[Machine transcription]
Grace mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ.
Amen.
Brothers and sisters, looking at the gospel lesson today, words of Jesus about his return.
Please be seated.
So what are we doing here on a perfectly good New Year’s Eve?
Aren’t there better things to do on such a night?
There must be a party somewhere to go to, or down to Lady Bird Lake for the fireworks
or at least at home watching the crowd in Times Square
counting down with great expectation of that ball to drop.
There’s probably a football game on TV too.
Well, for followers of Jesus,
there is no better place to be on New Year’s Eve
than here in worship with each other.
There’s no better place to be
to celebrate the many gifts that God has given us
this past year and no better place to be
as we look forward to the new year,
looking with great expectation
of what God can and will do for you in it.
And, in fact, that’s really the title of this sermon.
It kind of got left out of the program,
but it’s great expectations we can have.
And if nothing else, being here tonight
has helped you learn that there’s a section of hymns
in our in our hymnal to sing about the end times that’s why I had us do number
515 there to sing about that that and that’s what we sing about the end times
because there’s great expectations we can have about the end times and for me
I suspect and for others to New Year’s Eve just isn’t that big of a deal don’t
I don’t have many expectations for New Year’s Eve.
I guess the only expectation I have for New Year’s Eve
is that I’ll probably get woken up around midnight
with all the fireworks going on.
But for many, New Year’s Eve just isn’t that big of a deal.
And I think it could be the same
for people concerning the end times.
In many Christian circles, and probably admittedly so,
in Lutheran churches,
we don’t talk about the end times a lot.
End times or the second coming of Christ doesn’t get emphasized that much and
And in fact Marcia she catches me on this several times when whenever I say something like you know
Well, we’re all gonna die someday and she’ll correct me with no not unless Jesus comes back first
Gets me every time on that and I try to argue. It’s like no don’t it’s that doesn’t work because it’s it’s true
Not all people are gonna die. Jesus is gonna come back at some time and people are alive. Maybe it’ll be us
We don’t know but Jesus has some interesting words for us tonight in that gospel reading and I
Want us to have great expectations about that because the end times usually are kind of scary
And I think that’s why we don’t emphasize it as much because it’s kind of scary
It’s kind of mysterious, and we don’t know when it’s going to be so we don’t talk about it much
but
It has a lot of negative connotations, so even the name the end times well that sounds really welcoming doesn’t it and
also the
The last days or the end of the world
doesn’t sound all that
promising and
movies or TV shows on the subject always depict doom and gloom and people
scrounging for food and zombies and all kinds of stuff here that’s that’s what
gets gets gets portrayed and probably the most troubling idea is the idea of the
end times being judgment day the day the frightening day of all people standing
before Jesus as he comes and separates the sheep from the goats so no wonder
the end times doesn’t get emphasized or talked about a lot there’s not a lot of
great expectations about what can be happening but I want to encourage you
tonight to have great expectations not only of the new year coming up but also
of the return of Jesus and that’s what Jesus was talking about in that gospel
reading, the end times and his return, and he paints the picture of a master of a
household returning to his house from a wedding banquet, coming at an unexpected
time. And like the servants in the reading, we can be waiting with great
expectation and not fear of the return of our master, because he’s coming with
great things for us. For the followers of Jesus, He’s not coming back with punishment
in mind. For the servants in the reading, the Master comes back to them with a feast.
And He comes and He sets a table for the servants and He has them gather around it and He even
shows them their places there at the table and then He puts on the clothes of a servant
and he serves them. Jesus is coming back in the same way to serve us. That should
be expected because serving us is what he did the first time he came here. He
served us by giving his life on the cross to take the penalty of our sin and
He’s forgiving us.
He served us by dying for us
and rising again to take us
to that heavenly feast
where He’ll set the table before us,
have us gather around it,
and show us our places there.
Jesus is not coming back
with punishment in mind.
When He first came here,
He took that punishment from us.
Jesus is coming to serve us, serving us by giving us eternal life, giving us
glorified bodies and souls, free from evil and from sin and from pain and
sickness and suffering and tears and all of the ill effects of our bodies here on
earth. Jesus is going to take it away and serve us with all of that new. That’s
That’s what we can expect in the end times, on the last day, on the day of Jesus’ return.
