Malachi 4:1-6; Romans 15:4-13; St Luke 21:25-36
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Ready for winter? It’s December, got your boots out? Did you haul out your gloves? Got your winter coat in the front closet? No? Well, you are Hoosiers, you don’t wear coats and gloves and boots. You get by with sweatshirt and running from the warm car to the warm house. But it is winter. It’s December, and though the weather lately hasn’t shown it, you know what’s coming.
It’s December. Populus Zion. The Second Sunday of Advent. But our Lord has a more important question for us: Are you ready for summer? Jesus today compares His great and glorious Second Advent, His coming again, to the season of summer. And He means to prepare His disciples’ hearts for it.
Is your heart ready for that eternal summer to break in? For Paradise to be restored here on earth? Read for heaven and earth to pass away, to be burned to ash and stubble, in the blazing sun of the Father’s fury, to make room for the new heavens and the new earth where there is no more winter, only the eternal Sun of the Lord’s righteousness?
The signs are all around you. Cosmic things - signs in sun and moon and stars - are happening just as they have been every generation since the nativity of our Lord. The air is tense. Or, as Jesus put it, the fig tree is budding.
The eternal summer is coming. But the truth is, our hearts are not ready. Our hearts are as cold as ice toward certain people and you think that’s okay because they deserve it. But it’s not. That coldness is a rejection of our Lord and a rejection of His Gospel. Your cold heart has been slow to love and quick to judge. Your love for God’s Word has become cold and indifferent.
Summer’s coming. But your hearts are not ready, your hearts are cold. Cold hearts are heavy hearts. Weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life. Weighed down by hoarding and striving for temporal things. Weighed down with constant worry because you don’t trust your Father who art in heaven to provide and protect you.
Summer’s coming. But your hearts are not ready. The prophet Malachi talks today about climate change. But it has nothing to do with ozone layers or your carbon footprint. It has to do with the wrath to come of a God we have offended. The fig tree is budding. Summer is coming. And our hearts are not ready.
Repentance is needed. Repentance and faith. Christ Jesus exhorts you, Look at the fig tree, and all the trees. See the leaves of that with which our first parents attempted vainly to cloth themselves. See all the tree which the Lord our God has given. Let every budding tree convict you that you’ve not watched your hearts, but have let them get cold, heavy, indifferent toward God and His Kingdom. And by His grace, through His Word and Spirit, repent. Mortify your flesh, silence your heart and keep looking and listening. You shall know that you are of the truth and reassure your heart before Him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart condemns us, we have condense before God (1 Jn 3:19-21).
People loved by God, keep loving at all the trees like He said and rejoice. His Word shall work. It shall do what it says and accomplish His purpose to bring you to repentance and faith, to prepare your heart to stand. Look at all the trees until you find, with the eyes of faith, the One that didn’t bud. To us that is the most blessed tree of all. The One that takes center stage in our chancel, upon which shall soon be afixed the glorious fruit of our Lord’s own Body, given into death for you. The One that takes center stage in history.
Look at the trees. Especially that dry, ugly, barren, cursed Tree where Jesus went to absorb in His Body God’s burning and blazing wrath against sinners like us. This is the only Tree capable of melting the cold heart of man. The only Tree capable of stirring up the heavy heart of man. Because it is the Tree which by which you behold the very heart of God.
“Stir up our hearts, O Lord.” That’s our prayer this December day and every December. All day long through the dreary winter of this world until the Sun of Righteousness rises with healing in His wings. We pray this today and always because we are incapable of doing it ourselves. Of stirring up our hearts in repentance and faith, love and devotion. But the Lord who teaches this morning is the Lord to whom we pray precisely because He taught us to do so. And He promises to hear and answer!
More than that, He specializes in stirring things up. His birth so stirred the angels that they came down and sang for us. It so stirred the heavenly bodies that the star guided the Magi from the East. His preaching so stirred up every town to which He went. He stirred up the hearts of the self-righteous. He stirred up the devil’s kingdom because He came to die and rescue those who deserved hell. He stirred up and brought down the power of death by rising again over it.
