A parable for in between Sundays

Posted on November 21, 2021 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

Sermon for the Last Sunday of the Church Year

Today’s Service Folder

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11  +  Matthew 25:1-13

Collect of the Day: O Lord, we implore You, absolve Your people from their offenses, that from the bonds of our sins which, by reason of our frailty, we have brought upon ourselves, we may be delivered by Your bountiful goodness; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns, with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

Collect for the End of the Church Year: We thank You, Lord God, Heavenly Father, that in the past Church Year You have preserved Your Word among us in purity and by it have effectively enlivened our souls; and we implore You, that You would graciously forgive us all our neglect, unbelief, and disobedience with respect to Your Word, and continue to give us this precious treasure with Your blessing forevermore; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns, with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

Come, Lord Jesus! When do people pray that prayer (besides the common table prayer that we often use, asking for the Lord’s spiritual presence and blessing on our meal)? Come, Lord Jesus! We pray that, one, when something really bad happens, or in those moments when the state of the world appears truly bleak, so maybe you’ve said that prayer quite bit lately. Come, Lord Jesus! And you mean it! But two, most of all, we pray it on Sundays. That’s when we’re most focused on the Lord’s coming, and focused on His call to repentance before then, and on His redeeming work on the cross, and on His glorious resurrection from the dead, and on the forgiveness of sins, and on the sanctifying work of His Spirit. Sundays, at our Divine Service (where, ironically, we aren’t even gathered today for reasons our members know). But normally, on Sundays, that’s when we’re most engaged in prayer, in praise, in actively contemplating the Lord’s words and promises to His people and His plans for this world, culminating in His coming, in His return to put an end to this world, to raise the dead, and to give the inheritance of eternal life to all who are found faithful when He comes. Yes, if Jesus came back on Sunday morning, while we’re in the midst of praying, Come, Lord Jesus, which of us would be taken unawares?

Of course, the likelihood of Jesus appearing during the brief time we’re (normally) gathered together on Sunday mornings is not very high. It’s much more likely He’ll come in the in-between times. We’ll call it, “in between Sundays,” when we’re not actively engaged in worship. Now, yes, some of us also gather regularly on Wednesday evenings, and you may well spend some time in Bible reading and in prayer during the week. But there are plenty of moments between Sundays when you’re going about the business of your vocations, living life as usual, tending to your daily routine. Most of our lives are lived in between Sundays.

If we’re wise, we take that into account ahead of time and prepare for those in-between times, for those moments of normalcy, for those times of “life as usual,” so that if Christ returns when we’re looking down instead of up, when we’re not directly focused on His return, we’re still ready to receive Him. We bring along extra oil for our lamps, as it were.

But if we’re foolish, we won’t give it a thought. We’ll just enjoy our Sunday morning gatherings at church (when we can have them), pray for Jesus to come, and then forget about Him until next week. Or maybe it won’t even be next week. Maybe we go a longer time between Sundays. No big deal, right? Surely Jesus will plan His coming around our worship, so we’re sure to be ready! That’s called, not bringing along any extra oil for our lamps.

I hope you’re starting to see the connection with today’s parable of the Ten Virgins. It’s a perfect parable to end the church year with, because another year has passed in the Church, and still Jesus hasn’t come back. And the longer He takes, the easier it becomes to focus on other things, just as the excitement of those ten virgins who went out to wait for the Bridegroom eventually waned, the longer they waited, and they fell asleep. Now, that’s OK for those who were wise enough to bring along extra oil. But for those who weren’t, things turned out terribly when the Bridegroom finally arrived. And so we have here an important parable, a sobering parable for in between Sundays.

The Bridegroom in the parable was obviously a very important man, and the wedding an important one. These ten young ladies were to be a special part of his entourage, waiting near the wedding hall for him to arrive so that they could escort him on the final leg of the journey. When they entered the wedding hall together, that’s when the great and endless celebration was to begin.

All the virgins had to do was wait and be ready with burning lamps when the bridegroom finally arrived. Five of them took their simple job very seriously. They also took seriously the fact that the bridegroom never told them at exactly what time he was coming. Their wait could be short or long. It’s easy to be prepared for a short wait. But for a long one? For that, they needed extra oil for their lamps, and they brought it.

