Turn Us Again, O God: A Meditation on Psalm 80, for the First Sunday in Advent

Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel,

thou that leadest Joseph like a flock;

thou that dwellest between the cherubims, shine forth.

Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh

stir up thy strength, and come and save us.

Turn us again, O God,

and cause thy face to shine;

and we shall be saved.

 

O Lord God of hosts, how long wilt thou be angry

against the prayer of thy people?

Thou feedest them with the bread of tears;

and givest them tears to drink in great measure.

Thou makest us a strife unto our neighbours:

and our enemies laugh among themselves.

Turn us again, O God of hosts,

and cause thy face to shine;

and we shall be saved.

 

Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt:

thou hast cast out the heathen, and planted it.

Thou preparedst room before it,

and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land.

The hills were covered with the shadow of it,

and the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars.

She sent out her boughs unto the sea,

and her branches unto the river.

Why hast thou then broken down her hedges,

so that all they which pass by the way do pluck her?

The boar out of the wood doth waste it,

and the wild beast of the field doth devour it.

Return, we beseech thee, O God of hosts:

look down from heaven, and behold, and visit this vine;

And the vineyard which thy right hand hath planted,

and the branch that thou madest strong for thyself.

 It is burned with fire, it is cut down:

they perish at the rebuke of thy countenance.

 

Let thy hand be upon the man of thy right hand,

upon the son of man whom thou madest strong for thyself.

 So will not we go back from thee:

quicken us, and we will call upon thy name.

 Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts,

cause thy face to shine;

and we shall be saved.

 

Many calamities and struggles befell the people of Israel during their long history.  They began as a wondering people, called out by God through His covenant with Abraham somewhere around 2000 BC; after several generations of trial and prosperity, they were called out again from 400 years of Egyptian slavery through God’s covenant with Moses; another 400 years or so of rising and falling before their surrounding enemies during the times of Judges, culminating with the establishment of the monarchy in Saul, David, and Solomon around 1000 BC.  After the meteoric rise of Israel’s fortunes under David and Solomon, the kingdom fell into civil war, and centuries marked by attack and oppression and betrayal.  There were times of repentance, times of hard heartedness, times of enslavement, times of restoration, times of foreign occupation, times of liberating revolt, and by the time of Christ’s Advent, the nation was a vassal of Rome, with political intrigue and corruption in every corner of secular and religious affairs.  In the time of Christ, the nation was split into Sadducees and Pharisees, Zealots who sought to oust Rome from palace and temple, Essenes who camped in the desert to preserve themselves from earthly corruption, and shades of associations in between.  Within a generation after Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension, Israel was destroyed by Rome for insurrection, and scattered across the empire, surviving in small enclaves in cities everywhere, until 1948 when an act of the United Nations re-established them in their ancestral lands.  Today, the nation of Israel is a semi-religious, semi-secular nation state, surrounded by enemies who desire their total annihilation, with few allies beyond the United States.  For 4000 years, the people of Israel have watched their fortunes rise and fall, in various states of faith and repentance before the same God who inspired David to write the Psalm above.

 

I think this is worth reflecting upon, given our own nation’s peculiar founding.  Settled by the religiously and secularly oppressed of Europe, travelers arrived on these shores with an aim toward freedom, and specifically the freedom of conscience before God.  Their religious opinions varied greatly, but the vast majority were Christians, committed in greater and lesser degree to the Word of God given originally to the Jews, and carried on by the Church in their fulfillment through Jesus’ Word given to His Apostles.  To be sure, these settlers where not paragons of purity, but their hearts yearned for freedom to worship God as they understood Him, to follow His Word as they perceived it, to give space to each person to live virtuous and free, and to carve out through their labors a life of their choosing.  Our nation’s Founding Fathers set their cause before God and built our nation upon these principles, knowing that Divine Providence was predicated upon faith and virtue.  The next couple centuries would see this nation rent by foreign and civil wars, industrial revolutions, by growth in land and influence and population, and as a stalwart defense against the rising tides of tyrannical regimes in two world wars.  Today she languishes under the oppression of disease, economic calamity, and the machinations of enemies both outside and within.  Too many of her people have forgotten the Divine Providence which established and preserved her, and have turned to other gods to lead them into oblivion.  Even if we marked our beginnings with the arrival of our early settlers in the 1600’s, our nation’s length of days is less than one tenth that of the people of Israel, yet we can see in our own short history a similar rising and falling of our fortunes with the rising and falling of our faithfulness toward God and our virtue toward one another.

