How to Wait for Jesus

[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, earlier today. This the First Sunday of Advent, which begins the new Church Year.]

Mark 13:24-37
Advent is a season for waiting. As we get ready for Christmas during Advent, we remind ourselves that as surely as God once came into the world as the baby Jesus, that same Jesus will one day, on what the Bible calls the Day of the Lord, return to this world.

Advent, of course, nothing but a human invention, a tradition that Christians are free to keep or ignore. There’s nothing sacred about Advent in itself.

But as a reminder to you and me to wait (and how to wait) for Jesus’ return, Advent is useful.

It reminds us that when Jesus returns, He will put everything finally and fully right, and usher all who have trusted Him into life in His new creation.

It’s when that happens that we will fully appreciate the meaning of God’s promise given through the prophet Isaiah centuries before Jesus’ birth: “They who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:31, English Standard Version).

Until that day, we “live by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).

We trust that the God Who once took on human flesh (John 1:14), then died, rose, and ascended to heaven, will return.

All who confess Jesus as their God and Lord are waiting for that day of the Lord.

But, as Jesus makes clear in today’s gospel lesson, for the disciple of Jesus Christ, waiting is not a passive thing. Take a look at the lesson, please, Mark 13:24-37. Jesus has been talking about two events at the same time. One is the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD. The other is the Day of His return. He’s shifted mostly to talking about His return and the deterioration of life in this world that will precede it when He says in verse 26: “At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.”

Both the living and the dead will then be brought together to meet their King and receive His welcome into His kingdom.

Because of this promise from the crucified and risen Jesus, we confess: “...if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him” (Romans 6:8).

Next in our gospel lesson, Jesus talks to us specifically about waiting. Verse 28: “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near.”

The fig is one of the few trees in the Middle East, where Jesus lived in the first century, that loses its leaves in the fall. When its leaves begin to reappear in late spring, people know that warm weather is on its way. It’s a sign of things to come.

Verse 29: “Even so [Jesus goes on], when you see these things happening, you know that it is near, right at the door. Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.”

The these things that Jesus speaks of here are all the calamities that will happen in the world before His return, things like wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes, and famines. In other words, life will continue to go pretty much as it has in this world from the moment that Adam and Eve fell into sin.

And Jesus tells us that these things--all the sin and sadness that permeates our fallen universe--will not be the last words over the lives of those who trust in Christ. 

His Word--the Word of and about the Word made flesh, Jesus--will never pass away, will give all who have persevered in trusting in Him, a new and everlasting beginning.

So, we must not allow ourselves to be discouraged by these things--whether they’re injustice or corruption, disasters or holocausts, personal tragedies or illness, gun violence or racism, sexual harassment or selfishness.

Jesus has conquered them all and even in the midst of the things of this world, we can know God’s peace.

We can hope.

Life in this world is short; eternity lasts forever.

If we focus our hope on this world, we will, at most, gain only what will fall from our grasp when we draw our last earthly breaths. “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world,” Jesus once asked, “yet forfeit their soul?” (Mark 8:36) But when we trust in Christ above all, our grasp is on eternity with God, which can never be taken from anyone who believes!

As we trust in Christ, persevering in living life for Him and to His glory, the hope of eternity will splash into our daily lives here, empowering us to keep on following Jesus and living useful lives when the world loses its way.

We will live more fearlessly, with greater willingness to fail, free to love and care for others, knowing that whatever we may lose in this life, is nothing compared with all that God has in store for us in eternity.

“If only for this life we have hope in Christ,” the apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:9, “we are of all people most to be pitied.”

Our faith in Christ empowers us, obliges us even, to always hope, to live in hope! Not to hope in this world or in the things or the people of this world, but hope in Jesus Christ. 

When we hope in Christ and live in that hope, we know the truth to which 2 Timothy 1:7, points us: “For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.” We can live our lives at home, with our church family, and in the world at large with God’s “power love, and discipline.” We can live in the power of knowing thta if God has called us to do something, the Holy Spirit will empower us to do it. Period. End of subject.

