Decor [Trinity 27; St. Matthew 25:1-13]

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On this final Sunday, we once again find ourselves faced with fear as Jesus returns and says to you today,

“But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’”

Much ink has been spilled over this passage all in order to convince us that there is some significance to the number of virgins or that they are virgins to begin with. Likewise, there have been the exhaustive attempts to determine just what these lamps are and how to keep oil in them, because they appear to be the key to salvation or condemnation.

Then, of course, there is always the evil crowd who want us to be silent so God can speak and if we don’t hear voices in our head that we are doomed to hell and miss out on the feast. None of this turns out to be central to this Gospel reading and none of the conclusions mentioned turn out to be correct.

However, all of those things do turn out to be decoration. Those details, props, and actors are all there to adorn the real occasion and fill out the momentousness of the event. That is, the arrival and true presence of the Bridegroom.

The world understands decoration. It understands the need for visual representation of an abstract celebration. What is a birthday? You can talk about it all you want, but without family, cake, presents, and the birthday boy, you don’t have very much.

Even at funerals or memorials there are decorations. Although, it is at these times which we are most confused, because we have decorations, but we do not have the person of honor. The most crucial piece of the celebration puzzle is missing, but we know we must celebrate something, somehow.

Likewise, the decorations of this Gospel reading are not just for show. The decorations are not just there as fluffy detail; just because without them the story would be too plain. They are there to point to true presence. And when I say true presence, I’m not just talking about spiritual, but real, actual, physical presence.

So why is the Church any different? Its not. Or, it shouldn’t be. We don’t hang something up because we think it looks nice. We shouldn’t even be hanging things up that are just reminders of what Jesus has done for us, as if He is only a tool to get us to a higher quality of life with full lamps, a free country, family, strength for the day or anything like that.

There is only one reason we would even think of adorning the Church: it points to our belief that Christ is present to commune with us in His Body and Blood.

Return to Isaiah, heard earlier. The first three verses show us that before the infant gets long life, before vain labor and calamitous children are no more, and before the wolf and the lamb graze together, the Lord is there. “I create”, “I create”, “I create”, He says. Three times. And in order to enact His orders, He must be present.

Seek more of your answer in Thessalonians where St. Paul is describing the Day of the Lord. You don’t have a Lord’s Day without the Lord showing up and on that day we have been destined for salvation, not wrath, through Jesus.

Our Introit seems not to help, only speaking of prayer being heard, possibly from far away. But that is only true if Truth can spring out of the earth, far away, which it can’t. Truth, Jesus Christ, springs out of the earth, out of His mother, with a reasonable body and a reasonable soul. That is, a visual decoration, easy for us to understand that He is just like us.

In this Biblical light, it is not vampiric or cannibalistic to believe that Jesus, the Crucified Savior, is present in His own Supper which He sets before us this day. The real question faced with Christians is not, “Will you hear God when He calls”, but “Where is Jesus”.

This is the main concern for the 10 virgins: Where is Jesus? They are so concerned that they dressed to the nines and bring out their lamps to light His way. This is also the main concern for the watchmen. The only reason they are on the heights watching is to wait for the morning, in this case, the arrival of Jesus in order to announce it to everyone else.

The Church is on earth in order to announce the Lord’s Coming and the way she does this is by proclaiming His death until He comes in, with, and under the Lord’s Supper. The Church’s Sacraments are not decorations for show. They are the real and true testament that the Bridegroom has come to dwell with His people on earth, as He promised.

He comes to dwell in our hearts, bodily. Not just as some fanciful Santa Clause figment of our imagination, but as true Body and Blood. He comes as a corporeal child, wrapped in swaddling clothes. He grows and matures as a natural human being, increasing in wisdom and favor. He eats, drinks, sleeps, weeps, walks, talks, dresses, thirsts, hungers, touches, and acts.

Today, this same Son of God has not changed. He may be seated at the Right hand of God in power and glory, but that Right hand uses that power and glory in order to commune with His Church on earth, even at this Altar.

The cry of the Watchman is none other than the cry of the pastor. Christ is here! Come out to meet Him! Not in your dreams or emotions, but in flesh and blood. The wise virgins look for a body and light the way for a body. A spirit does not need a lamp to light His way.