 

And yet today, the Word of the Lord calls to Jew and Christian alike, just as it calls to every nation, tribe, and tongue of men, saying,  Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts, cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved.  Our God knows better than we, though He has left us over 4000 years of recorded history to see His truth for ourselves, that life and prosperity and hope reside only in Him.  He knows that our generations rise and fall with their relationship to Him, because He alone is the Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer of the world.  And as the Psalmist has implored, God has set His almighty hand upon the son of man whom thou madest strong for thyself, the Lord Jesus Christ, who has fulfilled all the Law and the Prophets, and established His Everlasting Gospel for the salvation of every soul and every people who put their trust in Him.

 

If we would see days of peace and restoration, where the divine virtues of faith, hope, and love abound among us and sweeten both our national discourse and community fellowship, strengthening us to withstand the ever rising tides of tyranny and despotism across the globe and in our own land, we must be turned again to the Lord of Hosts.  Our fate as individuals and as a nation lay today, as they have for every people from the foundation of the world, in the pierced hands of our incarnate, crucified, and risen Savior.  In faith may we pray again in faith and repentance, teaching our children so to do, that we may see times of refreshing from the Lord which bless His people in every age:

 

 Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel,

thou that leadest Joseph like a flock;

thou that dwellest between the cherubims, shine forth.

Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh

stir up thy strength, and come and save us.

Turn us again, O God,

and cause thy face to shine;

and we shall be saved.

 

Judgment is Coming: A Meditation on Matthew 25 for the Last Sunday of the Church Year

When the Son of man shall come in his glory,

 and all the holy angels with him,

then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:

And before him shall be gathered all nations:

and he shall separate them one from another,

as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:

 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand,

but the goats on the left.

 

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand,

Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom

prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat:

I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink:

I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me:

I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

Then shall the righteous answer him, saying,

Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee?

or thirsty, and gave thee drink?

When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in?

or naked, and clothed thee?

Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison,

and came unto thee?

And the King shall answer and say unto them,

Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it

unto one of the least of these my brethren,

ye have done it unto me.

 

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand,

Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire,

prepared for the devil and his angels:

For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat:

I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:

 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not:

sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.

Then shall they also answer him, saying,

Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked,

or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?

Then shall he answer them, saying,

Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not

to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.

And these shall go away into everlasting punishment:

but the righteous into life eternal.

 

It is hard to imagine a more terrifying scene than the one Jesus laid out for His disciples in Matthew 25.  He had been building to this imagery by using various parables to illustrate what the Kingdom of God is like, noting the gracious generosity of the King toward those who put their trust in Him, and the fearful consequences of rejecting the King’s grace only to stand in one’s own sin before the Law of God.  Here at the end of Matthew’s 25^th chapter, Jesus helped His disciples to understand that there was no escaping the Judgment which is to come.

 

There’s a scene in one of the later Marvel movies where Dr. Banner as the Hulk is hurtled through space after a cataclysmic encounter, only to land in the middle of a house in New York guarded by the mysterious Dr. Strange.  When everyone gathered around the disheveled Dr. Banner, all he could mutter was, “Thanos is coming…”  This kicked off a long series of heroic struggles by the Avengers against the Mad Titan to prevent a universe-wide apocalypse, and of course, everyone cheered at the end of the saga when the selfless sacrifice of Iron Man defeated the “inevitability” of Thanos.  I find it interesting and illustrative of our time that people fantasize about variations on the Apocalypse, and humanity’s collective ability to stop it.  In many ways, this wouldn’t be alien to Jesus’ listeners, many of whom likely thought that either God wasn’t really going to judge the world; that if He did, it wouldn’t be during their lifetimes, or in their locales; that it wouldn’t really impact the powerful or well connected; that if all else failed, they could run away and hide somewhere; and maybe some of them even harbored our modern hubris that if the strongest of us were to lead the charge, we could even stop God’s judgement.

