*The Last Sunday of the Church Year*
*No One Knows* *(Silence is Golden)* Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen! Christ our Lord says in today’s Gospel, “*Concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father*.” Dear Christian friends, The next time you hear people discussing such Christian-sounding things as rapture, pre-millennialism, post-millennialism, and so on, it would be a good thing if you could change the topic of conversation, leave the room, turn up the volume on the radio, or—if all else fails—confess the one true faith by sticking your fingers into your ears. If you ever run into someone who is preparing for Armageddon by stock-piling ammunition—as a man in Barnett is rumored to be doing—it might be good for you to take a step or two farther away from him. Why is it wise for you to do your best to avoid end-times encounters such as these? Two reasons, really: · First, hardly anything will make some Christians angrier quicker than when you question their end-times theories and schemes. In many American churches, if you ask the pastor to preach a sermon about the Last Day, you will either see the man shake in his boots or grin at the thrill of a fight. That pastor knows his congregation is divided in its opinions concerning the Last Day. No matter what that man might preach, someone will become irreconcilably angry. A pre-millennialist (as they are called) cannot stand to be in the same room with a post-millennialist, and vice-versa. They both will turn on you if you tell them there is no such thing a “secret rapture.” The only way to keep them all together is to keep them all quiet. Start a conversation about their theories and the fur will fly. · The second, greater reason for avoiding such end-times encounters is precisely that: it is all theory. Stated another way, it is someone’s imagination (probably Cyrus Schofield’s). Most of the talk you hear today about the End Times is totally human and NOT faithfully drawn from the Scriptures. Words like Armageddon and millennium may sound biblical, but so many false teachers have stirred their nonsense into the End Times that they make the return of our Lord more like the plot of a novel than a simple confession of faith. We should not feel surprised that there are so many convoluted ideas among Christians concerning the Last Day. We humans are quite a presumptuous lot. We think we should be masters of everything. It was not enough that God gave us dominion over everything on the earth. We want to be lord and master over God, too! Our sinful human nature finds it unacceptable to think that “*no one knows concerning that day or that hour, not even the angels in heaven nor the Son, but only the Father*.” We have a long history of presuming to know God’s thoughts—every false teacher and heretic in history has presumed to know God’s thoughts—and popular end-times theories are only further proof to the point. The earliest Christians—our forefathers in faith—had good reasons for keeping things simple, especially with regard to the Return of Christ. Those saints who have gone before us all lived and died on the same words you and I repeat each Sunday: “I believe Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead.” End of story. We should leave it at that. Our fellow Christians before us lived by the same contentment that we ourselves should learn to embrace and share: NOT that we would draw charts and maps of the future, but that we would shrug our shoulders and say with Jesus, “*no one knows concerning that day or that hour*.” We believe that, when God our heavenly Father speaks, He speaks because it is the merciful and loving thing for Him to do. We should believe the same thing about when God does NOT speak. When God our Father remains silent, He remains silent because it is the merciful and loving thing for Him to do. As analogy to the point, think about your prayers: How many times have you fervently prayed to God for something, only change your mind later to realize that it was a good thing that God did not answer the prayer the way you wanted it? God the Father is always ahead of us on this point. When He remains silent to our prayers, He knows what He is doing—and He is acting in love. Here is another analogy to illustrate the point of God’s gracious silence: Sometimes, when I get home from work, the wife and I have the same sort of how-was-your-day conversations that many of you also have in your homes. When I tell my wife about my day, there are tons of things I cannot and do not say. My wife knows considerably less about my pastoral care than you might think. I must remain silent about many things to her because I often work with people when they are not at their finest moments. My silence protects their reputation. My silence also protects my wife from knowing too much, that is, from knowing things that would burden her or afflict her. My silence is love, both for you and for her. In the same way, God’s silence is likewise love toward us. When our heavenly Father remains silent, He remains silent because it is the merciful and loving thing for Him to do. He has NOT kept hidden the time of His Son’s return because He wants to keep us guessing, or because He wants us to live in fear. God has withheld this knowledge from us because He loves us; because He knows how badly we would handle things if indeed we knew the precise moment “*concerning that day or that hour*.” Can you imagine what swine we would become if God had pinpointed for us the date and time of our Lord’s return? 1. While the time is still far off—perhaps twenty or thirty years away—none of us would pay any attention to God’s Word or promises at all! No one would attend themselves to the preaching of the Word; no one would hunger after the Body and Blood of Christ; no one would consider seriously the salvation that was poured out for them in Baptism. We would unrepentantly live as if God did not matter and as if I mattered most. 2. What if we knew the time was near? We quickly would become holy, wouldn’t we? All the monks in history would not be able to match our devotion! We would be gobbling the Holy Communion like it was our last meal, lavishly giving our possessions in works of charity, and gladly suffering all sorts of punishments and even imprisonment for the sake of Christ. In short, if we knew our Lord’s Return was scheduled for this coming Friday, we Christians would suddenly become glad to do all the things that we should be doing, anyway, but for all the wrong reasons. When it comes to the Last Day, God’s silence is golden, as the saying goes. That is why our dear Lord Jesus says in today’s Gospel, “*Concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father*.” That is why the Apostles’ Creed is so brief, stating only that “Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead.” That is also why our Lutheran forefathers made the Return of Christ in Judgment (AP XVII) one of their shortest explanations of the faith, and finally, it is why most conversations with American Christians on this topic will do you no absolutely good. Rather than building imaginary schemes upon what God has not said, we will content ourselves with these three things, which Christ Jesus our Lord has so clearly revealed in His written Word: 1. That all your sins are forgiven on account of Jesus’ death and resurrection. This means that your future is certain and that Christ’s return on the Last Day is nothing to fear. 2. That until Christ returns again, He has given His Christians important work to do—each Christian according to his or her ability. This work does not consist of earning salvation, but it consists of showing love to neighbor. As you heard in today’s Gospel, Christ’s return “*is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to stay awake*.” Let’s stick to our God-given work and not allow ourselves to get whipped up into other peoples’ end-times fervor. Our faithfulness is our staying awake (1 Thessalonians 5:4-11). 3. Finally, that Christ shall indeed return to “to judge the living and the dead.” And things will then be immeasurably better. May God our heavenly Father, His dear Son, and His ever-faithful Spirit graciously keep us patient and watchful until that day. Amen.
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