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Therefore, you also get ready, because the Son of Man is coming at the hour you don’t expect.

᛭ INI ᛭

We’ve got to be ready, we need to get ready. On this New Year’s Eve, as it is every New Year’s Eve, faithful Christians look for the time when years will cease. It’s good to do because we believe that Christ will come again, that He will return with power and great glory, to judge both the living and the dead. His Kingdom will have no end.

Christ’s given us a solemn warning: You don’t know when He’s coming back. He doesn’t share His ETA. There’s no way for us to calculate how long it will take. You can’t call Him up and ask Him. No, He’ll return exactly when His Father means Him to. No sleeping on the job!—our Lord and Savior IHS Christ is quite clear about it “the Son of Man is coming at the hour you don’t expect.” But what can you expect at His coming?

This time of year is full of hopes and expectations. We have hopes and expectations before Christmas. There’s hopes for what we were going to get for Christmas. There’s expectations and plans for what we were going to do for Christmas. We’ve got hopes and expectations for what’s going to happen in 2025. We’ve set expectations for ourselves, we call them resolutions. We lived last year, we’ll live this next year, we live every year, month, and day with a whole laundry list of expectations for the people in our life.

Sometimes people measure up to your expectation, they meet or maybe sometimes exceed them. Maybe you’ve got unreasonable expectations for others. You set the bar, and they don’t even get close. When the expectations we set up for ourselves and others are just our own personal demands, they don’t measure up, but so often we do. Since we’re the one setting the bar, we always match up, or we’re at least better than the people in our lives. Magically, we, at least, put up. good front about why we do measure up. Sure, we might say, “Well, I’m not perfect,” but the truth is we always come out smelling like roses no matter the situation. Always right. Always correct. Always meeting expectations.

Except that’s false, and we all know it. It’s part of the reason we play the expectation game with others. One of the darker reasons for why we tolerate people in our lives who often don’t measure up. We keep them around so we are better by comparison. The real issue comes not with your expectations, but God’s what does God expect from you? Well, He doesn’t want you playing that expectation game with others at all, and this is especially true with your fellow believers: “For if anyone thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one examine his own work, and then he will have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another. For each one shall bear his own load.” (Gal 6)

And if you think you’ll come out okay playing the expectation game, as if somehow by your own grit and determination and well, just because you’re you, the Lord’ll pass you by because you haven’t met His expectations. There’s a hopeless expectation for your continued grudges, putting yourself first, putting others down, whether secretly in your heart or privily behind their backs when they’re not around. “Each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it,” (1Cor 3) for “the Lord will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart.” (1Cor 4) That is what to expect at Christ’s coming!

So, is there hope for that great and awesome day? Well, the hope you have is what Christ gives you today, the warning He gives for those entering a New Year with an eye towards when years will cease. Therefore, you also get ready, because the Son of Man is coming at the hour you don’t expect.

The hope is that the LORD Himself gets hearts and minds, and lives and actions ready for His Second Coming. He enlivens preparation within your heart. He works out in your life to live according to His expectations and commandments—the fruit of faith. The LORD Himself creates clean hearts, “purifying hearts by faith.” (Acts 15) His blood sets us free to be people of God, not only to give us clean hearts, but “clean hands and a pure heart,” (Ps 24) that your hands would produce the fruits of faith.

The LORD is clear, “be ready,” to welcome Christ at His return rather than to run away in fear. Again, He prepares you for His Coming. His Word and Preachers do this. It was one reason He sent John the Baptist, the same reason He sends preachers today: “to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children,’ and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” (Lk 1) And faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ. (Rom 10) Faith doesn’t come, faith isn’t sustained apart from the Word. No Word means no faith. No faith means not ready. Not ready means and expectation of an unwelcome Second Coming of Christ.

But with the Word there is an abundance of preparation. With the Word there is hope. With the Word, and the LORD working through His Word, there is the expectation and hope of not fear but joy, not wrath but peace, not eternal punishment but eternal bliss. He would move our hearts toward others by His forgiveness, He would set our minds and hands toward His Commandments, even to do them! He would use us as His instruments in the lives of others. He would make us living stones, stones marked and engraved not only with His Commandments but with His Name and Cross, His calvary won redemption and forgiveness for all your sins.

“Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Heb 4) He has already done so. We can indeed “draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” (Heb 10) Let us resolve to rejoice in our Baptism, that we live the life of the Baptized, in faith toward God and in fervent love toward one another. Our flesh gets in the way of Baptism’s daily work. Let us resolved to take up the Supper of Christ’s body and blood, by which we remain in Him and Christ remains in us (Jn 6), and whoever thus remains in Him, he it is who bears much fruit. (Jn 15) Let us take up the Word of God! Start with the narratives of the Gospels—Acts and Genesis–Esther. (Maybe leap-frogging Leviticus and Deuteronomy your first time through.)“The Word of God is living and active,” (Heb 12) “it makes you wise unto salvation…and thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2Tim 3) Indeed, “whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.” (Rom 15)

To have the expectation that you actually have true faith and will actually believe and behave like a Christian apart from the Word and Sacraments is an unrealistic and false expectation. The Word of God is clear on that. But thus enlivened by reading your Bible, listening to and digesting the preaching, taking Communion, receiving Absolution, what hope and expectation can you have for Christ’s return? “He will gird himself and have [you] sit down to eat, and will come and serve [you.]” That’s hope and expectation that you can have going into 2025, that you can have each and every day, that you can have “now [as] our salvation is nearer than when we first believed,” (Rom 13) “For He who began a good work within you, will bring it to completion at the coming of our Lord IHS Christ. (Phil 2)

᛭ INI ᛭