The five foolish virgins, on the other hand, didn’t give any thought to the length of the wait they would have that night. They assumed the bridegroom would come quickly, within a few hours. They were ready for him when they first went out. They were ready for a while longer. But they didn’t use the opportunities they had early on to prepare for the longer wait they would have. So when the cry came at midnight announcing the Bridegroom’s arrival, they woke up and realized it was too late. Their lamps were going out. There was no more time to get oil. By the time they went out and bought some, it was too late. The doors were closed. And when they knocked and cried, “Lord, Lord, open the door for us!” all they heard was that terrible reply: “I do not know you.”

The Bridegroom in the parable represents the Lord Jesus, who as the model Husband, loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. The wedding in this parable is when He finally comes to pick up His Church and to bring her into the new heavens and the new earth that He will create after He judges and destroys this world. He’s told us that He’s coming. But He has intentionally not told us when.

The ten virgins represent active, believing Christians who truly start out waiting eagerly for the Bridegroom to come. They truly acknowledge their sins, repent of them, trust in Christ alone for forgiveness, are baptized, receive the Lord’s Supper. They all start out praying, Come, Lord Jesus! At least, that’s their prayer on Sunday.

But half of them, in this parable, don’t consider that their wait may be long, and so they don’t take the simple measures to make sure they still have a burning, living faith when Christ comes, which must still be burning at the end if we are to enter the heavenly mansions with our heavenly Bridegroom.

What are those measures? What does it mean to bring along extra oil? Most simply, it means using the means that God has provided to keep our faith alive. Hearing the Word and pondering what you hear. Receiving the Sacrament with seriousness as well as with joy. And making plans to continue to hear the Word and receive the Sacrament regularly, from Sunday to Sunday, throughout your whole life, knowing that faith needs to be fed and nourished if it’s going to keep burning.

And then there’s prayer, another simple tool God has given us to keep us from going astray from Sunday to Sunday, to keep our hearts and our minds set on Christ and on the things above.

If you take the Word that you hear on Sunday with you into the rest of the week, if you go back and ponder it, if you add prayer to your weekly routine, then even when you’re not actually reading the Bible or thinking about the sermon or saying a prayer, even when you’re sleeping, you have the oil you need for your lamp at the ready. And faith will not die. It’ll be there on Sunday and in between, so that, whenever Christ comes, you won’t have to scramble and go searching for it. You’ll be ready for the Bridegroom to come.

Come, Lord Jesus! We pray that prayer again today. We’ll be praying it every Sunday in earnest for the next four weeks during the Advent season. “Come, come, Emmanuel!” And in between Sundays, you have today’s parable to warn you not to grow apathetic about your faith and about the things God has given you to sustain it, because the Bridegroom will come when the world doesn’t expect Him. Yes, even the troubles and challenges life throws at us and the worsening state of affairs in this world are means the Lord uses to keep us from getting distracted, to keep us longing for the Bridegroom’s return, to keep us focused in between Sundays, and praying more and more, “Come, Lord Jesus!” Yes, Come, Lord Jesus! Amen.

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The Judge is watching how His Christians are treated

Posted on November 14, 2021 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

Sermon for Second to Last Sunday after Trinity (Trinity 26)

2 Thessalonians 1:3-10  +  Matthew 25:31-46

(No audio or video of today’s service is available. Service folder can be downloaded here.)

Collect of the Day: O God, so rule and govern our hearts and minds by Your Holy Spirit that, being ever mindful of the end of all things and the day of Your just judgment, we may be stirred up to holiness of living here and dwell with You forever hereafter; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns, with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

The Last Day is coming, the day we are all waiting for as Christians. It was still a long way off when Jesus spoke today’s parable to His disciples during Holy Week. But it’s much closer now. It’s the day when God will finally make a distinction between believers and unbelievers. He sees that distinction now already, but we don’t experience it. Believers and unbelievers live side by side in this world, and we suffer many of the same things. Even within the Church, among those who outwardly confess Christ, there is a mixture of weeds and wheat, sheep and goats.