And in telling us to see the signs of the inevitability of His return when He will bring our hope in Him to its fullness, Jesus is not telling us to waste our time in trying to game out the exact moment of His return.

Nor is He telling us to go along with our lives as though we’d never encountered Jesus, people indistinguishable from the unbelievers, agnostics, or atheists who surround us.

Verse 32: “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come. It’s like a man going away: He leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, each with their assigned task, and tells the one at the door to keep watch.”

Listen: This is how a Christian disciple waits for the return of Jesus. They fulfill their calling as disciples first, as members of Christ’s Body, the Church and second, as people who live in the world with families, spouses, friends; as people who are students or workers or retirees. 

Every follower of Jesus Christ, every disciple, has a vocation, no matter what their work or daily activities.

We’re to be and make disciples.

We’re to repent and believe in Jesus, to hear His Word and take it to heart, to love God and love neighbor, to love our fellow disciples with the same passion Christ has for us, to pray, and to make other disciples.

Each of us will have our own “assigned tasks” within that vocation. I can’t be as effective a witness for Christ among your friends, co-workers, neighbors, or classmates as you can be, because I’m not you and I'm not there with your friends, co-workers, neighbors, or classmates like you are. You may not be called to be Christ’s witness at the grocery deli counter in the same way I seem to be. But each of us who bear the name of Christ is called by Christ to wait and watch for Him. 

We faithfully wait and watch for Jesus’ return when we go about what it is God has called us to be and do, with faith in Christ. 

The chorus of one of my favorite songs by the late John Ylvisaker, Jesus Was Sent, says,

Jesus was sent that our eyes may be open,
So we might witness the day of the Lord.
He will make sense of our loving and hoping;
He will break fences and open the door. 

We faithfully wait and watch for Jesus’ return when we let Him break all the fences and doors we hide behind to hoard our lives and to feed the delusion we all have that our lives are our own and don’t actually belong to the God Who made us and died for us and rose for us.

We wait for Jesus rightly when we trust in Jesus and keep on trusting in Jesus all the time.

God help us to do just that. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

The world thinks you're crazy? Christ vindicates the faithful

Luke 18:1-8
Imagine this scenario. A man, insisting on his innocence, is convicted of a terrible crime and put in prison for decades. A group of law students becomes interested in his case and, employing DNA evidence not available at the time of the trial as well as finding other evidence the man’s defense attorney never used, prove that the convicted man is innocent. TV cameras and reporters wait outside the prison walls as the man is set free. “How do you feel?” they ask. “I’m sad that I can never get all those lost years back,” he says, “but I’m thankful to finally be vindicated.”

Vindication. When we know that we’re innocent or that we’ve been violated, but justice finally comes, or when we see the things we believe in are prone true, vindication is sweet.

In the passage in Luke that comes before today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus says that those who have trusted in Him, who have followed Him, and allowed His Word to reign with authority over our lives and have endured the rejection or dismissal or even persecution of others for our faith in Him, will be vindicated. We are justified.

Jesus says there that the vindication of our faith in Him, rejected by a cynical and sinful world, will come when He returns to bring judgment on those covered in sin and vindication to those who, by their faith, are covered by His grace.

“I tell you,” Jesus says, “on that night two people will be in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding grain together; one will be taken and the other left.” [Luke 17:34-35] Many Christians get this wrong, by the way. The ones taken away are, in fact, the ones facing judgment and hell; it’s the ones “left behind” who will remain with Jesus in His eternal kingdom! They will be vindicated for staying faithful to Him.

Jesus continues the vindication theme in our Gospel lesson for today, Luke 18:1-8. It begins: “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: ‘In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, “Grant me justice against my adversary.”’”

Now, there are several things it’s important to remember as we dig into Jesus’ words.