 

Like so many of our fantasies, Jesus’s Word of Truth dispels our ignorance and our arrogance.  In the end, when Jesus returns, it will be unavoidable and inescapable.  Every soul on the planet, from the dawn of time to the end, will be gathered before the throne of Jesus, and the great separation will be accomplished.  The good will be gathered into eternal life, and the evil will be condemned forever to hell.  Those who have lived by grace through faith in Jesus will enjoy the blessed communion of the Triune God, together with all the saints and angels of every time and place, for the sake of Jesus’ Vicarious Atonement for the sins of the world through His life, death, and resurrection.  Those who have rejected His grace shall stand before the holiness of His perfect Law and be judged accordingly for every thought, word, and deed—everything done and left undone—resulting in their just imprisonment in the fires of hell, to suffer the infernal communion of the devil and his demonic horde forever.  This Judgement is not only inescapable, it is inarguable; those saved by grace are judged righteous for Jesus’ sake, according to His infinite righteousness imputed to His people through faith alone, while those who stand outside of Jesus’ grace and righteousness must be judged alone in their own works against a standard of pure perfection.  There is no in-between, and no argument which assails such judgment.  If all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, then no one stands righteous on his own merits, no matter how other people might relatively judge him.  And if a person stands in the satisfaction of Jesus’ righteousness earned through the Cross of His Passion, there is no argument to overthrow the vindication of the saints for Jesus’ sake.

 

This Judgment is coming, and it is coming soon.  If we were to think we could avoid it by our own death, we continue to deceive ourselves—for as the Apostle teaches us, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.  And so, whether we stand before the Great Judge at the hour of our death, or at the end of time, we will all still stand before Him some day very soon.  In that day there will be no escape, no argument, no resistance—only the justice of Almighty God perfectly applied to all people on the same terms and by the same standards.  There will be no opportunity for the rich to bribe their way out, or the powerful to raise arms against the Almighty; no cleverness of academic theorizing or sophistry of depraved theologians will wipe away one jot or one tittle from the Word of the Living God.  There, in the presence of Him who sees all and knows all, who discerns the secret thoughts of the mind and the private passions of the heart, we shall stand and know as we have always been known by Him.  We shall know then what has always been true, and what the Word of God has been teaching mankind from the beginning, without the dross and deception of fallen minds and corrupted hearts.  Judgment is coming, and it hastens toward us every day, with every breath we breathe, inexorable and unwavering.

 

Yet for the Christian, this Day of Judgment is one that has already occurred.  Two millennia past there came and died upon the hill of Calvary the Only Begotten Son of the Living God, full of grace and truth.  For God so loved this fallen world, that He sent His only Son to be its Savior, taking the sins of every hand, eye, mouth, mind, and heart upon Himself, that the Judgment of God might be poured out on Him rather than us.  And after having taken that Judgment in our place, He rose again the third day and gave the gift of His salvation to all who would turn from their sins and believe in Him.  This Judgment was everything we have earned, and Jesus’ grace is everything we cannot—the forgiveness of our sins, eternal life, and salvation in His most holy name alone.  There stands the Judgment of the Christian, on a hill, long ago and far away, so that no one might fear the coming Day of the Lord.

 

And so the Law and the Gospel come to you on this last day of the Church Year, as we turn once again to prepare our hearts for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ at Christmas.  If that Day of the Lord fills you with fear and trembling, turn to Him who has taken that Judgment already upon Himself, and offers to you the peaceful riches of His unfathomable grace.  For if the Judge who is to sit upon His throne and separate the sheep from the goats is the same Savior who has given His life for the life of the world, there is nothing for the Christian left to answer, but the peaceful and thankful prayer, “Amen—even so, come Lord Jesus.”

