November 24th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
Updated: November 25, 2:15pm.
The last Sunday of the Church Year is one of my favorites. It is the last time the word “Alleluia” is sung in worship until Christmas, because the penitential Advent season starts next week in the Western churches. It is also the Sunday we really focus on the end times.
The suggested Hymn of the Day, LSB 534, “Lord, Enthroned in Heavenly Splendor,” drives this home with its four Alleluias in the middle of each verse. Following the Alleluias is a repeated phrase to end the verse, so my kids may really get into this one. They love Alleluias and refrains. The tune (adjust volume down before going here) is tricky but fun.
The suggested Gospel reading from the 3-year Lectionary, Series C, is Luke 23:27-43. It is mostly about the Crucifixion and the “thief on the cross” story, but check out vv. 28-31:
But turning to them Jesus said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us,’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?”
Check that emphasis out. That is an interesting piece of social commentary for our times, when there are today medications that stop menstruation altogether, in effect causing barrenness. There are still businesses where occupations cannot slow down or choose not to slow down for child birth, so those usually go to men or to women who deliberately do not have families. Blessed are the barren, indeed, in the end times.
Heaven and earth will pass away, three Gospels and 2 Peter tell us. I’ve been hesitant to tell my children that “Grammy” or my grandparents were in Heaven, because Heaven doesn’t seem to be all that safe a place either. 
Are they with Jesus? Perhaps that is a little more accurate, since Christ is God and God is omnipresent. The dead rest until the last trumpet, cue Handel echoing St. Paul, when we shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. The dwelling place of God is with man. Death, crying, pain, and mourning, gone. The marriage feast of Christ and his people will be infinitely glorious.
Update: We didn’t sing 534, but 516, “Wake, Awake, for Night is Flying.” It is among my favorite hymns, because I sang this song in a men’s trio back in seventh grade. Pastor Gau preached on Malachi 3:13-18, tastefully using a photo album as an example of the memory book God has for us, where we may imagine pictures of our baptism, our participation in the Lord’s Supper, and the good deeds God has given us to do.
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November 26th, 2007 at 9:22 am
I always took “Heaven and Earth will pass away” to mean the elements will be consumed, that heaven there meant the sky. I may be mistaken, but I don’t think you need to worry about telling your kids that christians who have gone before are in Heaven. Jesus speaks in that way when He spoke of the rich man and Lazarus. The LCMS has a decent paper on it. https://www.lcms.org/graphics/assets/media/CTCR/resurrec1.pdf
They used to have a shorter answer in a FAQ somewhere, but I can’t find it.
November 27th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
I do have a little gripe, though, that during advent my pastors often read passages that “obviously” seem to me to apply to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. as though they applied to Jesus’ final appearance.
Along those lines, I’d suggest that Lk 23.28 isn’t a general prediction of what women will say on the last day, but is specific to that generation — “Daughters of Jerusalem,” weep for yourselves, because in a short time your city will be destroyed because she rejected her king and messiah.
Sort of funny, the guest preacher we had last Sunday started the reading at verse 32, omitting vv. 27-31. I suspect it was on purpose — vv. 27-31 does sound much like the “gospel” — but he’s also a retired pastor, so maybe he just got a little mixed up.