First, in first century Judea, widows were in a tenuous position. They weren’t supposed to have any property and women generally had no rights. If a woman was wronged, she was completely at the mercy of a society in which a woman’s testimony was inadmissible in court.

Second, Old Testament law made it clear that God expected His people to care for widows, as well as orphans, the poor, and strangers (what we would today call immigrants). [Maybe, a better word would be refugees.] But first century Judea didn’t like talking about God’s Law when it was uncomfortable. (They're not very different from us, are they?)

Third, in the first century world, there was no distinction between civil and criminal law. In our country, we have agencies like police departments to gather evidence and seek indictments against people who have committed crimes. Then we have prosecuting attorneys to prosecute crimes. In first century Judea though, if a member of your family was murdered, the job of finding and seeking a conviction against the murderer was yours. There were no law enforcement officials, no professional prosecutors.

That’s the situation in which the widow in Jesus’ parable, a woman likely penniless and certainly powerless, finds herself as she seeks vindication. We don’t know what the crime was that had been committed against her. (Although the judge seems to acknowledge that she was in the right.) But we do know that the deck is stacked against her because the judge to which she makes her constant petitions didn’t care about God or about the opinions of others. Jesus’ original hearers, knowing how the world usually worked, undoubtedly thought as Jesus began His parable, that the widow and her cause were toast!

Go back to the lesson, please, starting at verse 4: “For some time he [the judge] refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”

The word translated here as attack me, in the Greek in which Luke originally wrote the Gospel, is the verb, ὑπωπιάζω. It means, literally, strike under the eye. The judge was worried that the widow would give him a black eye. That phrase could be, just like today, used both literally or figuratively. The judge is worried that this widow who keeps bothering him, seeking vindication day after day after day, will give him the black eye of a bad reputation.

He’d been careful to conceal the fact that he was a cynic and a sinner who loved neither God or people. But this relentless woman could ruin everything for him. Because she was so incessant, her story was bound to come out. The town would know that she had been wronged and that the judge had refused to do anything for her. So, the judge thinks, “Enough, already! I will see that this irksome petitioner gets justice!”

Of course, this is where people most often misunderstand this parable. They think that God is the unjust judge and that, if we want to get Him to do what we want Him to do, we have to wear Him out with our praying. In this interpretation of the parable, God becomes a surly call center operator who gives us blessings because we keep pestering Him. I hope that, from what you know of the God we meet in Jesus Christ, that picture of God doesn’t seem right.

Jesus sets us straight on this. Verse 6: “And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly.”

Jesus is saying that God is nothing like that unjust judge! The judge finally vindicated the widow against his will. But God, our Father in heaven, wants to vindicate us. He wants to demonstrate to us that we haven’t been crazy to trust in Him, that He is the God Who gives life, forgiveness, purpose, and peace to all who put their trust in His Son, Jesus.

When life seems to have gone dry...when hope seems hard to find...when relationships become challenging...when the world seems to make a mockery of our faith, we can cry out to God and He will fill us with the power of His Holy Spirit, the strength of His love, the assurance of His presence. We will know our faith isn’t for nothing. We will be vindicated!

Through Jesus, the promise given to ancient Israel is also for we who confess that Jesus is our Lord and God: “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” [Deuteronomy 31:6]

In Matthew 28:20, Jesus underscores this promise for we disciples: “I am with you always, even to the close of the age.”

Some read this passage and think that it means if we pray for a new Lamborghini--I saw one parked by Five Guys a few weeks ago--God will give it to us.

God does provide for our daily bread, of course. Jesus teaches us to pray for our daily bread to acknowledge Him as the giver of everything we need to live.

And God does entrust some people with greater wealth...along with the high obligations associated with being a wealthy person who has the ability to care for so many of his or her neighbors on this planet.

But remember that in this parable, Jesus is talking about praying for the vindication of our faith in Him.

