Populus Zion – The Second Sunday of Advent

St. Luke 21:25-36

December 4, 2022

“Daily the world is oppressed by new and growing evils.” Thus spake Gregory the Great, in the 6th century. “Daily the world is oppressed by new and growing evils.” A thousand years later, in the 16th c., Luther said, “There has never been greater error, sin, and falsehood on earth from the beginning as there has been in the last century.”

It feels like our day is different. The transgender craze seems a unique rebellion against nature itself. But each age has its madness, as we spin closer to the day of judgment. Luther saw the immorality of the clergy as a harbinger of the end: “Unchastity has taken forms against nature and has drowned no estate as much as the spiritual estate” - the spiritual estate meaning the clergy and monastics. The depravity of our day may be uniquely celebrated by government and corporations, but the rebellion against the Creator is not new. The historic Lutheran complaints about abuses testify that the deep perversions inside the Roman Catholic monasteries and seminaries were already scandalous five hundred years ago.

Every generation believes the world has gone mad. It seems that Truth itself is losing. But it cannot. We heard the Lord Jesus say today, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”

We live in an age of lies. But the lie will not prevail. Only the Word of God prevails. So as we see God’s Word disrespected, natural marriage disrespected, and lawmakers calling good evil and evil good, we are called to steadfastness, and optimism. Not optimism in any worldly solution, but optimism in the one and only source of genuine hope. As the world goes mad, and it seems certain destruction is upon us, Jesus says, “Look up and lift up your heads.” Gregory the Great explained it to his congregation this way: “Those who love God are ordered to rejoice and be merry at the world’s end. They will soon find him whom they love, while what they have not loved is passing away.”

“Him whom they love” is Christ, who is coming to set all things right. “What they have not loved” are the lusts and idols of the world. “What they have not loved is passing away.” Gregory is alluding to these words of St. John:

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. 17 And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever. [1 Jn 2:15–17]

“The world is passing away.” Why then do you put so much energy into building a career, building a name, accumulating wealth, and fretting over the things outside your control? You live—and I indict myself in this—we live as though what Jesus says is for a different time and different people. Today Jesus calls us—us—to ready ourselves for the judgment.

Give hard thought to that day. Amend your life. Change your habits. Resist and overcome the passions that have dominated you. Lament your sins. Meditate on how severely God judges sin. Then you will be rightly glad when He comes to heal you. [Adapted from Gregory]

“Take heed to yourselves,” Jesus says. He echoes the Law of Moses, which tells us, “Be attentive to yourself, lest an unlawful word come to be hidden in your heart” [Deut. 15.9 LXX]. What word, what thought, what desire have you hidden in your heart? “We human beings are easily led toward sins of the mind” [Basil of Caesarea]. So Jesus teaches us to be attentive to ourselves, to be aware, then beware, what is going on in our minds and hearts. Beware what words you are forming, beware what lies you are believing. “No one will know.” “This cannot hurt me.” “I deserve it.”

Take heed to yourselves! If you say of your neighbor, “What a fool!” you are guilty of murder. If you look with lust, you are guilty of adultery. Take heed to yourself, and reject the words as they form in your mind. Denounce them. “Be attentive to yourself, lest an unlawful word come to be hidden in your heart.” The Wisdom of Sirach gives us this advice: “Know that you are walking in the midst of snares and that you are going about on the city battlements” [9:13]. The world contains traps set for you, and the enemy is targeting you.

Be attentive to these things. The cultural expectation is that you will be attentive to the news, to politics, to sports, to the popular culture. Do what is necessary, but these are the things passing away. Be attentive to yourself, and the danger of sin, and be attentive to God’s Word, that you might be saved from this passing-away-world.

The sinful nature (or concupiscence) is always tugging us toward licentiousness, to license, to breaking the law. Concupiscence says, “Enjoy the pleasure now, repent later.” But this is an abuse of God’s grace. Pursuing pleasure this way will result in pain. Pursuing a self-made heaven will result in hell. It’s profoundly unpopular, but God’s Word warns us hell is a reality, judgment is coming, and we must repent.

So “take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly. 35 For it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth. 36 Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.”

How do we stand before the Son of Man on the Day of Judgment? Only by repentance.

And the repentant He absolves. +INJ+