But on that day, the Lord will make a visible separation of the people of the earth, moving them into two separate groups. And what will be the basis of the distinction? Not race. Not gender. Not social status. Not the number or the severity of sins committed. Not the number of good works done. The deciding factor on God’s part is faith in Christ Jesus, genuine faith that knows the Lord Jesus who died for our sins, and that relies on Him and on Him alone for justification before the judgment of God. Where there is faith in Christ, God has chosen to see sheep, people who have been baptized into Christ and clothed with Christ and made sheep of the Good Shepherd. Where there is unbelief, He sees only sinners clothed with nothing but their own sins. He sees only goats. And He will make what is already visible to Him visible to everyone when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, when he sits upon his glorious throne and gathers all nations to Himself and separates them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will set the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

But lest we think that our Lord is unconcerned about people’s works, as if salvation by faith alone meant that God doesn’t care what we do or don’t do, Jesus focuses in this parable on just one simple piece of evidence that He tells us He will find among the sheep and among the goats. Among the sheep, He will find simple deeds of kindness done for “His brothers” (we’ll talk about that in just a moment), evidence that they are rightly counted among the blessed, while among the goats, He will find a lack of such deeds, evidence that they are rightly counted among the cursed.

Now, who are Jesus’ brothers? People regularly misunderstand this parable, thinking it’s about how we treat anyone in the world. But when Jesus says, “these My brothers” (which includes both brothers and sisters, by the way), He isn’t talking about all mankind. Yes, in the sense that Jesus, like all men, was descended from Adam according to His human nature, He is the Brother of all men. But whenever Jesus talks about His brothers, He’s always talking about Christians. As He once said, “Who is My mother, or My brothers?” And He looked around in a circle at those who sat about Him, and said, “Here are My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of God is My brother and My sister and mother.” The same goes for the whole New Testament, where the believers are referred to dozens of times as simply “the brothers” or “the brethren.”

So, in the parable, Jesus first addresses His brothers, that is, His sheep. Come, you who are blessed by my Father! St. Paul uses the same word “blessed” in Ephesians 1 to describe God’s treatment of us in Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.

On the Last Day, the King will confer on His believers that ultimate blessing for which we were chosen before the foundation of the world. He says, Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. The Day of Judgment is, then, a purely joyful day for those who are faithful until the end. No former sins will be recalled or mentioned. No guilt will be imposed. Only the joy of finally receiving the inheritance that has been promised to believers since the beginning.

And why are they invited to inherit this kingdom? Or rather, what is the evidence that proves the King right in giving it to them? For I was hungry, and you gave me food; I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink; I was a stranger, and you took me in; naked, and you clothed me; I was sick, and you visited me; I was in prison, and you came to me.’

Those words are confusing to the sheep in the parable, because they know very well they didn’t do any of things for Jesus. We’ve never even seen Him with our own eyes, much less given Him material help in need. But the King explains: Truly, I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these my brothers, you did for me.

Now, Jesus could have mentioned many good works done by His believers. He could have commended them for loving and honoring His Word and teaching, or for suffering patiently under the cross, as He does in the Book of Revelation with the faithful churches. But here He chose to mention and to highlight those simple acts of kindness done toward His brothers, toward their fellow Christians. The Judge is watching how His Christians are treated. He accepts those acts of kindness done toward His brothers as acts of kindness done toward Himself, because, after all, believers are all members of one body, His body, of which He is the Head. See how much He cares for each member, how much He cares that His believers carry out His great commandment, “That you love one another, as I have loved you.”

The question is, why does Jesus tell us this parable of how it will be on the Last Day? Why does He focus only on this one thing? First, so that we see how earnest He is that His brothers be cared for in the midst of all the suffering of this world. Second, so that we might repent for ever neglecting a fellow Christian in his or her need, whether it’s the Christians in your own home, or a fellow church member, or any Christian at all who has been placed in your path to help. And, third, so that, having received His forgiveness, we might make it a top priority in our lives to do this thing that matters so much to Jesus, to care for His brothers, for our brothers and sisters in Christ.

After addressing the sheep, the King turns to the goats. Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. What horrible words to hear from the mouth of the King on the Last Day! Depart from Me, you who are cursed! Notice, by the way, that these cursed people are sent into the everlasting fire, originally prepared not for men but for the devil and his angels. Still, men will experience that eternal torment along with the devil and his angels if they are found on the left side of the King when He comes.

And why are they sent away into the everlasting fire? For I was hungry, and you did not give me food; I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and you did not take me in; naked, and you did not clothe me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit me.’

Those words are confusing to the goats in the parable. What do You mean, Lord? When did we see You hurting or in need? And the King will explain: Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me. Again, Jesus could have mentioned any one of the sins of those unbelievers. But the only piece of evidence He needs to vindicate His own verdict as the Judge is their neglect of His brothers, their failure to do these simple deeds of kindness to His Christians.