Today, in the United States, it’s become increasingly fashionable to ignorantly dismiss the existence of God, the deity of Jesus, His resurrection, or the justification of sinners by the grace of God through faith in Jesus. “Where is God in the midst of all of the world’s sufferings and injustices?” they ask.

The answer: He’s where He’s always been, with those who trust in Him. He’s with us when we go through the cross experiences of our lives, having gone through His own cross for us. And He’s with us when our faith sustains and inspires us to lives filled with His love and, powered by His Holy Spirit, we share the Good News of Jesus, making disciples in His name.

As the apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:7, “we live by faith, not by sight.” But when Jesus returns, when He calls us out of our graves and says, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father…” [Matthew 25:34], we will, like the widow in Jesus’ parable, be fully, eternally, perfectly vindicated in our faith. He will give us the justice not that we deserve, because that would mean death and eternal condemnation. He instead will give us--is giving us even now as we trust in Him--the justice of God’s grace: forgiveness, life, and love we don’t deserve and could never earn, but that God gives freely to all who follow Jesus.

All of which leads to the question Jesus asks at the end of the parable today: “However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

We are all, of course, sinners. We fall short of the glory God intended for us to live in as creatures made in His image.

If we were to be tried for sin by God, the righteous Judge, no amount of evidence could disprove our guilt. The conviction rate would be 100% and our lives would bear witness against us.

Only our faith in Jesus, the Son of Man, can vindicate us, can justify us.

So, in response to Jesus' question here, I give you this exhortation, this encouragement: Pray each day that the Holy Spirit, the author of faith in Jesus Christ who plants it in the hearts and the lives of sinners willing to believe, will fill you with faith and with the assurance that, despite your mistakes, sins, and failings, God loves you with an infinite love and declares you free to live in His grace for all eternity.

God wants to vindicate you in this way, quickly, now, always. Amen

Does God Still Speak to His People?

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]

1 Kings 19:9-18
In his fantastic book, The Power of a Whisper, Pastor Bill Hybels, tells what happened to him one day after he prayed this prayer: “God, if there is something you would like me to do…then please say so. It doesn’t matter what it is; I’ll do it.”

He had no idea how God might answer that prayer. But in a few days, Hybels and his wife Lynne were leaving the funeral of his aunt and getting into their car when he “spotted a frail, elderly woman pulling into [a] nearby apartment complex.” He saw the woman park her car, then “slowly and laboriously pull grocery bags out of her trunk.” Hybels sensed God’s Holy Spirit telling him, “How about helping that woman with her groceries?”

Initially, Hybels says, he tried to brush past this holy whisper. It seemed so mundane. But he remembered his prayer.

He approached the elderly woman, asking if he could help her. Relieved, she said, “Oh, yes! Thank you!”

As Hybels tells it: “The driveway leading back to her apartment recently had been seal-coated and was roped off, meaning residents had to walk a few hundred yards just to get from their cars to their homes.” Hybels knew he was helping to fill a real need, especially when the woman handed him a thirty-pound bag of peaches even he found a little hard to handle.

As Hybels tells it, the woman led him “through backyards that had become swamps due to recent rains…” She was “extremely arthritic and slow-moving.” It took thirty minutes for them just to make their way to the woman’s apartment!

After he had helped her to empty the sacks, she reached her hand out to Hybels and said, “I will believe to my dying day that God sent you to help me just now.” As inglorious as it all seemed, Hybels was sure she was right.

Our first Bible lesson for today recounts a conversation between God and the prophet Elijah. It raises an important question: Does God still speak to believers in 2011, the way He spoke to his prophet in the ninth-century BC or was Hybels’ direct message from God a figment of an overly spiritual imagination? What does the Bible say?

