Sermon: Wittenberg Academy – St. Johannes von Staupitz, Nov 8, 2022

8 Nov 2022 – St. Johannes von Staupitz

Text: Matt 24:29-51

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

This morning, there was a lunar eclipse.  It was a total eclipse, also known as a “blood moon” – which gets the “prophecy experts” worked up.  Like astrologers, they get out their charts and programs that convert Hebrew letters to numbers and dates, and they can upgrade their timetables for the return of Jesus.

Of course, their prognostications always fail, because as our Lord says: “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.”  And in fact, Jesus gives us pretty good advice, as He is wont to do: “Stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.  But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into.  Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

And so, dear friends, we know that He is coming.  It is as inevitable as the rising of the sun and moon.  But we don’t know when.  That is why we are to be awake, to be vigilant, to be standing ready like a minuteman armed and ready to deploy on a moment’s notice. 

Things like celestial events do have a good use, as they do remind us of our Lord’s words that “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”  And then the whole world will see “the Son of Man coming on the clouds.” 

He is returning, dear brothers and sisters.  While the wild-eyed late-night TV preachers are wrong in their calculus, they are not wrong that Jesus is coming.  We confess it in the Creed at every Divine Service: “And He will come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead, whose kingdom will have no end.”  And that is the main thing about our confession, dear brothers and sisters.  He is coming in His glory to bring justice, to right wrongs, to vindicate the hurt, to fix that which is broken.  And though we are poor miserable sinners, we do not have to fear His coming.  For more important than a blood moon is the blood of Christ shed on the cross, when indeed signs appeared in the heavens, and Satan was defeated for eternity. 

While the world is roiled in fear and trepidation about the climate, elections, politics, the economy, world affairs, even as depression and drugs and despondency seem to have become a pandemic of doom, we Christians take comfort, and even joy, in the old maxim: “Stat crux dum volvitur orbis.”  That is, “While the world spins, the cross stands.”  The crucified one stands for us, dear friends, as our advocate, as our Redeemer, as our Savior. 

As the hymnist sings:

Those dear tokens of His passion
Still His dazzling body bears,
Cause of endless exultation
To His ransomed worshipers.
With what rapture, with what rapture, with what rapture
Gaze we on those glorious scars!

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.