The Judge is watching how His Christians are treated. How angry He is when the world mistreats His brothers and sisters, or in this case, even when the world fails to show them a little kindness. His people should be treated with the greatest care and respect and kindness by everyone, at all times. That’s what God commands. He knows that the world will disobey His commands, but He sends out this parable to warn the world ahead of time. “Don’t pretend you didn’t know! I will bring down all your mistreatment of My people upon your heads! Even the good you don’t do for My precious Christians, you don’t do for Me. And you will not get away with it.”

It seems right now that the world will get away with it and that Christians must be forever marginalized and isolated and mocked. But it will not always be this way. Soon the King will come and reveal His righteousness judgment. The distinction will be made between the righteous and the wicked. Until then, the Judge is watching how His Christians are treated. And even now He is sending Christians, even you, to treat His brothers and sisters with kindness and love, so that we all have all the support we need to make it safely through this life until that great and glorious Last Day, when the wicked will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. Amen.

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Lord’s Prayer: Second Petition

Posted on November 10, 2021 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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The Second Petition of the Lord’s Prayer

The first petition, the first thing we ask of our Father in the Lord’s Prayer, is that His name may be hallowed or sanctified among us in two ways: that He would provide parents and pastors who preach and teach His Word purely and correctly, and that He would help us, as the children of God, to lead holy lives, so that His name may be known rightly in the world. The second petition, the second thing we ask of our Father in the Lord’s Prayer, is that His kingdom may come.

Before we consider how God’s kingdom comes, we should define what God’s kingdom is.

We don’t have much experience with kingdoms in our part of the world. America rejected the notion of kings and monarchies when it rebelled against the British empire. There are no kingdoms per se in North America or South America. We have to look across the ocean to the UK, to the United Kingdom, to find a monarchy, that is, a king (or in this case, a queen) with a realm over which he (or she) reigns. Even then, the UK is not actually ruled by the queen any longer. She’s mostly a figure-head, a vestige of a by-gone era when kings and queens were actually the supreme authority in their realm.

In the kingdom of heaven, God the Father is the King, the supreme authority. But He has seated His glorified Son Jesus Christ at His right hand. He is also called the “King.” St. Paul refers to this in the second reading you heard this evening. When Christ comes again and raises the dead, then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death. For “He has put all things under His feet.” But when He says “all things are put under Him,” it is evident that He who put all things under Him is excepted. Now when all things are made subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.

So Christ is King of the kingdom, installed as King by His Father, both according to His divine nature and His human nature. But after the Last Day, when His work on our behalf as Christ the Mediator is fully completed, He will hand over the reign to God the Father, according to His human nature, even as He reigns with the Father forever according to His divine nature.

But what is His reign? What is His kingdom? It’s called the kingdom “of heaven,” meaning it’s not an earthly kind of kingdom. That’s what Jesus confessed before Pontius Pilate. My kingdom is not of this world. The kingdom of Israel was of this world. It was an earthly kingdom, with a visible, defined territory, and identifiable citizens, a standing army, and a king who was the supreme authority over that kingdom. But the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven isn’t a defined territory. Both John the Baptist and Jesus proclaimed, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand!” And St. Luke records this: When Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, He answered them and said, “The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’ For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you,” which can also be translated, “The kingdom of God is among you.” For now, until Christ returns, the kingdom of heaven is invisible, not restricted to any nation or any territory in the world. It’s wherever God reigns in people’s hearts.

So when you pray, Thy kingdom come, you’re not really praying for the Last Day to come and for Jesus to return in glory with His visible kingdom. That may be a small part of the prayer, but not the main part. You’re praying for God’s kingdom to come here and now before the Last Day.

Not that God needs us to ask for His kingdom to come, or else it won’t come. As Luther explains, God’s kingdom certainly comes by itself without our prayer; but we ask in this prayer that it may come to us also. Just as we prayed that God’s name may be “made holy among us also.”

Now the question: How is this done? How does God’s kingdom come? It comes when the heavenly Father gives us His Holy Spirit, so that by His grace we believe His holy Word, and lead godly lives, here in time and there in eternity. When people think of God’s kingdom coming, they tend to think of the end of the world, or maybe even some sort of millennial reign of Christ where He comes to fix our broken society, defeat evil, and make our life on earth glorious. But as we’ve already said, that’s not how God’s kingdom comes. It comes when He gives us His Holy Spirit, who works through God’s Word to nudge us and pull us and lead us to believe His Word. Where there is faith in Christ, there is also the Spirit of Christ. There Christ reigns as King. There He defends that person against Satan’s accusations and attacks.