Pull out the pew Bibles for a moment, please, and turn to 1 Samuel 3:1, on page 158. The verse tells about when God called a young boy named Samuel to be a priest, judge, and prophet. It says: “Now the boy Samuel ministered to the LORD before Eli. [And this is the part to which I want to call particular attention:] And the word of the LORD was rare in those days; there was no widespread revelation.” That last sentence has always interested me because of is its unspoken assumption that, throughout much of ancient Israel’s history, God commonly spoke to His especially called people, like prophets. The era before Samuel’s call apparently, was a rare time when the connection between God and His people grew spotty.

Centuries after Samuel, after God came into the world in the person of Jesus and after Jesus died and rose and sent the Holy Spirit to believers in the Church, it wasn’t just to prophets and priests that God spoke. It was to all believers. In the pew Bibles, take a look at Acts, chapter 2, starting at verse 17, on page 627. On Pentecost, Peter is explaining how ordinary people who believed in Jesus were telling others about God’s mighty works. He explained how such a thing was possible by remembering the ancient words of the prophet Joel: “And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, That I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh…”

In fact, throughout the book of Acts, which tells the story of the early Church, we’re told how God’s people prayed and God directed them. The Bible assumes that it’s normal for God to speak to believers who are dialed into God.

But how does God speak to us?

Please pull out the Celebrate inserts and look at the first lesson, 2 Kings 19:9-18.

Let’s set the stage: It’s the ninth century BC. About fifty years earlier, the nation of Israel had split in two. The southern kingdom, known as Judah, retained its worship life in Jerusalem and struggled to retain its faith in the God of the Bible, Who they knew as Yahweh, the LORD. The northern kingdom, with its capital of Samaria, called itself Israel.

According to the Bible, the northern kingdom never had a king who was faithful to Yahweh or just in his actions. The worst of its rulers was Ahab, who worshiped Baal, a false deity of rain, fertility, and agriculture.

Despite the LORD’s first commandment that no other god should be worshiped, Ahab and his wife Jezebel encouraged the people to turn their back on God.

God made Elijah a prophet in order to call the king and the nation to repent for their sins and to trust in God alone.

A contest was held at Mount Carmel involving Elijah on one side and 400 prophets of Baal on the other. No matter what the prophets of Baal did, they couldn't cause their idol to do anything to prove its existence. (In fact, one of the funniest passages in Scripture is part of this incident. As the Baal worshipers went through their conniptions, Elijah taunted them, at one point suggesting that Baal has wandered away. But actually, that dainty translation in most of our English versions of the Bible don't get it right. Elijah literally told them that maybe Baal had to take a pit stop to go to the bath room!)

At Mount Carmel, God was shown to be faithful and powerful, while Baal was shown to be a man-made fiction.

Right after this contest, it seemed that the northern kingdom would return to God. King Ahab got rid of the prophets of Baal as God, through Elijah, directed him.

Later though, Ahab told his wife Jezebel about all that happened and she sent a message to Elijah, telling him that within a day’s time, she would see that Elijah was a dead man. First Kings, chapter 19, verse 3, says that when Elijah received that message, “he was afraid” and he ran. Like Peter, in our Gospel lesson, Elijah allowed his fears to veto his faith in God. He panicked.

Our lesson finds Elijah at Mount Horeb, also known as Mount Sinai, the place where, six centuries before Elijah’s time, God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses. Twice in our lesson, God asks Elijah why he has run. Twice, Elijah says, as he does in verse 10, you see: “I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken Your covenant [the covenant God had made with Israel on that very mountain], thrown down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.”

Have you ever known fear like that, a fear that leaves you feeling alone and without hope? The doctor tells you about a poor prognosis or a loved one dies and you wonder how you can possibly function. The stock market moves further into negative territory and you fear that you’ll have no retirement income.

It’s at times like these that God wants to tell us, in the words of Psalm 46:10: “Be still and know that I am God.”

God wants to tell all who believe in Jesus Christ, as 1 John 4:4 puts it: “Little children…the one who is in you [the Bible teaches that Christ lives in His people] is greater than the one who is in the world.”

