once in a while. Ask for guidance and wisdom in your personal vocations, from God and from others. And when you mess up, which you most certainly will, as a husband, mother, friend, or brother, seek forgiveness. Don’t waste time. You don’t know the hour of the Second Coming, nor the hour of your own impending death. So don’t hesitate. But repent and reconcile. That’s what our religion is all about. And stay right here, where the Gospel is rightly taught and the Sacraments are rightly administered. If you do, then you will be ready for whenever the King finally comes, you’ll be good and ready until kingdom come. You will be prepared for His permanent advent. Trust me in this. And yes, you will be ready as well should He first decide to carry you home individually, in His most able arms, over the threshold of death, into paradise, where you will rest peacefully in the company of all the saints until that Last Day, until you are raised body and soul from the grave to inherit the new earth with all the children of God. 8 The Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end, the King of glory and of all creation, the Lord of Hosts, He is coming soon, make no mistake. The truth of that statement has only become truer since this sermon first began twenty or so minutes ago. And should you ever feel afraid, or too weak to withstand the seemingly overlong wait, alone or too discouraged and downtrodden to carry on for another difficult day, then do not despair, dear friends. For behold, Christ the King, He comes to you right now as well. To pick you up for a little while, to wipe your cheek, to stand you firm and set you straight, to strengthen and ready you for tomorrow and for the other five days outside these walls. He comes now, this Sunday, this Lord’s Day, to bear you up for the drought, to sustain you for the long winter ahead, and to lead you with His unfading light through the deep darkness of this often-exasperating life. And so very soon, He indeed will come again in glory at last to make all things new – to put an end to each and every sorrow – to raise the dead from their defeated death – to grant us access to the river and the tree of life in that eternal spring on the horizon – to welcome us into His blessed kingdom, where we will live with Him and all our departed loved ones in the faith in righteousness and under His reign forever and ever. Until then though, do not fret, brothers and sisters, everything is going to be alright. It’s going to be okay. I promise you. Because God is always with you – now – and also very, very soon. How do we prepare for His coming then? How do we withstand the wait and ready ourselves for that final advent of His? Well, we do so by being here and receiving Him when He comes to us right now, in this present and perennial advent – in the Divine Service, today and next week and the week after that too. So dear saints, I really hope to see you then. And so does the King, the Holy Bridegroom Himself. In His Name. Amen.
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