And where there is faith in Christ, there is the Spirit of Christ also enabling us and urging us to lead godly lives, lives of love, lives of service to God and our neighbor, lives of devotion to God’s Word. The Holy Spirit reminds constantly that to call Christ “King” means to submit to Him as King, to bow before His authority, to do the King’s bidding. What kind of subject of a kingdom says, “Yes, I have a king. But I don’t listen to Him. I do whatever I like.” No, to have a king is to acknowledge that you owe Him your allegiance, your obedience, and your service. For His part, your King has delivered you from the devil’s kingdom and has freely granted you a place in His kingdom, where He promises everlasting life and protection and glory and honor.

God’s kingdom comes among us as the Spirit brings us to faith and sanctifies us in love. His kingdom has to keep coming to us every day. Faith has to be not only created but sustained. And leading a godly life is not a one-time activity, but a daily activity. As long as we live here in time, we need our Father’s kingdom to keep coming to us, to keep us in His kingdom, so that Christ keeps reigning in our hearts. That’s vital, because the devil’s kingdom is all around us here in time, and the threat is always there of falling back into the devil’s dark kingdom by falling into temptation and impenitence.

But our Father has given us this petition of the Lord’s Prayer as a promise that, when we ask for His help to keep us in His kingdom, He will always provide it. When we pray, Thy kingdom come, we can be sure that it will, and that it will dependably defeat the devil’s kingdom and prevent him from stealing us away.

And then, finally, the King will return and bring His kingdom into the universe visibly and gloriously. And there, in eternity, we will serve our King in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as He is risen from the dead, lives, and reigns forever and ever. And so we pray, Our Father who art in heaven, Thy kingdom come! Amen.

 

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Flee from idolatry as you endure the great tribulation

Posted on November 7, 2021 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Third to Last Sunday (Trinity 25)

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18  +  Matthew 24:15-28

Today the lectionary begins turning our thoughts to the end times, to the state of the world and of the Church leading up to Christ’s return. It isn’t a pretty picture. But there is hope in it! Not the hope of a better world here, but the promise of God’s protection and help as we live through the dark days of the great tribulation. Alongside that promise, though, comes a warning from the Lord Jesus, an urgent warning to flee from the idolatry that will afflict the Church as we wait for Him to return.

Jesus is talking with His disciples about the signs leading up to His coming at the Last Day. He foretells a horrible event from the beginning of the New Testament period—the destruction of Jerusalem in the first century—but uses that same event as a metaphor for the last days.

Therefore, He says, when you see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. The Old Testament prophets refer to idols as abominations, things that God truly hates. A desolation is something that lays waste to an area. Daniel, who lived about 600 years before Christ, prophesied that an idol would be set up in the holy place, in the innermost part of the temple in Jerusalem, right next to the place where God had promised to dwell. That prophecy was partially fulfilled some 400 years later when Antiochus Epiphanes would oppress the Jews over the course of about three years, banning their religion and literally setting up an idol in the temple. But Jesus applies Daniel’s prophecy to another event yet to come, to the idolatry of the Jews who would reject Him, who would still use the temple in Jerusalem to make sacrifices for sin, mocking the sacrifice of Christ that had already been made once for all. That idolatry culminated in the desolation caused by the Roman armies that besieged and finally destroyed Jerusalem.

Just as Scripture often uses the literal kingdom of Israel in the Old Testament as a figure of the spiritual kingdom of Christ in the New Testament, so Jesus uses that literal idol in the literal temple and the resulting desolation in the literal city of Jerusalem to represent a spiritual abomination, a spiritual idol (or idols) in the spiritual temple of God, which is the Holy Christian Church.

The papistic idolatry, the idolatry of the Roman Church, grew over the centuries, setting the saints and their merits next to Christ in the holy place of the Church, setting the justifying works and satisfactions of the Christian next to Christ, setting the pope himself next to Christ and actually above Christ because his teaching contradicted the word of Christ, and yet he was to be believed instead of Christ, which is why Lutherans refer to the papacy as the Antichrist, or at least as the ultimate Antichrist. Because not all the idols that have been set up in the Church can be traced directly to the papacy.