God is bigger than anything we may fear and, as Romans 8 reminds us, those who turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ, live in the certainty that nothing can separate us from the love of God given to us through Christ!

Sometimes though, we may need special guidance or assurance. Elijah did.

Look at verse 11 of our first lesson. God told Elijah to stand on the mountain, “for the LORD is about to pass by.” Then, we’re told, “Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind, an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire, and after the fire the sound of sheer silence.”

It was there in the silence, that somewhere in his own spirit, Elijah heard God speak to him. (The older translations says that God spoke to Elijah in “a still, small voice,” but even that may suggest something too noisy.)

God then ordered Elijah to move past his fears, giving him three specific tasks.

Listen! When you’re afraid or lonely or need guidance or you simply want to offer yourself to the God Who offered Himself for you on the cross, you can hear from God.

The most reliable place to hear God is on the pages of the Bible. That’s where God’s Word can always be found.

I got to know a Pentecostal pastor named Howard back in Cincinnati. Loved that man! We were having a heart to heart one night when he said, “You know, so many Pentecostals want to hear ‘a special word from God.’ But all they really need to do is look at the Bible to find God’s Word for their lives.” I smiled and said, "Howard, you sound like a Lutheran!"

Howard was right! We’ve all read about people who have done horrible things because, they claimed, some voice had told them to do so. If you feel prompted to do something, look in the Book. Find out what God’s Word says. Talk to a trusted Christian friend who knows God’s Book. God will never tell us to do anything that runs contrary to His revealed will in the Bible. Never.

But when, in the silence of your soul, you sense God prompting you, go for it!

Jim and Sheila, from our congregation, went to Bob Evans for lunch on Friday. Across the way from them sat an older man eating by himself. Sheila observed his conversation with the waitress, indicating he might be a “regular” there. She thought she heard him use the word, “radiation.”

That’s when I think God spoke to Sheila. “I felt,” she wrote to me in an email on Friday, “like I wanted to make this man’s day.”

In order to not be heard by the man, she wrote a note asking the waitress to bring the man’s check to Jim and her. She handed one of our “The Meal’s on Us!” cards to the waitress to give to the man. Later, the waitress brought a box to the man as he’d requested and told him that his meal had been taken care of. “Who?” he asked. The waitress shrugged. The man teared up, read the card twice, then tucked it into his pocket. Sheila says, “My heart felt warm all over.”

[The front of one of our "This meal's on us!" card.]

[The back side of our "This meal's on us!" card.]

Does God still speak to His people today? Yes, most reliably in His Word, the Bible.

But there are also times when God may speak to us in the silence of our hearts and minds, when God will order our steps directly. God will teach us, as He taught Elijah (and as he taught Peter in our Gospel lesson), to live "by faith and not by sight.”

And when we live by faith in Christ, then we are  truly living!

Understanding Revelation, Part 3 (Revelation 7:9-17)

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Revelation 7:9-17
The junior high years of my life were, in many ways, awful. At least they seemed that way to me at the time. If you can imagine it, I was a mouthy kid, one of the smallest in my class, and surely among the least physically coordinated. All of that taken together, especially my mouthiness, were like open invitations—even to otherwise good kids from really good homes—to insult me, taunt me, hit me, knock my books out from my arms, smash my lunch bags, pick fights, or, and this is the thing I think I hated the most, smack me on the back of the head---for you NCIS fans, Jethro Gibbs-style.

I hated going to school during those years. But walking home in the afternoon was often just as awful as the school day had been, as three or four guys would make my life miserable for three-quarters or more of the way home. Eventually on those walks home though, something wonderful would happen. I would get to my home street in the Westgate area and it was as though everything bad was lifted from my shoulders. When I was thirteen, walking down that street, coming home from school, I truly thought to myself, "This is the most perfect place in the world!" It was my shelter.

In this third installment of our sermon series on the book of Revelation, we come to a point in the book at which its first readers and hearers in churches from first-century western Turkey, may have needed   soothing words promising them shelter against the uncontrollable storms of life.