 

Teach Us to Number our Days: A Meditation on Psalm 90

Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.

Before the mountains were brought forth,

or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world,

even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

 

Thou turnest man to destruction;

and sayest, Return, ye children of men.

For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past,

and as a watch in the night.

Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as asleep:

in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.

In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up;

 in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.

For we are consumed by thine anger,

and by thy wrath are we troubled.

Thou hast set our iniquities before thee,

our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.

For all our days are passed away in thy wrath:

we spend our years as a tale that is told.

The days of our years are threescore years and ten;

and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,

yet is their strength labour and sorrow;

for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

Who knoweth the power of thine anger?

 even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.

 

So teach us to number our days,

that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

Return, O Lord, how long?

and let it repent thee concerning thy servants.

O satisfy us early with thy mercy;

that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us,

and the years wherein we have seen evil.

Let thy work appear unto thy servants,

and thy glory unto their children.

And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us:

and establish thou the work of our hands upon us;

yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.

 

The Psalmist, after calling to remembrance the eternality of God, His presence as the everlasting home of His people, the righteous judgment of God upon a sinful humanity, and the fleeting nature of all life in this world, asks of the Lord to teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.  It is a Psalm of both Law and Gospel, which opens and closes with a faithful trust in God’s providence and grace for His people even in the light of present calamity.

 

To number our days in this Hebrew idiom, is to count them, be conscious of them, and remember that our days in this world are limited.  If a normal life span is somewhere between 70 and 80 years (oddly enough it hasn’t changed much since around 1000 BC when David was penning the Psalms for the ancient Israelites, as the last century’s slavish pursuit of science and technology still has the average American lifespan around 78 years) then there are only so many days given to us to use in this present world.  To the very young, 70 or 80 years of life seems like an eternity, but as age presses upon each of us, the awareness of the temporal nature of our present life becomes more and more clear.  A year may seem very long to a 14 year old waiting anxiously to drive at 16, to be independent at 18, or to drink in the pubs at 21, where the appeal of some future opportunity makes the time feel slow to arrive.  And then, somewhere in our 20’s or 30’s, people become aware that they are no longer children, their bodies don’t quite heal as fast as they used to, and even the most fit struggle harder to keep their athletic physique.  By our 40’s and 50’s we’re becoming even more aware of how the choices and blessings of our younger years make inescapable the consequences of years ahead, with more visits to doctors, more concerns about retirement savings, and the looming time of frailty we know will eventually part us from our more arduous labors.  We become increasingly aware, as we watch other friends, family, and associates die before us, that making it to 70 or 80 years of age is a gracious blessing not afforded to all, and the closer we get to those ages, the more we wonder when our days will be finished.  Unlike the anxiousness of youth which makes time seem to crawl through those early years, every year after seems to flow with increasing speed and urgency, no matter how we might want to delay it.

 

Yet of course, our lives are not lived in a vacuum.  We live our lives in the presence of others living theirs, all in the same world the Lord has blessed us to occupy—a world we have caused to be full of trouble and heartache.  Regardless of the plans we may think so solid in our youth, the countless variables of our times and places intersected by the times and places of everyone around us, make our future days truly known only to God.  All lives are marked by some kind of struggle in body, mind, and spirit, as the sinfulness which dwells so deep in our own persons works out in greater and lesser ways in our homes, communities, and nations.  There’s a clamorous rising and falling of people, which in our individuality, reflects forward into all our professional, political, and family associations, making the world a seemingly crazy place where both blessings and judgment surround everyone.  This cacophony stymies the philosopher and the mystic, the scientist and the researcher, the leaders of industries and the craftsmen of trades, because only God can see the threads of history woven into their ultimate tapestry, and only He can guide the loom to weave it.  He alone is the author of life, the judge of sin, and the savior of all who trust in Him.  Yet within the maelstrom which is life in this fallen world, it is easy to forget the goodness of God as our beginning our and end, to set our eyes in despair upon the tumultuous waves, rather than upon Him who has created the sea and the dry land, and every living creature upon or within them.