Or maybe they can, in a way, if “popery” is considered more generally. Every time a teaching is set up in the Church that contradicts the Word of Christ and is supposed to be believed instead of Christ, you have a little pope there, don’t you? Every time a man (a pastor or a priest or a minister of this or that) insists on being obeyed in the Church when he’s teaching something other than the word of Christ, you have a little pope there. Every time a synod or a church body demands your loyalty, regardless of the Word of Christ, or every time Christians give their loyalty to a synod or a church body or a minister, regardless of the Word of Christ, you have a little pope there, a little antichrist, an idol, an abomination that will cause desolation.

So, “Flee!” Jesus says. Fleeing ahead of the Roman armies was a physical fleeing. Fleeing from all these other idols is a spiritual fleeing, although there may be some physical fleeing involved. Run away from that church or that church body that has set up an idol where only Christ belongs. Get out of the assembly where idolatry, even secret idolatry, is being openly practiced. Run away in your heart from every idol that you might fear, love, or trust in more than God.

Flee! And do it without delay! That’s what Jesus’ instructions boil down to. Let the one who is on the housetop not come down to get anything out of his house. And let the one who is in the field not turn back to get his clothes. But woe to the women who are with child and who are nursing in those days! Pray that your flight is not in the winter or on the Sabbath! In other words, anything that hinders your flight from where idolatry has taken hold in the Church will harm you! Getting away from it is urgent, and all the more urgent as the Last Day approaches, when the tribulation will be at its greatest.

You see, fleeing from Rome and from all the idols that are set up within the visible Church is essential to avoid the desolation it will cause—the desolation of souls! But it doesn’t get you out of the great tribulation. Jesus says, For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not happened since the beginning of the world until now, nor will there ever be. Indeed, if those days were not shortened, no flesh would be saved. But for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. The Book of Revelation talks about the saints who were even then “coming out of the great tribulation.” So, in a sense, it’s been going on since the first century. But just as the first abomination of desolation was literal and the second is spiritual or figurative, so might the tribulation be. The great tribulation of the first century involved severe physical persecution and torture. The great tribulation near the end of the world may be much more of a spiritual tribulation, trouble and affliction of the spirit, the trouble of being surrounded and assaulted by false doctrine, the trouble of a hundred different Christian church bodies, the trouble of a world that completely and thoroughly rejects God’s Word, natural law, and justice. The public schools of our country (and in most of the world) teach what I call a “gentle atheism.” They don’t come right out and say God doesn’t exist, or that all religion is evil. They just unteach everything the Bible teaches and replace it with a false history, false morality, and false authority. They train generations of citizens not to rely on God’s word, but on science and the ingenuity of the human race. Practically all the world powers deny Christ, if not by name, then by policy and by action. This is all part of the great tribulation, and it would be too much even for the elect to withstand, if God didn’t shorten the days for us.

Now, sometimes He shortens the days by giving us a brief reprieve, a few moments of sanity and normalcy. But those reprieves are temporary. Sometimes He shortens the days by bringing believers out of this life, so that we finish our race in faith and win the battle by leaving the battle safely. But in the end, only the coming of Christ will truly shorten the days of the great tribulation in which we find ourselves. Only the coming of Christ will put an end to the great tribulation.

Jesus has further warnings for those who live in the great tribulation: “Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is Christ!’ or ‘There!’ do not believe it. For there will arise false christs, and false prophets, and they will perform great signs and wonders, so as to deceive even the elect, if that were possible. See, I have told you ahead of time. False prophets pointing to false christs. Isn’t that exactly what we see in the Church at large? False prophets pointing to evolutionary Jesus, who didn’t create the world in six days, pointing to LGBT Jesus, who didn’t create them male and female and bless the marriage of one man and one woman, pointing to socialist Jesus who compels people to charity by force, to collectivist Jesus who demands that people get vaccines or wear masks “for the good of the collective society,” to abortionist Jesus, to a false Jesus who calls “love” what the Jesus of the Bible calls “sin.”

That’s the false Jesus of the liberal talking points. But then there are plenty of false prophets on the more “conservative” side who point to American patriot Jesus, or to “Baptist Jesus” or “generic Evangelical Jesus,” who waits for you to make a decision for Him and invite Him into your heart by your own powers, who doesn’t work anything through Baptism but views it as your own work of obedience, to the Jesus who doesn’t want little children to be baptized, or who does want them baptized, but not for the forgiveness of their sins, to the Jesus who doesn’t give His true body and blood in the Holy Sacrament.

