Sermon for Advent 2, December 6, 2020
Grace to you and peace from God the Father and Jesus Christ
our Lord. Amen.
Luke 12:35-40 35“Be dressed, ready for
service, and keep your lamps burning. 36Be like people waiting for their master to return from a
wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the
door for him. 37Blessed are those
servants, whom the master will find watching when he comes. Amen I tell you: He will dress himself
and have them recline at the table, and he will come and serve them. 38Even if he comes in the
second or third watch, they will be blessed if he finds them alert. 39But know this: If the master of
the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would have watched
and not allowed his house to be broken into.
40You also be ready, because the Son of Man is coming at an
hour when you are not expecting him. (EHV)
Ready
to serve the Lord, He serves us!
Dear servants of the
living God,
Two weeks ago, we were reminded to be ready for Jesus’
return on Judgment Day. Our text this
morning seems to say much the same thing.
Yet, Jesus taught this to His disciples much earlier in His ministry
than the text two weeks ago, and rather than telling us to be prepared to wake
up from sleeping to meet the Lord, this text explains how we are to be ready to
serve Him as we go about our daily lives.
Furthermore, it shows us that when we remain Ready to serve the Lord,
He serves us!
This text
comes in the context of Jesus telling the people not to be worried about their
lives in this world. That encouragement
is particularly relevant in this day and age where every headline screams discouragement
and disaster. If we listen to the world,
everything sounds hopeless, and you are considered a fool to believe anything
else. Yet, it is pure idolatry to
believe that our troubles go unnoticed by our Father in heaven.
You see, Jesus
assured His followers that, at all times, God knows exactly what we are going
through, and the Father cares about our needs and our fears, and He provides
exactly what is needed for our eternal good.
Likewise, the Holy Spirit promises “that all things work together for
the good of those who love God, for those who are called according to his
purpose.” (Romans 8:28) Because of
Jesus, “whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.” (Romans 14:8) Therefore, being Almighty God’s blood-bought
children means that He will take care of us and we have no reason to be afraid.
Consequently,
since Christ has brought us into the household of God who is taking care of
everything we need, Jesus told His disciples, “Be dressed, ready for service,
and keep your lamps burning.” We are
not merely pawns on a stage; we have purpose in this world. By faith and through baptism, our God has
dressed us in the righteousness of His Son so that we may glorify Him by our
works of service.
Dear
friends, the two main commands of the Law are these, “‘You shall love the
Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and
with all your strength.’ The second is
this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Mark 12:30-31) You really cannot do one without the other
because, in fact, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for
good works, which God prepared in advance so that we would walk in them.” (Ephesians
2:10) We are reminded of another time
Jesus taught His disciples, “Let your light shine in people’s presence, so
that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”
(Matthew 5:16) The works we do to serve
God and our neighbor call out to the world that our Master has done special
things for all.
Therefore,
Christians have a responsibility to their Savior to be ready to serve Him at
all times by working to advance His business which is the saving of souls. We don’t know when those opportunities will
come, but Peter later advised, “Always be prepared to give an answer to
everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that is in you.” (1
Peter 3:15) In the context of calling a
sinner to repentance and faith, Jesus promised His disciples, “Where two or
three have gathered together in my name, there I am among them.” (Matthew
18:20) Thus, it is not a stretch to
understand this text to mean that we are to be prepared to meet Jesus at any
moment and at every opportunity to share with fellow sinners the Good News of what
He has done for us. Jesus said, “Be
like people waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that
when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. Blessed are those servants, whom the master
will find watching when he comes.”
To be
watching with vigilance is to serve faithfully.
