[Malachi 4:1-6 / Romans 15:4-13 / Luke 21:25-36]I don’t know about you, but I love to read a good novel. I especially love mysteries and thrillers. But there are times in the middle of a book when things are looking so bad for the hero, that I just need a sneak peak at the back pages to assure myself that they make it through. Then I can happily go back to reading the scary stuff.
Today’s readings, people loved by God, are a divine peek at the end of the story of this world, and our lives in it. And when what God is teaching in them sinks into our souls and hearts, it fills us with hope. Not the wishy-washy kind of hope that says: “Wouldn’t it be nice if…” Rather, the rock solid kind of hope that simply knows how it all ends, and thus gives us the strength to weather whatever may come our way before that ending arrives.
In the first reading from Malachi, the prophet speaks of the coming of the Day of the Lord. Is it bad news or good news? Depends on whether you are arrogant and an evildoer, or whether you are among those who fear the Lord’s name – that is who worship Him in humility. For, make no mistake about it, the End of this earth’s story is some kind of bad news to those who, filled with pride, embrace evil and hold onto it. Because that Day, when it comes, will wipe out everything that is not love – wipe it out forever: leaving neither root nor branch. But that same fire that is death to all that is not love, arises as the Sun of righteousness with healing for those who fear God’s name. For them, when that glorious light breaks upon this earth it will be joy like the Springtime when the calves kick up their heels and play in the newly green fields of Spring. They know that all the evil that they still struggle with and long to be freed from will be destroyed in them, and only that which is good and holy and pleasing to God will remain. When they think of that Day, when they pray: “Come, Lord Jesus!” they know they are asking for their own full and final healing from the wounds of sin and death.
Our Epistle simply brims with this hope. We are told that the Scriptures were written down precisely for this purpose: that we might have hope! And here is the hope they give: the gift of living in harmony with one another, and raising together a united voice of praise to the Father of our Lord Jesus, welcoming each other with the same joy that each of us has been welcomed by the Lord, abounding together in the praise of the Lord who has made us all one in Jesus Christ. Do you see, then, that this is what the Church is called to be? A little foretaste here on earth of our blessed hope? The Father’s one family gathered through His Son, filled with the joy and peace that come from the Holy Spirit, and abounding in hope. Living already the joy of the Age that is to come. The Church is the people who live in this world already the life that is on the other side of the Last Day. Oh, we live it poorly, that is true. We continually forget our hope, forget that we are one family, forget that we are created to sing the praises of the Blessed Trinity. But the ongoing existence of the Church as a people reminds us forever of the life God really and truly is reaching each of us in His Son. Jew, Gentile, all of us called to glorify God for His great mercy: the hope that is ours in Jesus, who has forgiven our sins upon His Cross and defeated our death by His resurrection and who ascended to rule over all things until the glorious moment of His appearing. God gave us the Scriptures to fill us with that hope that we might live in this world as colonists of that age that is to come.
And in today’s Gospel, Jesus talks about how this age comes apart and how frightening it will be. “People fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world.” Yet His people don’t see the events in the same way. When everything seems to be coming apart, and it looks like there is no future, that’s the moment when Jesus says for His people to “straighten up and raise you heads” – to look to the skies – “for your redemption is drawing near.”
And so He uses that lovely parable of the fig tree and all trees. When we see them bud, we know it’s not long before the warm days of spring and summer will embrace us. So too, when we see these things taking place – and terror is on every side – our hope sees us through. We know it’s not the END. It’s the beginning. Holding tight to His words that cannot and do not fail, we await their final fulfillment when He will make all things new.
And do I need to tell you that before the big universe falls apart, many times our private universes fall apart. Sickness, suffering, depression, death. They come. Oh, but people loved by God, hold tight to your HOPE. They cannot destroy you. They cannot rob you of peace. You know the end of the story. You know that what you have tasted here in this world in His Church is only the appetizers of the feast. Baptized into your Jesus, you have been given forgiveness more than the sin of the world, let alone your own. Fed by His body and blood, into you has gone the Life that defeated death. He holds you in His hand and when events turn more terrible than you can imagine, when your universe is shaken to its core, He is still there, and His promises to you will hold and will see you through the darkness into the Light of that Sun that never sets.
And so our Lord warns us one and all to watch ourselves, and not get weighed down with the partying, the drunkenness, the cares and worries of life. As Pastor Gleason said last week: living as though that final Day were never going to come. But come it will. And so we pray for the strength not to be overwhelmed by what precedes it, that we may have strength to escape and to stand before our Jesus, the Son of Man.
When that is the joy of your heart, the desire of your life, to stand before Him, to sing His praise with the holy angels, to gaze in wonder and awe upon the scars He bears that testify forever to His love for you, and so for you to love Him forever with a love that is pure, undefiled, and ever growing – well then what do you really have to fear from that Day’s arrival? Nothing at all. The cry and prayer of your heart can be the unalloyed joy of: Come, Lord Jesus! Come, Forgiveness of my sin! Come, Defeater of death! Come, Resurrection of my body! Come, Giver of the Feast! Come, dearest Brother who has made us your sisters and brother and coheirs with You of Your Father’s kingdom! Come, and set us free!
You see, when you've had a peek at the end of the book, when you know the end of the story, it gives you a hope that sees you through whatever you have to go through; a hope that sees you home. Amen.
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