Therefore, if they say to you, ‘Look, he is in the desert!’ do not go out; or, ‘Look, he is in the inner rooms!’ do not believe it. For as the lightning comes out of the east and is visible in the west, so also will be the coming of the Son of Man. There is only one true Jesus Christ, who has ascended into heaven and will not return until the very Last Day of this world when every eye will see Him. Until then, He has left a sure and dependable witness of His teaching: His words faithfully recorded in Holy Scripture, which will never pass away. And He has left a ministry of the Word that carries His blessing and His authority. If you go seeking Jesus apart from His Word and the ministry of it, you will only find a false christ.

Our Gospel concludes with that rather strange saying: For where the carcass lies, there the eagles will gather. It’s actually a paraphrase from the book of Job, where God is scolding Job for thinking himself wiser than God. And God has to remind him that God is the one who gave the eagle the nature and the ability to spy out the landscape from afar, to pinpoint where the dead body is, and to gather there. So it is with God’s children. We won’t miss Jesus at His coming. We won’t miss out on the eternal life He will bring. Instead, St. Paul describes the scene beautifully in today’s Epistle: For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord.

Such is the wisdom of God, to allow His visible Church to falter and to embrace the idol and to allow His true believers, His invisible Church to suffer much in this great tribulation. But rather than question God’s wisdom as Job did, let us embrace it and acknowledge that God knows far better than we do what is right and necessary for this world and for His beloved Church, including each one of His dear children. Trust in Him. Watch out for idols and flee from them, wherever they are set up. Seek Him in His word and the ministry of it during this great tribulation. And eagerly expect His coming! Amen.

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The Lord’s Prayer: Invocation and First Petition

Posted on November 3, 2021 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Small Catechism Review / Celebration of All Saints’ Day

1 John 3:1-3  +  Matthew 5:1-12

It’s no coincidence that our celebration of All Saints’ Day coincides with our focus on the Small Catechism, specifically the Invocation and 1st Petition of the Lord’s Prayer. I lined it up this way, because the connections are so beautiful.

Jesus teaches us to address His eternal Father as “our Father” in heaven. To whom is He speaking? Not to all of humanity. The Lord’s Prayer hasn’t been given to everyone. Oh, anyone can read it or hear it. But to pray it, in truth? That only belongs to those who have been given the right to become children of God, to those who have believed in the name of the Father’s only-begotten Son. Jesus taught this prayer to His disciples, to the baptized, to believers. In other words, He taught it to His saints on earth.

What are the saints on earth to believe when Jesus teaches us to pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven”? With these words, God would invite us to believe that He is our true Father, and that we are His true children. That’s what believers in Christ are to believe, that, for Christ’s sake, the eternal Father is now our true Father, and we His true children. We don’t deserve to believe that, or to be called that. It’s pure grace, for the sake of Christ. And it applied also to Old Testament believers, who were taught to call upon the God of Israel as “our Father” through faith in the coming Messiah, sealed with the blood of the Old Testament.

All the saints on earth have learned to call God “our Father.” Not our earthly father, but our Father in heaven. We earthly fathers do the best we can to imitate His love and fatherly care for His children, but we fall so far short it’s barely worth the comparison. Still, Jesus used the comparison and wants us to view His Father as our Father and to know that His Father views us as His dear children, just as dear to Him as Jesus Himself is.

And that relationship doesn’t end when our bodies die. Our earthly fathers die, and while we still acknowledge them and love them as our fathers after they die, our interaction with them is lost. Not so with our heavenly Father. When a child of His dies, the relationship and the interaction continue. In fact, we call Him Father “who is in heaven,” which is precisely where the departed saints dwell, together with the holy angels. They still call Him “our Father” and are still cared for by Him as His dear children, so that the “Our Father” of the Lord’s Prayer unites the saints on earth with the saints in heaven. Though we can’t interact with each other, we still call upon our Father together.