We can have great expectations of the return of our Master.
He’s our Master, but at His heavenly feast, He’s also our waiter, our servant.
In great expectations of Jesus’ return, we can say that we wait for Him to wait on us.
and to serve us His heavenly feast.
But for now, we’ve got something really good.
We have a great preview of that heavenly feast to come.
We have a foretaste of the feast to come, if you will.
And yes, I mean the Lord’s Supper.
Just a bit of bread and a bit of wine,
but it’s a feast.
A feast of God’s grace
given to us in Christ’s body and blood in that bread and wine. He gathers us
here, tonight even. He gathers us here and shows us our places at the table and
and He serves us, serves us His grace for the forgiveness of our sins, serving us
by giving what He already gave us,
His body and His blood,
for that forgiveness.
So we can have great expectations
of the feast to come,
but also in the foretaste
of the feast to come.
We can have great expectations
of Christ’s work among us right now,
forgiving our sins,
giving us comfort and hope.
Great expectations for now,
not just for the future.
And boy, we really do need that comfort and hope now.
We need some great expectations with the way things can be in this world
and in our lives.
Yeah, I know.
I know that life can be rough.
And the expectations of going into a new year can be pretty grim sometimes
if things are pretty rough in your life right now.
Sometimes it seems like things are completely falling apart
in this world or in your own life.
You may be dealing with any kinds of trouble.
Career worries, finances, health,
relationships, worries about terrorism
or violence in the world, or maybe it’s your own sins.
Things that you’ve done
or didn’t do, that are causing you guilt and shame and you’re you’re dragging
them all with you into this coming new year. If so, there’s good news. You can
have some great expectations of good news in this new year. There’s good
reason for you to have great expectations because Jesus is with you.
Jesus is with you, giving you a feast of His love and grace and forgiveness and
comfort. He’s promised these things and He’s given it in His death and His
resurrection for you. The years change, the times change, Jesus does not change.
The expectations you may have had for Jesus years ago are still the same. He
still promises all of those things and we can expect that God was our help in
ages past he is your help for years to come as we just sang so be encouraged and
in the epistle Paul’s letter to the Romans great words here of great promise
and expectation and comfort he said what then shall we say to these things if God
for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son but gave him up
for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”
Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword, your life
problems, even your own sin will not separate you from the love of Christ. A
A good way to be reminded about the good news of Christ’s return
and the great expectations we can have in that is in the creed.
I think sometimes this part of the creed,
I don’t think we think about it that much.
It’s near the end of the creed,
so we start to think about, okay, what’s coming up next?
And we don’t really fully think about it that much.
But in the second article, it says,
I believe in Jesus Christ that He will come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead.
He’s coming again.
When we pray the common table prayer, everybody kind of knows that it’s these are thy,
that’s where everybody gets kind of confused on that.
There’s a come Lord Jesus be our guest, let these gifts to us be blessed.
We’re praying Jesus come back.
We want you to return.
right now we don’t even have to eat first it’s okay you can come back now
it’s it’s fine see for Lutherans we call this this whole idea of enjoying God’s
grace now but also looking forward to we call it the great now and not yet we
enjoy the grace of God now we have that expectation of his grace but also in his
second coming, there’s more to come.
We enjoy so much of his grace here now,
but at the same time, we don’t yet experience
the fullness of it.
Boy, we could have great expectations of that.
Not only can we be excited about it,
we can have great expectations of all that.
And I know in our lives, there’s always the specter
of death that’s there, and even I always say it,
Marcia corrects me, I say,
well, we’re all gonna die someday.
Death is always this ever-present thing.
It’s always this thing that we think we have to deal with
and we have to, you know, kind of account for
and deal with it, but Jesus is coming back,
maybe in our lifetime.
So I would encourage us to not always be looking
for a hole in the ground.
Don’t put your expectations there in your death and burial,
but also be looking for a hole in the sky.
Why be looking for Jesus to come back?
He’s promised to do it.
We can expect it at any time.
Yeah, Jesus is coming.
We don’t know when,
probably when we don’t expect it,
but let’s be expecting it,
having great expectations
into this new year and every year.
And so now let’s prepare to celebrate
with great expectations
the foretaste of the feast to come.
amen now may the peace of God which passes all
understanding keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus amen