And He is coming again to shake things up on earth. “Lo! He comes with clouds descending, once for every sinner slain; thousand, thousand saints attending swell the triumph of His train: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia! Christ the Lord returns to reign” (LSB 336:1). And it’ll be, paradoxically, like an ice-cold eternal winter for those who reject Him while also enduring the consuming fire and burning oven in the scorching heat of His fierce wrath.
But for those whom He has prepared and for whom His kingdom has been prepared, it will be like the perfect summer, with the glorious Sun of Righteousness and the cool river whose streams make glad the City of God, the holy habitation of the Most High (Ps 46:4). Again this morning He stirs up your heart by His Word and Spirit to prepare you so that on that Day you might straighten up and raise your heads because your redemption is drawing near.
Summer’s coming. And we have been made ready because He was always ready. When it came to dealing with the winter of our sins, He was ready to die for them. And He did. When it came to dealing with our cold heart, He was ready to atone for them. And He did. When it came to dealing with our indifference, He was ready to suffer and bleed, opening the very heart of the Father to us. And He did.
We pray: Stir up our hearts, O Lord, and grant that we may have a heart more like Yours, so that we might not be distracted from the most important things. Your heart was never cold toward anyone, even those who betrayed You. Help us to strive, O Lord, to have a heart like that. For You were never anxious, because You had perfect love and trust in Your Father’s plan. Give us endurance and encouragement through Your Scriptures, that we might have hope and live in harmony with one another, in accord with You, who live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
People loved by God, summer’s coming and when it’s here there will be signs in sun and moon and stars. But you have right in front of you the better sign of His love and favor toward you in this Sacrament. The Sun of Righteousness rising over the glorious Cup of Salvation, by which our Lord strengthens you in faith and love that you may not be shaken. There will indeed be a Day when many are fainting with fear and foreboding, but on that Day you will stand, because are again kneeling to receive your true Messiah whose “dear token of His passion” are revealed to you here.
It’s December. But summer is coming. Lift up your prepared hearts to the Lord, to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, + who together with the Holy Spirit, be glory now and unto the ages. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Ready for winter? It’s December, got your boots out? Did you haul out your gloves? Got your winter coat in the front closet? No? Well, you are Hoosiers, you don’t wear coats and gloves and boots. You get by with sweatshirt and running from the warm car to the warm house. But it is winter. It’s December, and though the weather lately hasn’t shown it, you know what’s coming.
It’s December. Populus Zion. The Second Sunday of Advent. But our Lord has a more important question for us: Are you ready for summer? Jesus today compares His great and glorious Second Advent, His coming again, to the season of summer. And He means to prepare His disciples’ hearts for it.
Is your heart ready for that eternal summer to break in? For Paradise to be restored here on earth? Read for heaven and earth to pass away, to be burned to ash and stubble, in the blazing sun of the Father’s fury, to make room for the new heavens and the new earth where there is no more winter, only the eternal Sun of the Lord’s righteousness?
The signs are all around you. Cosmic things - signs in sun and moon and stars - are happening just as they have been every generation since the nativity of our Lord. The air is tense. Or, as Jesus put it, the fig tree is budding.
The eternal summer is coming. But the truth is, our hearts are not ready. Our hearts are as cold as ice toward certain people and you think that’s okay because they deserve it. But it’s not. That coldness is a rejection of our Lord and a rejection of His Gospel. Your cold heart has been slow to love and quick to judge. Your love for God’s Word has become cold and indifferent.
Summer’s coming. But your hearts are not ready, your hearts are cold. Cold hearts are heavy hearts. Weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life. Weighed down by hoarding and striving for temporal things. Weighed down with constant worry because you don’t trust your Father who art in heaven to provide and protect you.
Summer’s coming. But your hearts are not ready. The prophet Malachi talks today about climate change. But it has nothing to do with ozone layers or your carbon footprint. It has to do with the wrath to come of a God we have offended. The fig tree is budding. Summer is coming. And our hearts are not ready.