This is not a reading of dread or woe or worry about how much we have prepared or how little we have prepared. It is satanic to shift our eyes towards how little our lamps are or how poorly they are prepared or even how full or empty they are. Listen, rather, to the Words of the Bridegroom Who has come down from heaven in order to bring you with Him.

Take and eat. Take and drink. You are needed. You are a part of the celebration. This reading is about Jesus coming to get you, coming to call you, and coming to feed you. The Bridegroom is coming in order to celebrate His retrieval of you from sin, death, and the devil.

At this very moment, you are right where you need to be. The Church on earth provides the exact spot where Jesus is: handing out lamps, handing out oil, handing out His Sacraments. You hear the Word of Jesus, because it is He who is speaking to you. You receive the Supper of Jesus, because it is He who is feeding you.

The Sacraments decorate the Church in order that you know that you are already part of the wedding party, that your lamp is full to the brim, and that you are inside the feast and not outside. Not because of how you brought yourself, but because of how Jesus baptized you into that position, preached you into His Church, and fed you the invitation.

So the Doomsday Clock-ers have it all wrong. It is already midnight in this world. But that means midnight is passing. That means the night will soon be over. And even though we still stumble through the darkness, a light shines. The Gospel is still here being preached and the Sacraments administered. The clarion call of the Church still echoes loud in the dark.

The Scapegoat [Trinity 26; St. Matthew 25:31-46]

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So, Jesus speaks to us today in His Gospel and says,

“Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has blessed St. Luke in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will" (Eph. 1:3-5)

That purpose we hear of today in Jesus declaring the separation of the sheep from the goats. In our sin, we don’t really want to know who the sheep are, because we think we are they, but also because we are only truly interested in who the goats are. That way we can feel better that there are others worse off than ourselves.

Goat is usually the part of language no one wants to be a part of. When something gets your goat, it is bad. When someone is a scapegoat, same thing. It is a negative meaning. This is a fairly new phenomenon, I think, for we don’t even hear of the word “scapegoat” until a bible translator coins it in 1530.

Its important to notice that goats have gotten a bad rap. All your favorite Hollywood demons have goat features, but in the Bible it is only this one instance where goats appear to be the bad guys and the reason for our poor view of them as well.

However, for most of the Old Testament, goats are placed on the same level as sheep. They are a legal substitute for sacrifice. The Paschal lamb taken and eaten for the Passover may be from the sheep or the goats. And not just at Passover, either, but throughout the year. If a sacrifice is needed, a goat works just as well as a lamb.

It was also goat skin that covered Jacob in front of Isaac, his father, in order to trick him into giving Esau’s blessing to him. It was also the blood of a goat that covered Joseph’s coat in order to trick Jacob.

The only difference, of course, comes when Moses starts talking about a scapegoat. What that word really means is, the goat that leaves. You see, on the Day of Atonement, there were two sacrifices to be made, two goats. One was picked to offer to the Lord and the other was picked to be led into the wilderness, never to return. Both are equally doomed.

One was picked to die, that one was for the Lord, and the other for exile. At least it got to live, maybe.

The point is: the only way to tell whether the goat was for sacrifice or for sin was for someone to declare which was which, just as Jesus does today. Before Jesus speaks, there is no difference between the sheep and the goats. Before Jesus separates them, they are all growing up and working the same way, just like the wheat and the tares.

And lest you tear up the wheat or scandalize the sheep, the weeds and the goats must remain. In fact, in the Song of Solomon, one of the ways the Bride finds her Bridegroom is because she feeds her goats.

This means that you do not know who is a sheep and who is a goat until Jesus says so. And that’s ok, because what you do know is Who it is that is the sacrifice for sin, both the lamb and the scapegoat: Jesus Christ.

All sacrifices commanded by God in the Old Testament point to Jesus, no matter what they may be. Jesus is, of course, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world, but He is also the scapegoat, the goat that leaves with the sin of the world. He suffers and dies, leaving this plane of existence, descending into hell and resting in the earth for 3 days.

