Audio recording Sermon manuscript: We have come to the last Sundays of the Church Year. At the end of the Church Year the lectionary directs our attention to the end of the world. Our readings today are especially concerned with that line in the Creed that says, “He shall come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead. His kingdom shall have no end.” Almost 2,000 years have passed since Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead. A person might wonder: “Where is this promised coming of his?” There is plenty of material available for a person to scoff at the notion that Jesus will come again. It’s not very hard to scoff. We human beings have been prone to scoff since almost the very beginning: “You won’t surely die.” “He won’t see us in these bushes.” “Where’s the water, Noah?” “How are we going to escape, Moses?” “If you’re really the Christ, then come down from that cross? Then we’ll believe you.” With Christ’s second coming we are dealing with an article of faith. Hebrews says of faith that it is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen. There’s hardly any arguing that can be done for articles of faith. Either something happens or it doesn’t. Arguing only plays into our natural tendency to scoff. Arguing, for example, is what convinced the Jewish leaders that Jesus could not be the promised Christ. John’s Gospel tells us what the leaders were saying about Jesus. They said, “He has the audacity to heal people on the Sabbath! He’s a Sabbath breaker. He even continued to heal people on the Sabbath after we specifically told him not to. How can the Christ be a Sabbath breaker?” They said, “He is from Nazareth in Galilee. The Christ has to come from Bethlehem. Plus we’re not even very sure about who his father is.” Then there were all those people with whom Jesus associated: “A bunch of sinners—the whole lot of them. No self-respecting Christ would associate with people like that.” The ringleaders who put Jesus to death had zero doubt that he was an imposter and a blasphemer. Their arguments were ironclad. It was the stupid laymen who were being taken in by him. It was for the sake of the stupid laymen that he had to be put to death and that right soon, otherwise the whole world would go after him. But arguing, and the fear of being scoffed at, finally got the best even of almost all of the disciples. They also came to point where they denied him and disbelieved in him—especially after he died. They had thought that he was the Christ, but now he was dead. You can’t prop up a corpse on the throne and expect good government or victory over the Gentiles. So do not imagine that those who scoff at Christ’s second coming are doing anything new. Ever since the fall into sin mankind has had a devil of a time believing anything that God says or promises. The one who believes is blessed. The one who does not believe only discovers the truth after it is too late. Waiting and seeing is different from watching and praying. Waiting and seeing is what some of the people were doing at Christ’s cross: “Let’s wait and see if the does something that is worthy of us bestowing our faith upon him.” But Jesus did not reveal himself to many skeptics after he rose from the dead. The notable exception to that was the apostle Thomas. As it says in Romans: “God shows mercy to whom he desires, and he hardens whom he desires.” Regardless of what anybody thinks, the truth must win out. God will vindicate his people. This is one of the things that Jesus is teaching in our Gospel reading today. All people and every individual is either a sheep or a goat. Every individual goes either to Jesus’s right or his left. The sole criterion for whether a person is on Jesus’s right or his left is whether that individual believed in him and in the promise of his second coming. We are justified before God by faith. The value of faith is rather hidden in this life. It doesn’t appear all that useful. Money, intelligence, and a go