Repentance is needed. Repentance and faith. Christ Jesus exhorts you, Look at the fig tree, and all the trees. See the leaves of that with which our first parents attempted vainly to cloth themselves. See all the tree which the Lord our God has given. Let every budding tree convict you that you’ve not watched your hearts, but have let them get cold, heavy, indifferent toward God and His Kingdom. And by His grace, through His Word and Spirit, repent. Mortify your flesh, silence your heart and keep looking and listening. You shall know that you are of the truth and reassure your heart before Him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart condemns us, we have condense before God (1 Jn 3:19-21).
People loved by God, keep loving at all the trees like He said and rejoice. His Word shall work. It shall do what it says and accomplish His purpose to bring you to repentance and faith, to prepare your heart to stand. Look at all the trees until you find, with the eyes of faith, the One that didn’t bud. To us that is the most blessed tree of all. The One that takes center stage in our chancel, upon which shall soon be afixed the glorious fruit of our Lord’s own Body, given into death for you. The One that takes center stage in history.
Look at the trees. Especially that dry, ugly, barren, cursed Tree where Jesus went to absorb in His Body God’s burning and blazing wrath against sinners like us. This is the only Tree capable of melting the cold heart of man. The only Tree capable of stirring up the heavy heart of man. Because it is the Tree which by which you behold the very heart of God.
“Stir up our hearts, O Lord.” That’s our prayer this December day and every December. All day long through the dreary winter of this world until the Sun of Righteousness rises with healing in His wings. We pray this today and always because we are incapable of doing it ourselves. Of stirring up our hearts in repentance and faith, love and devotion. But the Lord who teaches this morning is the Lord to whom we pray precisely because He taught us to do so. And He promises to hear and answer!
More than that, He specializes in stirring things up. His birth so stirred the angels that they came down and sang for us. It so stirred the heavenly bodies that the star guided the Magi from the East. His preaching so stirred up every town to which He went. He stirred up the hearts of the self-righteous. He stirred up the devil’s kingdom because He came to die and rescue those who deserved hell. He stirred up and brought down the power of death by rising again over it.
And He is coming again to shake things up on earth. “Lo! He comes with clouds descending, once for every sinner slain; thousand, thousand saints attending swell the triumph of His train: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia! Christ the Lord returns to reign” (LSB 336:1). And it’ll be, paradoxically, like an ice-cold eternal winter for those who reject Him while also enduring the consuming fire and burning oven in the scorching heat of His fierce wrath.
But for those whom He has prepared and for whom His kingdom has been prepared, it will be like the perfect summer, with the glorious Sun of Righteousness and the cool river whose streams make glad the City of God, the holy habitation of the Most High (Ps 46:4). Again this morning He stirs up your heart by His Word and Spirit to prepare you so that on that Day you might straighten up and raise your heads because your redemption is drawing near.
Summer’s coming. And we have been made ready because He was always ready. When it came to dealing with the winter of our sins, He was ready to die for them. And He did. When it came to dealing with our cold heart, He was ready to atone for them. And He did. When it came to dealing with our indifference, He was ready to suffer and bleed, opening the very heart of the Father to us. And He did.
We pray: Stir up our hearts, O Lord, and grant that we may have a heart more like Yours, so that we might not be distracted from the most important things. Your heart was never cold toward anyone, even those who betrayed You. Help us to strive, O Lord, to have a heart like that. For You were never anxious, because You had perfect love and trust in Your Father’s plan. Give us endurance and encouragement through Your Scriptures, that we might have hope and live in harmony with one another, in accord with You, who live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
People loved by God, summer’s coming and when it’s here there will be signs in sun and moon and stars. But you have right in front of you the better sign of His love and favor toward you in this Sacrament. The Sun of Righteousness rising over the glorious Cup of Salvation, by which our Lord strengthens you in faith and love that you may not be shaken. There will indeed be a Day when many are fainting with fear and foreboding, but on that Day you will stand, because are again kneeling to receive your true Messiah whose “dear token of His passion” are revealed to you here.
It’s December. But summer is coming. Lift up your prepared hearts to the Lord, to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, + who together with the Holy Spirit, be glory now and unto the ages. Amen.
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