 

The Psalmist calls the people of God to number their days, not out of fear for the calamity of unpredictable life, but in light of the goodness and graciousness of our God and Savior who gives, restores, sustains, and preserves our life eternally with Him.  As the length of our days impress upon our fallen minds the deadly consequences of our sin, both individually and across the whole human race, the grace of God in Jesus Christ calls us to trust instead upon His goodness, mercy, and love.  We have not created ourselves, and though we can use our will to either good or evil ends through faith or unbelief, we are not the ultimate authors of our own destiny.  Into this span of years, however long they may be for each of us, the Lord of Glory speaks His Everlasting Gospel to every soul, desiring that each may come to faith and repentance, life and salvation in Jesus.  Only in Him are our sins forgiven, our lives restored, and meaning once again infused into the days of our earthly pilgrimage no matter the storms which come.

 

And with this miracle of redemption before our eyes, we learn to see the Wisdom that our lives aren’t really constrained to those 70 or 80 years, after all.  While the world’s tempests and despots rage, while forces ignorant and malignant strive in vainglorious rebellion against heaven and earth, those who know the Wisdom of Jesus’ Gospel see that their lives begin in God and are preserved in God forever.  Thus we number our days not out of fear of judgment, but in the loving knowledge that we are blessed to labor in the Lord’s world for only these brief years, before we are blessed with an eternity of fulfilment and completion in Him, gathered together in the communion of the saints in light perpetual.  It is fear that counts our days afraid to lose them, but the perfect love of God in Jesus Christ casts out such fear, because the grace of His saving Gospel won through His Cross overwhelms all righteous judgment according to the Law.  We are a people alive today, and alive every day throughout all generations, for Jesus’ sake.

 

And so, may the Lord of life teach us to number our days, to count them all joy no matter what trials and tribulations may come, because we have been taught the Wisdom of Jesus which overcomes our fear, our struggle, our sin, and our death.  Let the beauty of the Lord be upon us, that the work of His crucified hands may be established within, upon, and among us, and that with all generations of the faithful from before the foundation of the world, He may be our dwelling place forever. Amen.

 

The Cloud of Witnesses: An All Saints Day Meditation on Hebrews 11 & 12

11 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for,

the evidence of things not seen.

² For by it the elders obtained a good report.

³ Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God,

so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

⁴ By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain,

by which he obtained witness that he was righteous,

God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaketh.

⁵ By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death;

and was not found, because God had translated him:

 for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.

⁶ But without faith it is impossible to please him:

 for he that cometh to God must believe that he is,

and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him…

 

¹³ These all died in faith, not having received the promises,

but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them,

 and embraced them, and confessed that

they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

¹⁴ For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country.

¹⁵ And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out,

they might have had opportunity to have returned.

¹⁶ But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly:

wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God:

for he hath prepared for them a city…

 

³² And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon,

and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthae;

of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets:

³³ Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness,

 obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions.

³⁴ Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword,

out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight,

turned to flight the armies of the aliens.

³⁵ Women received their dead raised to life again:

and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance;

 that they might obtain a better resurrection:

³⁶ And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings,

yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment:

³⁷ They were stoned, they were sawn asunder,

were tempted, were slain with the sword:

they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins;

 being destitute, afflicted, tormented;

³⁸ (Of whom the world was not worthy:)

they wandered in deserts, and in mountains,

and in dens and caves of the earth…

 

12 Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses,

 let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us,

and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,

² Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith;

who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross,

despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.

 

It is easy, I think, to either reduce the idea of the saints to past irrelevance, or elevate them to the heights of idolatry.  Lutherans are accustomed to thinking of the saints as exemplars to lives of faith and duty according to their respective vocations, which instruct present Christians in their own vocational duties.  The inspired author of the Book of Hebrews offers an additional perspective of the saints, worthy of contemplation:  that of witnesses.  This idea of the saints as living witnesses of the present moment comports well with Jesus’ teaching about Abraham having rejoiced to see Jesus’ day, because God is a God of the living and not the dead. It also is a natural consequence of the Scripture’s repeated teaching that the just shall live by faith, not only in this world, but in the world to come.  The saints are not the saviors of the present Christian, nor are they irrelevant relics of a forgotten past; rather, they are eternally living in the fulfillment of the gracious promise of redemption in Jesus Christ by faith, both examples and witnesses to every present generation.