It is through Christian believers that God serves this world. That is our chief purpose in life, so
everything we do in whatever vocations we are assigned should be done with
serving Christ in mind. By devoting
ourselves to serving our Lord and Savior, we share Christ with our neighbors in
everything we do. That doesn’t make us
all preachers, but in our faithfully serving Christ in our regular vocations,
we show Jesus to the world as we serve our neighbors. God’s Son will be known by the actions of His
true servants, and on Judgement Day, Jesus will recount all those ways His
followers have served Him, and He will say, “Just as you did it for one of
the least of these brothers of mine, you did it for me.” (Matthew 25:40)
In this
text, we have a foreshadowing of the joy and glory that will be ours in
heaven. We meet Jesus where He promises
to be found, and here on earth, that is in His Word and Sacrament. Therefore, we meet Him most prominently in
the regular church services. Jesus said,
“Blessed are those servants, whom the master will find watching when he
comes. Amen I tell you: He will dress himself
and have them recline at the table, and he will come and serve them.” It is here that we are dressed for service in
the white robes of Christ’s righteousness.
Here, in church, is where He returns to be with us and where we are
renewed as His servants, where He feeds us and refreshes us with His holy Word
and with His true body and blood as nourishment and healing for our souls.
What an
amazing thing Jesus promises; that we His servants will be served by our Lord
and Savior. In the liturgical worship
service, we have exactly that invitation.
Whenever we gather around the Word in worship, God is serving us. Christ Jesus has dressed Himself in
righteousness so that He can likewise refresh us with His grace and truth. In the invocation, we meet our Savior in His
hall and welcome Him back into our presence.
With the confession and absolution, He washes us clean and restores us
in grace. With the readings and
especially with the sermon, Jesus feeds us with the richest of foods.
Through
Isaiah, our Lord pictured this feast when he said, “Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.…Listen carefully to me, and eat what is
good. Satisfy your appetite with rich
food. Turn your ear toward me, and come
to me. Listen, so that you may continue
to live.” (Isaiah 55:1-3) After the
feast of His message, Jesus gives us His real body and blood as healing
medicine for our souls, rebuilding the damaged heart so that sin no longer
condemns or controls. Finally, our Lord
opens His arms and His ears to hear our prayers, and after listening to our
needs, He gives us His blessing to send us on our way.
God
serving us through Word and Sacrament foreshadows what we will experience in heaven,
and God doesn’t want anyone to miss it.
This is why Jesus pleads with His people to remain ever vigilant in our
service and in our watching. Every
promise God ever made about the Christ has come true with one still remaining
to be fulfilled. That is Jesus’ return
to judge the world, but no one knows the day or the hour. That is as it should be for our lives are to
be lived by faith. If we knew the time
in advance what would that leave for faith?
So Ready to serve the Lord, He serves us!
Our
Savior gave us a picture to remind us of this need to be ready. It’s kind of a reverse picture: “If the
master of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would have
watched and not allowed his house to be broken into.” The homeowner in this picture didn’t expect
the burglar when he came, so he had no plan in place to defend his property
which was then ransacked. Likewise, if
we are not ready for Jesus’ return, our residence in His heavenly home is at
stake. When we see the day approaching,
Jesus wants us to look up eagerly expecting His return in glory, but He also
warns about the unbelievers that when He comes, “they will say to the mountains,
‘Fall on us!’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’” (Luke 23:30) For the unfaithful and the wicked, the end
will be a disaster of unending proportion.
Yet, for those Ready to serve the Lord, He serves us!
In the
final statement of our text, Jesus says, “You also be ready, because the Son
of Man is coming at an hour when you are not expecting him.” Jesus tells us what He can about the
end. It is all we need to know. We are not to know the hour, but we do know
His grace. For servants that have often
been found lacking, Jesus died on the cross.
For those who trust in His love, Jesus lived the perfectly holy life
that will be our fine white clothes forevermore.
Though
many have grown tired of waiting, and many have abandoned their posts, for
those who remain faithful till the end, the reward is eternal life at the
banquet feast of heaven, the marriage celebration of the Son of God and His
bride, the Church. You don’t want to
miss it, because the heavenly Bridegroom gives the greatest gifts and the
greatest love this world has ever seen.
He gave it all for you. Amen.
The peace
of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ
Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.
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