He is exiled, forsaken by the Father for your sake. This tale of the sheep and the goats is not about us, it is about the Christ Who is Himself the sacrifice and priest; both the blessed and the accursed; the One who leaves and the One Who stays.

Only in Jesus do we have any blessing from the Father. Only in Jesus are we chosen to be holy and blameless before the Father. Only in Jesus are we predestined to be the blessed inheritors of the eternal kingdom given by the King of kings, Himself.

Thus we seek the scapegoat covering that Jacob used. We search earnestly for the goat’s blood to cover our sinful ways, as Joseph’s brothers did. We endure both the good and the bad handed out by God, not because we are strong enough, but because Jesus endures both to the end for us. The end being His suffering and death on the cross.

So where is the distinction and what does this mean for us? There are those who say that you do not become a car just because you sit in a garage, making the negative comment that you are not a Christian just because you are in a church. What this kind of argument is called is a false dichotomy: making a comparison of two things that have nothing to do with each other, but sounds good to the ears.

The problem is that you don’t usually find people in a garage, or rather, you don’t usually store people in a garage. You store cars in a garage. You expect to find cars there, not people. You build garages for the express purpose of housing cars.

Likewise, you put sheep in a sheep-pen. If you want a place for goats, you put them in a goat-pen. What you do with Christians is you put them in a Christian-pen, otherwise known as a Church.

It is true that no matter how long a person stays in a garage, that will never make them a car, but the garage is not preaching the good news of cars or handing out the holy things of cars, either.

A person does, however, have a 100% chance of becoming a Christian in a Church. Why? Because God dwells there, He stores His holy things there, and His transformative word of the Cross is preached there. Garages don’t preach. God does.

So the sheep and the goats should go to Church, because it is only there that the goats have any chance of being made into sheep. Living as often as we can among the holy things of God, makes us holy. This is why Jesus calls them holy baptism, holy communion, and the holy Gospel.

We do not get to say who are the sheep and who are the goats. We do get to say, “I am a sheep” because of Who and what we commune with. We are covered with the blood of the Lamb and the skin of the Scapegoat in order that our sin and guilt be taken away.

Now to be sure, the goats do not get a happy ending in this parable told by Jesus, but we do not cling to the labels “sheep and goats” and we laugh at anyone who asks us whether we are one or the other, because we know, in our sin, we are the goat. In Christ we are the sheep.

The Lord reveals to us the true label where we are “blessed by the Father”, that is the cross and the title, “baptized”, and the occupation, “those who commune”.

Just one thing [Trinity 25; St. Matthew 24:15-28]

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On this 3^rd last Sunday of the Church year, we hear our Lord speak directly to us saying,

“For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.”

No man has greater faith than the congregation here at St. Luke. False christs and false prophets will not find a welcome here, because St. Luke Evangelical Lutheran Church knows that the only great sign and wonder to be worked in our time is the Word and Sacrament received by the Baptized.

The Word of God is kept here and the sacraments of God are freely given according to it. There is no holier place on earth than this spot.

Yet, there are those who believe that the Church on earth is simply a vaccination. A “get well” pavilion. Where we can come in for our once a week, mandatory appointment, shoot up, and be on our merry way for the rest of the week, month, year, lifetime…

Some would even have it be a hospital where cures are administered and the sick are cared for and nursed to better health. Thus, when we feel down or grumpy, we can come in, have our mood turned around, and skip down the road.

Rather, it is neither of those things, but it is a hospice center, plain and simple. Truly, you could say the whole world is on hospice and all headed in the same direction.

Let’s set the record straight, first. The Abomination of Desolation, in part, has already come to pass in humanity offering up God on the cross. At this horrific act of complete and utter rebellion against the Creator, the whole world shakes and fear spreads like wildfire. Truly there is nothing worse that can be done on this earth than killing God.

Thus we flee to the mountains of the Lord which are His Chancel and Pulpit. We run to the consolation of Israel in baptism and the Lord’s Supper. We flee because we know death follows all these happenings. We flee because we also know that death has already grabbed hold of us and we have nowhere else to turn.