In chapter 6, the part of the book that follows our lesson from last Sunday, those early Christians would have learned of how, in the vision given to John the Evangelist on the island of Patmos, Jesus, the Lamb of God, opened the first six of the seven seals mentioned in last week’s Bible lesson. To these churches, just then beginning to suffer sporadic persecution for their faith in Jesus Christ, John gave a message that can basically be boiled down to this: “Don’t worry. Things are going to get worse.”

That is the message from the seals on the scroll of the future broken open by the risen and ascended Jesus. With the breaking of the first four seals, the famed four horses and riders of the apocalypse are unleashed. (They didn’t play football for Notre Dame, by the way.) They represent all the violence and disasters we suffer in this fallen, imperfect world. When the fifth seal was broken, John says that he saw all those killed for their adherence to the Word of God and heard them cry out, “How long will it be, O Lord, before You avenge our blood?” With the opening of the sixth seal, a great earthquake came, the sun went black, the moon was like blood, the stars fell to the earth “as the fig tree drops its winter fruit when shaken by a gale.” (This image of the fruit of the fig tree would have been especially interesting to the first recipients of Revelation, because the ancient rabbis always taught that the forbidden fruit eaten by Adam and Eve was a fig, not an apple.) Then the sky vanished. Mountains and islands were moved from their places. The powerful and wealthy, along with the rest of humanity, overwhelmed by the entire cosmos in its convulsive death throes, asked to be spared the impending wrath of the Lamb of God, Jesus.

As chapter 7 begins, God’s people—believers in Jesus—are gathered as if prepared for some final struggle, some terrible ordeal, some great suffering.  As you read apocalyptic literature, as you consider things Jesus said, and as you pay attention to how Revelation unfolds, you realize that John isn’t just describing future events. War and hatred, violence and natural disasters are happening today. The killing of Christians for their faith is happening today. (In fact, during the twentieth century, more people were martyred for their faith in Jesus Christ than in the preceding nineteen centuries combined! That anti-Christian violence continues in this century.)

This world was plunged into sin and descended into its inevitable decline into death the moment that Adam and Eve bit into the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It has been dying ever since. Jesus came into this world to call all people to repentance and renewal so that we could have everlasting life with God beyond the inevitable death of this world, beyond our own inevitable deaths.

In the midst of these grim visions, before recounting how the Lamb of God broke the seventh seal and before going on to tell of other foreboding visions, John presents another picture, one filled with hope and joy. It constitutes our lesson from Revelation for this morning and takes place before the throne of God and of the Lamb, the Father and the Son, Who share a single throne. In his vision, John sees a multitude drawn from every nationality and race, people who have trusted in Jesus Christ as God, Savior, and Shepherd. They wear white robes of purity, made clean by the sacrificed blood of Jesus on the cross. They carry palm leaves, symbol of victory. (Interestingly, the Gospel of John is the only one of the New Testament Gospels who specifically mentions palm leaves being waved on the first Palm Sunday.) Then, the white-robed multitude sings praises to Jesus. They praise Jesus in seven different ways. "Blessing and glory and wisdom," they begin. In Jewish tradition, whenever lists like this were made, the middle item is the most important. And that holds true here as well. The multitude, above all, gives its thanksgiving to the Lamb Whose death on the cross opens up eternity to all who believe in Him!

Then, like a Socratic teacher seeking to help a student own the lesson being taught, one of the heavenly elders asks John, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” John says he doesn’t know. So, the elder tells him: “These are the ones coming out of the great affliction…” These are the ones who have endured all the challenges and tragedies seen with the breaking of those seals by Jesus the Lamb. These are the people who, in spite of everything, have continued to turn from their sin—to repent—and to trust in the God of grace we know in Jesus Christ.