 

We live in a peculiar age today, where the challenges of modernity constantly batter the foundations of the societies in which we live.  Those who wish to tear down the ideas and monuments of our past to create a new future, are often devoid of the concept that history is more than what is recorded in books—it is the living witness of those who have gone on before us.  The world we live into today we have inherited, not by our own power or intelligence or sense of self-worth, but by the grace of God who breathed into us life, and ordained us for our time and place.  So it was true for thousands of generations before us, and so it will be true until the end of time.  No one decides by their own power to be born, but rather is brought into being by the will and providence of God, working through parents as the means of such creative grace.  And every person whom God creates, God desires to have in His eternal fellowship, through the Gospel of salvation He offers in Jesus Christ; a Gospel not established by the will and power of men, but by the grace and love of God, who alone can take upon Himself the sin and death of the world, and offer in their place forgiveness and eternal life.  Such a gift cannot be earned, but only received by humble faith and repentance.

 

The life which emerges from faith and repentance, a love outflowing from the love God first gave to us, is manifested according to our vocations in our time and place.  The neighbors we are given to care for become our duty, first within our families, then within our communities by virtue of our office and work.  The saints show forth their examples of how to be loving and faithful fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers; leaders and followers, managers and laborers; doctors and lawyers, craftsmen and artists; soldiers and policemen, rescue workers and caregivers; pastors and laity, missionaries and teachers; and every shade of calling in between.  Our duty is clearly shown to us by the need of the neighbors given to our care according to our callings and livelihoods, and the saints give us example of how to live faithfully and lovingly in a fallen world.

 

And yet, the saints are more than just examples—they are alive by grace through faith in Christ alone, living in the presence of the omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent God, sharing blessed communion with both God and the Church in every age.  Those who have gone before us in faith, are now as we will be, when our short time of struggle and trail is over.  And while there may be however many billions of souls upon the planet at this moment, the heavenly host of saints and martyrs, prophets and apostles, and all the orders of the holy angels, gathered in from the foundation of the world, vastly outnumber our present moment.  If time would fail the author of Hebrews to recount only the lives of heroic saints set down in the canon of holy Scripture, consider how much more daunting it would be to recount the lives of every saintly parent and child, worker and leader, pastor and parishioner, who has lived in the last several thousand years.  The heavenly banquet hall is brimming with far more saints than we have revealed to us, or that are remembered in the annals of history.  To us in our present moment, these brave souls may be forgotten, but there, no one is forgotten, as it is God Himself who writes our names in His Book of Life, and gathers His people into His eternal Kingdom where the bonds of fellowship are never forgotten, and never broken.  No matter how extended our circles of family and friends are in this present moment, those circles are exponentially and unfathomably larger in world to come.

 

These are our witnesses, who cheer us on to lives of heroic faith and love in our time and place; who testify by their very presence to the goodness and graciousness of Almighty God.  These are they who have run their race before us, and rest in the fulfilled promises in which we now hope.  These are our brothers and sisters in Christ, who encourage us to endure and persevere in this short time we are given, knowing that when we join their heavenly choir not many days hence, our voices will join with theirs in eternal songs of victory, praise, and joy, all for Jesus’ sake.  Here we see only dimly what then we shall see with perfect clarity, as the fullness of what we were created to be is brought forth in us, and joined to the infinite beauty and variety of the People of God.

 

Let not your hearts be troubled by the shadows and vanities of our age.  The saints continue their witness, as Jesus continues His presence among us, by His Word and Spirit calling us to eternal lives marked by faith, hope, and love, and ultimately into the fullness of that fellowship where joy shall know no end.  Thanks be to our eternal and saving God, now and forever!  Amen.