Now, once we believe that we, as believers in Christ, are God’s true children, what is Jesus teaching us to do with these words? He wants us to believe it so that with all boldness and confidence we should ask Him, as dear children ask their dear father. Pray! Ask! Knock on the door! Seek! But only ask if you actually need help. I mean, if you can face this world on your own, by all means, do it! If you can provide for yourself without our Father sustaining you and prospering you and giving you the opportunities you need, then go for it! If you can handle all the hardships, all the oppression, all the persecution, all the overwhelming force of this world’s hatred and injustice, then don’t ask Him for help. But if you’re wise enough to realize that your needs are very great, and if you believe that God is your dear Father and you His dear child, then why wouldn’t you ask, and ask often?

The saints above no longer have earthly needs, and whether or not they have heavenly needs they still need to ask our Father to fulfill, we don’t have any idea. They may well ask Him to help us, His earthly children, though we have no reason to believe they can know the specifics of what’s going on in our lives. Still, we know they did ask Him, they did pray to our Father when they were here, when their souls were still united with their bodies, and we know that our Father heard their prayers. Some of those prayers are recorded in the Psalms, others in Collects and hymns of the Church, and in the Liturgy itself. When we pray as the saints before us prayed, whether with the same words or with the same thoughts, we’re again participating in that great but invisible communion we have with the saints on the other side of this life, who have received the ultimate fulfillment of the last petition, “Deliver us from evil,” by being admitted to heavenly glory. That, too, should spur us on to ask Him, our Father, to pray, following in the footsteps of the saints.

And the very first thing our Lord has taught us to ask for is the content of the First Petition: Hallowed be Thy name. May Your name be hallowed, made holy, sanctified, dear Father in heaven! A perfect petition for a celebration of All Hallows, that is, All Saints, those who have been made perfectly holy, not only in their status before God by faith, but in their existence and in their conduct. They no longer sin. They no longer carry around the sinful flesh with its weaknesses. The Old Man has been put to death once and for all. They have received most of the promised blessings of the beatitudes that we heard this evening, while a few still wait for the coming of Christ. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven, forever and ever. They are being comforted. They are being filled, never to hunger again for righteousness or for anything. They have obtained the fullest measure of God’s mercy. They see God. They are called the sons of God. And their reward in heaven is great. Among them, God’s name is held as perfectly holy at all times.

But what do we mean when we pray, Hallowed by Thy name? We ask in this prayer that God’s name may be made holy among us also.

How is that done? Luther’s explanation is short and to the point. It’s done in two ways: (1) When God’s Word is taught purely and correctly, and (2) when we, as the children of God, also lead holy lives according to it.

So “hallowed be Your name” means, first of all, Heavenly Father, help the Christian parents among us to teach Your Word rightly to their children, that they may know Your name rightly, may know rightly who You are, what You command, what You promise, what You have done for us and what You will do. Help our pastors to preach well, to persevere in the true doctrine of Your Word that their hearers may know Your name rightly. Protect parents and pastors from the lies of the evil one, and grant them a heart of faith and a life that reflects it.

Secondly, “hallowed be Your name” means, “Heavenly Father, help us Christians, who have been baptized into Your holy name, to lead holy lives on earth, so that those who see us and our behavior don’t think poorly of You as we bear Your name in the world.” You know how God’s name is blasphemed in the world. And one of the causes of it is people who bear the name Christian but lead lives that are contrary to God’s Word. “Hallowed be Thy name” is an earnest prayer to God that we don’t fall into open sin, so that our very lives become false teachers about who God is and what it means to believe in Him.

But we can also think of the saints above when we pray the First Petition. We can give thanks to God for all the parents and preachers who have finished their race in faith, who did teach God’s Word purely and correctly, so that we can know it, too. We can give thanks to God that, in spite of their sins, in spite of their weaknesses, in spite of the temptations and the persecutions that they faced, the saints above, those who fell asleep in faith, did sanctify the name of God through their confession of sins, through their confession of faith in Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and through their confession of Christ before the world. We can give thanks to God that they are now among those who sanctify our Father’s name perfectly, together with the holy angels.

Is it strange to think of the dead as we pray the Lord’s Prayer? It shouldn’t be. Because as Jesus has said, God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Nor is He the Father of the dead, but of the living. Those who died in faith are actually alive. They’re just calling God “our Father” from a different place, from a place where we can’t go yet but will go eventually, by our Father’s grace and with His help and protection. So tonight, and whenever we pray the Lord’s Prayer, let us remember with thanksgiving the whole family of our Father, both below and above. Hallowed be His name! Amen.

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