Part of our mission as Saint Matthew Lutheran Church is to share the Good News with those not presently connected with Christ and His Church, telling them and showing them that God wants them to be part of that multitude of faithful believers in eternity who, by the power of God’s Holy Spirit, have turned their backs to sin and trusted in Jesus. That’s why your invitations to others to be with us for Friend Day next Sunday are so important. We want all of our friends to be with us when we stand before the Lamb of God!

Beyond that, here’s what I want to make sure to underscore in your minds and hearts this morning. Listen to what the elder says of this white-robed multitude: “they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.” The Lamb of God would shelter them and, as Isaiah had long ago written, He would also “be their shepherd, and…guide them to springs of the water of life, and [would] wipe away every tear from their eyes.” In eternity, God’s people will be sheltered for all eternity.

But the word translated as shelter in today’s lesson means more than protection and love. The word in the original Greek is skeinosei. Literally, it means tabernacled. It’s another form of a word that appears in John 1:14, where we’re told that the Word of God, Jesus, was made flesh and tabernacled—or dwelt or lived—among human beings on earth. These terms are related to a Hebrew word from the Old Testament: shekinah. Shekinah means home or dwelling place, but was most often used of the dwelling place of God. It denoted the very presence of God. God lived or tabernacled in the temple’s holy of holies.

The use of the word tabernacled by the elder who spoke to John the prophet must have been deliberate. Today, as the New Testament tells us, we walk by faith and not by sight; today, we see Christ only partially, but one day we will see Him face to face.

There are blessings in this life, of course! We live on a planet of majestic beauty, filled with intricate patterns and breathtaking wonder. We have family and friends with whom to share all of life's joys and challenges. We have talents, abilities, and passions that give our lives meaning and fulfillment. All of these blessings and many others are ways in which God extends His shelter to us even in this imperfect world.

And, those who belong to Christ know that our lives today are imbued with purpose and hope from God. It's in pursuit of our purpose as disciples of Jesus that our young people are going to serve our neighbors this summer, that we're all going to do the community food drive next month. It was from a sense of God's purpose for them that, decades ago, people from Saint Matthew had the vision to begin broadcasting our Sunday worship service. Today, this broadcast is the longest-running radio program in Ohio. We pursue our purpose as followers of Jesus is what also recently compelled us to join other Lutherans in helping the people in Haiti rebuild their lives following the earthquake of 102 days ago.

But as purposeful and wonderful as life with God is here today, one day, all who believe in Jesus Christ will, along with the white-robed multitude of John's vision, live in God’s perfect shelter, in what is truly the most perfect place. Every blessing you and I have ever experienced in this life, no matter how great, is but a small, whispering preview of what those who follow Jesus have to look forward to in eternity. All our tears and sorrows will be ended and all around us, we will see among the white-robed multitude people with whom we shared Jesus. Our hearts will soar when we hear our Lord tell us of our lives here, “Well done, good and faithful student!”

But even now God is with us. He shelters from sin and death all who dare to run from sin and run to Him. Even in the convulsions of a dying world, those who dare to turn to Christ are touched by the Lamb and sense eternity breaking into their lives. I’ve mentioned before Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor who, on April 9, 1945, was executed for opposing the cruel insanity of Nazi Germany. On the brink of his final ordeal, as the executioner slipped a rope around his neck, Bonhoeffer considered the scene he was about to see and experience as a follower of Jesus. He had already known the shelter of love and grace God extended to him while he was imprisoned and tortured by the Nazis. Now he knew that he was going into the eternal shelter of the Lamb, where life would once more be the way God intended it for His children. Bonhoeffer said, “"This is the end - for me the beginning of life."

Life can sometimes bring great affliction. I don’t have to tell that to many of you. You know it better than I do. But even when we consider the end of this life, you and I can live in the knowledge that the God Who shields His children from all that would tempt us from trusting in Him, will, at the moment we draw our last breaths, greet us in eternity and let us live in His shelter forevermore.

“Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen!"