Thus, we can put to rest any thought we may have of the Church being a booster shot center. The problem with this is that there is no vaccine against death and fear.

We may also nix the hospital idea. Not only are there no cures to be had in church, but when we join, things only seem to go downhill, instead of up. We get worse, not better. We pick up others’ diseases, we despair of treatment, and we question competence of staff and attendees.

What do we think? That we are the nurses and the attendants who are healthy and administering to the sick? There aren’t any upright people in the whole world to administer any kind of treatment, much less a correct one.

The world is very evil. So much so that no one is left to care for the wounded and dying, except for the wounded and dying. In fact, if you read the pericope from the Gospel again, you will not find the faithful standing up to any of this. If we assume these running away are faithful, then they are simply told to run, not stay and fight.

Why do you suppose that is? Was everyone on vacation that weekend or had something better to do than to watch for the Coming of Christ or this abomination? Truly we are in the midst of this great tribulation Jesus speaks of.

You do not see the faithful because they are sin-sick and dying. No one is standing up to the Abomination because they lack the strength, not to mention it is God’s doing so who could stop it? All believers are not fighting, but wrapped comfortably in their death beds and waiting.

But Hospice provides comfort, at least. So what comfort is there in Church?

Well, what if you were on hospice and the doctor came in to tell you that there was a way to get well. You just had to eat this one piece of broccoli each week and you would be out of hospice that day. Would you do it?

If you had chronic heart failure, but your cardiologist says that if you do this one pushup, just once a week in order to stave it off, would you do that?

Even simpler, does putting gas in your car once a week make the gas any less valuable or necessary?

No, it doesn’t. It does the opposite. Having gas in your car increases its value for you, for then it is able to work. Push-ups? Broccoli? Heck yes we would do those things. If something so simple could accomplish so much, why would we shun it?

Jesus says, “As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes” (1 Cor.11:26). Does that not sound like the piece of broccoli or the pushup or the gas to you? Jesus is saying that until the Son of Man returns like lightning, you will find Him doing His Will and making His Kingdom come through the sacrament.

Which, if you take it often, you will be a part of His work. The care and cure at the hospice of the Church is not administered by a man, but the God-man, Jesus Christ. Who walks among His baptized believers, washing their wounds that make them weak in battle, speaking words of encouragement as they face their own sin and death, and spoon feeding life and salvation to each and every patient.

This is the power of the Lord’s Supper. Even though the flesh is weak, the Spirit is willing and moves us towards the Body and Blood of Jesus, which is the one and only true medicine on earth.

Just one shot is not enough. It is not that the Lord’s Supper is so weak that it needs multiple installments, just one is enough for the Supper. It is you who are too weak for only one dose, for in sin you are hemorrhaging. Hemorrhaging blood, hemorrhaging life, and hemorrhaging faith.

The cure that Jesus gives is a steady IV drip of Communion. It is there that we find Jesus. It is there that we find the forgiveness of sins. It is there that we find true strength and true healing.

It is in the Lord’s Supper that the abomination of desolation will have no rebut or defense against. It is in our communion with Almighty God that all the false christs, all the false prophets, and all the false signs and wonders will give way to. No lie of the devil can stand up to the true Body and Blood given and eaten.

This is because it is a rock solid promise and sign. Jesus promises forgiveness and delivers in His Supper. Jesus promises healing and salvation and He delivers in the physical, concrete bread and wine of communion.

The Christian’s solace is only in Jesus Christ and His righteousness. But it is not ours until He gives it to us to take and eat and take and drink. You can sing about salvation and argue about theology all you want, but until you give someone physical proof of your truthfulness, they will never believe you.

The pure Gospel and the true sacraments are what make the Church a mighty fortress against the great tribulation and a comfort against our own sickness and death. Through our own might, nothing can be done, no matter how sincerely we try. Through Jesus’ promises, nothing will get through to us no matter how sincerely He tries.

But something we can lay hold of; something concrete that appeals to our sin-dulled senses does. Especially something that’s available as often and as much as we desire it to be.

Truly the table and the cup of the Lord overflows and we want to be there when it flows upon us and the Faith of Jesus makes that happen, for you. For where the body is, there we will gather.