"The Calm in the Midst of the Storm" Second Sunday in Advent Populus Zion Commemoration of Nicholas of Myra, Pastor December 6, 2015 Luke 21:25–36
The calm after the storm is as startling as the storm itself. When the storm is particularly vicious, the calm afterward is remarkable by contrast. When the storm hits, though, calm doesn’t seem possible. Pelting rain, severe gusts, powerful crashes of thunder, brilliant flashes of lightning. You pray for the calm to come. You pray the storm will blow over quickly. You pray you’ll make it through. A severe storm brings out some of our deepest fears. Damage, injury, and death often come from horrific storms. The calm afterward can be eerily quiet. It can be unnerving. But if you make it safely through, the calm is a welcome relief after the battering of the storm. Storms come in life. Sometimes you are hit in life with storms and you fear if you’ll make it through. Extreme trials can come up out of the blue and your life can seem to turn upside down. Your daily life can be overwhelmed by temptations, difficulties, and frustrations. The world around you can seem a relentless barrage of wars, attacks, hatred, and people suffering. When will calm come after the storm? Well, we do know that as long as we live on this earth we will be bombarded with no end of sin, guilt, troubles, and evil. We live in a fallen world and we are bound in our sinful flesh. We can’t escape these storms in this life. Some people try, through chemical dependency, or various religions, or any number of escapes from the reality that is sinful, fallen nature. As our Lord says in the Gospel reading today, when He returns on the Last Day He will bring all this to an end. But where is the hope in that? Must we wait until we die or until our Lord comes again to experience the calm after the storm? The answer the Bible gives is no. God gives us calm in the midst of the storm. Even while we live and are buffeted by the storms of life He provides us with calm. You do not have to despair of the mess the world is in or fear the trials you endure. Your God gives you not escape only after the storm but right now in the midst of it. In the Gospel reading Jesus speaks of His return on the Last Day. What leads up to that is what we often refer to as the End Times. The signs are what we see all around us: wars, devastations, false messiahs. In many ways the coming of our Lord at the end is as the coming of our Lord at Bethlehem. Though His return on the Last Day will be in glory and His coming at Bethlehem was in humility, the world He came into was much the same as it will be when He comes again. Just as the storm rages around us, in the events of the world stage and in our own lives, the storm was raging when Jesus was born in a stable. In the Gospel reading Jesus says that we must be prepared. We must watch and be alert. We must pray. It was the same before He came the first time. His people were to be ready. They didn’t know when He would come, only that He said He would. This is the great answer. It is Jesus Himself. He came not after the storm but in the midst of it. He came not after the world got its act together but when it was in the very process of messing it up. He came not when people finally saw the light and stopped sinning, but while they were yet sinners. He came not when people turned the corner and stopped being enemies of one another and stopped rejecting God, but even while they were yet enemies of God. The storm hit when Adam and Eve fell into sin and has been raging ever since. In the very midst of the storm Jesus came. He is the calm in the midst of the storm. God does not promise some future hope we have to wait for. He comes right in our need. He doesn’t wait for the storm to blow over to give us the calm we need, He gives it to us as the storm is raging. And so it was that in a world of sin and hatred of God there was a baby born in a stable and laid in a manger. So it was that God gave the very thing we need in the midst of the storm, the calm that is God Himself in the flesh. God almighty in the very fallen sinful world being coddled and cuddled, being fed and being changed. Being nurtured and raised in order to carry out the will of His Heavenly Father. The life Jesus lived was the calm of living according to God’s good and gracious will. The life He lived was centered around His ministry, in which He was showing that everything of who He was and everything He did was for the purpose of going to the cross. The storm that was the central event of history could not have been worse for those who looked to Him for hope and salvation. That He was now hanging on a cross and was nearing death was too much for them to bear. All hope was lost. There would be no calm after this storm, only questions, only despair. The brutal suffering He bore was gut-wrenching for them to witness. But the storm that really hit was not seen by them; only alluded to by signs in the heavens and on the earth. The sun went dark and the earth shook. The temple curtain was torn from top to bottom. Something was going on and it was a lot more than met the eye. Jesus did not simply suffer at the hands of men but at the hands of His own Father. He was despised and beaten by men but He was forsaken by His Father. He suffered the hell we deserve to suffer. Our sin was laid on Him. Our guilt was borne by Him. Our eternal punishment became His. The eternal storm of weeping and gnashing of teeth was placed on Him, the one who is without sin and is pure before the Father. And yet, in the midst of this storm was serene calm. Jesus praying to His Father, “Father, into Your hands I commend My spirit.” In the midst of the suffering of Jesus was His glorious cry, “It is finished.” Salvation was accomplished not in some spiritualistic fashion but with the actual flesh and blood Jesus suffering for the sin of the world on a cross. The calm in the midst of the storm. Salvation accomplished in the midst of the fallen and hopeless world. And so it is that Jesus spoke the words we heard in today’s Gospel reading right before all of the events unfolded which would bring Him to the cross. The very hope He gives in the warning of the End Times and the Last Day is inextricably linked with the cross. Our being vigilant in the midst of the storms of life and the End Times is possible because even before these things happen and even as they happen we already possess the calm in the midst of the storm. Jesus has already come in the midst of it. He already has come to save us, giving us new life in Baptism. He comes in the midst of everything wrong in this world and in your life in bread and wine, giving you the very body He offered on the cross and the very blood He shed on the cross. There is no greater calm than this, it is given and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sin. He gives it to you to strengthen and preserve you in body and soul to life everlasting. So it is that you do not give in to the cares and pleasures of life but rather entrust yourself to the calm that is your Lord Jesus Christ. You hear His Gospel, you live as the Baptized child of God you are, and you partake often of His body and blood. The calm you receive now in this lifetime in Him will give way to the glory of standing before Him on the Last Day and for eternity. Amen. SDG -- Pastor Paul L. Willweber Prince of Peace Lutheran Church [LCMS] 6801 Easton Ct., San Diego, California 92120 619.583.1436 princeofpeacesd.net three-taverns.net It is the spirit and genius of Lutheranism to be liberal in everything except where the marks of the Church are concerned. [Henry Hamann, On Being a Christian] _______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list Sermons@cat41.org http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
