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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Whether for this past Thanksgiving holiday, or for the coming Christmas holidays, or at any other time, we generally like to know when guests are arriving, so that we can be ready. The Global Positioning System and navigational aids, such as Google Maps and Waze, perhaps have taken that desire to know when to expect our guests to an extreme, providing generally accurate estimated times of arrival down to the minute and permitting hosts and hostesses even to track the progress of their arriving guests. In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus said that we do not know the day and do not expect the hour of His coming the final time to judge the living and the dead. But, He also said that we must nevertheless “stay awake” (or, perhaps better, “keep watch” or “be alert”) and “be ready”. For, as in the game “Hide and Seek” (what is apparently called “44 Homes” in Australia), Jesus is coming whether we are “Ready or Not”.
Perhaps somewhat surprising after the immediately preceding discussion in St. Matthew’s account of when the Temple would be destroyed and what would be the sign of Jesus’s coming and of the end of the age, which concludes with Jesus’s saying that His disciples would be able to know that He is near, at the very gates, (Matthew 24:3-35), Jesus in today’s Gospel Reading said that, other than the Heavenly Father, no one knows the day and hour of His coming the final time, and so Jesus likened the situation at the time of His coming to that situation at the time of Noah and repeatedly exhorted His disciples, including us, to keep watch and be ready.
We might be tempted to think, since we do not know the day and hour of Jesus’s final coming, that we cannot keep watch and be ready. And, Jesus’s example of the master of the house who, if he had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into, almost seems to make that point, as if, since the master of the house did not know in what part of the night the thief was coming, then he could not have kept his house from being broken into. But, such ignorance as an excuse is not the conclusion Jesus draws from the example; He concludes rather by commanding that we be ready, as it were, always.
Of what does such perpetual readiness consist? The comparison between the days of Noah and the coming of the Son of Man might give us some indication. The difference between being “ready or not” certainly was not the sex people were born or their daily vocations, so the difference must have been in something else. We know from Holy Scripture that prior to the flood, as is still the case today, the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of human hearts was only evil continually (Genesis 6:5), which merited those people the kind of destruction so many experienced. On account of their human nature, Noah and his family were also wicked and evil, though Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord and was righteous (Genesis 6:8-9), presumably the way any sinful human being is righteous, by God’s grace through faith in the Savior, Who for Noah and his family had yet to come but Who for us has come.
As God through Noah in his days and through Jesus in His days called the people of their respective times to turn in sorrow from their sins and to trust God to forgive their sins for the sake of that Savior, so God calls and enables us to repent in our time, before our deaths or His final coming, whichever comes first, when it will be too late for repentance and faith, as some who are not so ready will be taken away for eternal torment and others who are so ready will be left for eternal bliss—not taken away, as some wrongly think, in a secret rapture but after a return and judgment visible to all (Matthew 24:27; Luke 17:24).
Sent by the Heavenly Father out of His great love for even the sinful world, that Savior is the God-man Jesus Christ. Today’s Gospel Reading can lead us to ponder the mystery of the Christ’s taking on our human flesh in the man Jesus, that He could be both all-knowing God and, at the same time, at least during His state of humiliation, when He did not always or fully use His divine abilities, a man ignorant of the day and hour of His own final coming known by the Father, with Whom He shares the Divine Nature. Yet, whether or not we understand how Jesus could be both omniscient and in some way ignorant, we know from God’s revelation to us that it was so. And, more importantly, we know that in the man Jesus God died on the cross and that His sacrifice there was both in the place of and sufficient for the sins of the world, including our own sins. We are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ! When we repent and believe, then God freely forgives us, making us “ready” for the day and hour of the coming of the Son of Man.
God forgives us makes us “ready” for the day and hour of the coming of the Son of Man as He did in the days of Noah and Jesus, through the reading and preaching of His Word to groups such as this one and through His Gospel applied to individuals in Holy Baptism, individual Holy Absolution, and the Sacrament of the Altar. Today’s Gospel Reading might make us especially think of Holy Baptism, water included in God’s command and combined with God’s word, for Divinely‑inspired writers like St. Peter see the ark in which Noah and his family were saved as corresponding to Baptism, which saves those who receive it in repentance and faith (1 Peter 3:20‑21). But also important are both Holy Absolution, which we seek out, for example, when specific sins trouble us, and the Sacrament of the Altar, in which bread and wine are the Body and Blood of Christ given and shed for us, and present on the altar, distributed by the pastor, and received by us for the forgiveness of sins and so also for life and salvation. In all these ways, God forgives our sins and makes us “ready” for the day and hour of the coming of the Son of Man.
Arguably God alone makes us “ready”, at least initially, but we ourselves certainly also have a role to play in remaining ready and in being watchful for the day and hour of the coming of the Son of Man. Like those in today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 2:1-5), we say let us go up to the House of the God of Jacob that He may teach us His ways and we may walk in His paths, and we do so come up to His House! Because He here forgives us and so recreates us, we, in the words of today’s Epistle Reading (Romans 13:11-14), walk properly, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy, making no provision for gratifying the desires of our sinful flesh. When we fail so to walk, as we will fail, with daily repentance and faith, we live in God’s forgiveness of sins and extend our own forgiveness to one another. Such sin and all suffering will come to an end with the day and hour of the coming of the Son of Man!
To some extent we are rightly concerned about being ready for the arrival of those who come to visit, and, to be sure, knowing when they will come certainly helps us to be ready (or we keep our house in such a state that we are always ready). Yet, much more are we concerned about always being ready by repentance and faith for the arrival of Him Who comes to judge the living and the dead, despite our not knowing the day or expecting the hour of His coming. Our so being “Ready or Not” is not part of a game such as “Hide and Seek” any more than was God’s seeking Adam and Eve who after their sin had hidden themselves from the presence of the Lord God (Genesis 3:8). Not only during this penitential season of Advent but always, by God’s mercy and grace we are watchful and ready for the final coming of the Son of Man and so will be left to enjoy His presence in glorified bodies free from sin and suffering for all eternity.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +