“THE COMING CONSUMMATION”
Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 29)
November 22, 2015
Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church
Glenshaw, Pennsylvania
TEXT:
My righteousness draws near, My salvation has gone out, and My arm
will judge the peoples; the coastlands hope for Me, and for My arm
they wait.
Isaiah 51:5 (ESV)
It’s funny how our perception of things changes through the years.
When I was a child I would get this uncomfortable, sinking feeling
whenever I heard or thought about the end of the world. Christian or
not, I just didn’t want to hear about it. I still have vivid memories
of how my elementary school, in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis,
had us bring in blankets and canned food to prepare for the nuclear
war that we were sure to have any day. Nothing in those days
frightened me more or made me feel more uneasy than the thought that
the world might end soon. But today, at age sixty-one, the feelings
that I get when I am confronted with this subject are not feelings of
dread at all, but feelings of longing. I guess the more of life that
I experience, the more I can see how messed up this world really is,
and how desperately it cries out for everything to be made just and
right. At times I feel myself relating very well to a couple lines
from one of my favorite hymns:
“Yet saints their watch are keeping; their cry goes up, ‘How long?’
And soon the night of weeping shall be the morn of song”
(Lutheran Service Book #644, stanza 3).
If you’ve ever been involved with the care of dying people, you are
no doubt familiar with the phenomenon of “unfinished business”: people
needing to do something or see something happen before they can truly
leave this world in peace. Of course from a spiritual point of view
we know that everything necessary for us to die in peace has already
been done for us in the life, death and resurrection of our Savior,
but there are other human issues that need to be resolved: perhaps the
confession of some secret sin burdening the conscience or maybe
reconciliation with an alienated friend or relative. Our dying world
also has needs like that--the need to bring everything to a peaceful
conclusion before human history can properly come to a close. Since
this world’s biggest problem (and the cause of all of its other
problems) is sin, it only makes sense that what this world of sin and
sinners needs more than anything else is righteousness and salvation.
In the passage before us the Lord speaks of revealing His
righteousness and His justice. It would be an understatement to say
that our world is in need of righteousness and justice. We have
gotten so accustomed to things being imperfect in this world that we
are no longer all that sure what is right or wrong. Some things that
are so horrendous that they go against not only conscience but nature
itself find advocates, while other things, known to be good and right
and wholesome since day one, have detractors. The same could be said
of justice. All too often in our world the guilty go free while the
innocent are penalized. But Isaiah speaks here of the perfect
righteousness and justice of the Lord being revealed in the earth.
That righteousness and justice have been revealed once and for all in
the perfect life and innocent death of the Savior that God sent. The
perfect life of the Son of God proclaims His righteousness and in His
innocent suffering and death on the cross we can see God’s perfect
justice.
But if this was all dealt with twenty centuries ago, why is it that
we still have sin and injustice in the world today? It was dealt with
in the sense that the problem of sin has been resolved and the justice
that God demands has been met, but these things that our Savior has
accomplished for us have not yet reached their glorious fulfillment.
This fulfillment must wait until He comes again in His glory to take
us all to be with Him forever. There is nothing more that needs to be
done for all righteousness to be fulfilled, but that perfect
righteousness of God, revealed in Jesus Christ, is obscured by the
fact that we are sinners living in a fallen and broken world. The
world that God created was perfect but we have ruined it by our sin,
making it corrupt, unjust, and unfair. And we continue to oppose the
will and work of God each and every day.
Be that as it may, we don’t have to just “roll over and die,” so to
speak. We are not doomed to wallow in our sin and death. Isaiah
prophesies not only the revelation of God’s righteousness and justice;
he also proclaims the revelation of God’s salvation and hope. These
also come to us through the life and ministry of the Son of God.
Through the mercy and grace of God, revealed in His Son Jesus Christ,
the guilty are forgiven. Their sin is not denied or excused or swept
under the rug as so often is the case when humans claim to forgive.
Nor is it pushed aside to be brought up again in the next dispute.
The Lord’s forgiveness is genuine. He exposes our sin for what it is
and shows us how serious it is by punishing it in the crucifixion of
His Son, and in that cross of Jesus He also forgives us. And when He
forgives, He forgets. It’s a done deal. Sin forgiven is a thing of
the past, never to raise its ugly head again.
This means that we are spared from the condemnation that we deserve
because our Savior has endured God’s judgment in our place. As long
as we still live in this world, we have to bear the temporal
consequences of sin--even its worst consequence, which is death.
These temporal consequences of sin cause us a lot of suffering and
misery, to be sure, but even in the midst of all of that we have hope,
because we know that our Savior has done all that needs to be done to
deliver us from it all and to take us into glory to live with Him
forever.
As we consider our difficult life in this world while we await the
return of our Lord and Savior, a lesson can be learned from the Jewish
marriage customs in the time of Jesus: After the dowry or bride-price
had been set, the bridegroom would pay it, making the bride legally
his. But he would leave her with her family and return to his
father’s home to build an addition onto that home--the place where he
and his beloved would reside. No one knew how long that project would
take, but when it was completed the bridegroom (with virtually no
warning) would return to get his bride and take her to his home. As
soon as the marriage was consummated, the wedding feast began with
great joy. With this in mind and remembering that we, as members of
the Christian Church, are the bride of Christ, listen once again to
this familiar promise of Jesus: “In My Father’s house are many rooms.
If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place
for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again
and take you to Myself, that where I am you may be also” (John 14:2,
3). That promise of our Savior will get us through every difficulty,
every frustration, and every disappointment in life, cheering us
always with the knowledge that the One who loves us so much that He
paid the price of His own blood to make us His own is coming again to
deliver us from it all and take us into His eternal glory and joy.
Amen.
May the Lord bless your hearing of His Word, using it to accomplish in
you those things for which He gave it. May you be enriched and
strengthened in faith that you may leave here today to go out into our
world armed with the whole armor of God, prepared to be able
ambassadors of your Savior Jesus Christ. He who calls you is
faithful, and He will do it. Amen.