Luke 21:5-28
November 16, 2025
I enjoy going into a store like Lowes Home Improvement during the fall season, because they always have all of this stuff on display as soon as you walk in the door. The displays are large and they grab your attention as if to say, “We know you have some big things coming up and we are here to help.” In one part of the store you will find all kinds of Halloween items to put in your yard or on your home. In another section you will see large Thanksgiving baskets filled with tools. And finally, in another area you will see the display of Christmas trees, with rows of lights, decorations, and blow-up figures. Every year it seems like we are encouraged by our commercial society to begin our holiday preparations earlier and earlier. Seeing all of those holiday displays near the end of September as soon as you walk in the door of Lowes reminded me that the holiday season can really wear us out even before it has a chance to lift us up.
So what kind of encouragement can we find from the Word of God today as we prepare for the holiday season? Our Gospel reading from Luke talks about getting ready for something big that is coming, but it’s not a holiday. It’s the end of the world as we know it and the return of Jesus. For Christians this will be a joyful day, as I mentioned last week that our physical bodies will be reunited with our souls for those who had already died and they will live with Jesus forever; and those who are still living on that day, they will immediately be taken to heaven to live with Jesus forever. But when will this happen? What are the signs we should be looking for, after all, we know the dates, sights, and sounds of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas? How should we prepare? In our Old Testament lesson, the prophet Malachi thought it would happen any day and so he tried to prepare the people. Money and possessions had become all too important to the people in those days, and their worship life was falling apart. People would come to worship only when they felt like it. Others only gave their leftovers for offerings instead of their best to God. (Sounds like Malachi could be describing our world today.)
The signs of holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas are usually bright and exciting, but what about the signs of Jesus’ return? Jesus says the signs will involve distress, fear, hardships, and difficulties. Well that certainly doesn’t sound very joyful, especially at this time of the year. At the same time, I think if you look beneath the surface, behind the smiles of this approaching season, you will find a lot of people just trying to survive rather than celebrate these exciting holy days. In fact, I think each one of us can find some way to identify with our Gospel text which talks about wars, earthquakes, suffering, and confusion at the coming of our Lord.
In our second lesson from Thessalonians, many of the people in those days thought that Jesus would return at any moment to this earth. So they quit working and they started living off of others, but Jesus did not come. In the year 1202 there was an earthquake followed by a famine in Syria that supposedly claimed the lives of over 1 million people that year and many thought that the time of Christ was near. In the 1300s a black plague took the lives of some 20 million people in Europe, convincing many that the end of the world was just around the corner. In the 1500s when Martin Luther and others split from the Catholic Church, many thought that would spell doom for our world. We have experienced WWI, WWII, wars in Korea and Vietnam, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the Covid pandemic. All of those events led many to predict the end of time as we know it. But we are still here. Jesus said, “No one knows about that day or hour, only the Father in heaven.” So why won’t God tell us? Why is He keeping that day a secret? After all, we really don’t like secrets. Just look at today’s media. We want to know everything today; we want to know it fast, and we want to know it now.
Go back to the days of Adam and Eve, and we see that they did not like secrets. God had created them in His image and He gave them the world to take care of and to enjoy. And God commanded them, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good an evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” The serpent tempts Adam and Eve by saying, “You won’t die, for God knows if you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like Him.” That phrase “for God knows” suggests that God has not told Adam and Eve everything about life. He’s holding something back; He has secrets.
Why would God not tell them and all of us the whole story? Could it be that God is guiding us on a “need to know” basis, and perhaps protecting us? Or maybe it’s like a surprise birthday party. God has something amazing waiting for us, a great surprise waiting for us that is beyond our understanding. Maybe we need to believe that God’s secrets are necessary and good. But Satan makes it sound like God is keeping the full truth from us, that God doesn’t care about us. After all, we reason, if God did care, then He would tell us everything, right?
There’s a story of a young, new Indian chief meeting with his tribe of Indians in November on a remote reservation and someone from the group asks the chief if the winter is going to be cold or mild. The young chief had never been taught the old secrets of how to predict the weather, but he didn’t want to embarrass himself in front of the Indians and admit he didn’t know. So he looked up at the sky and said it was going to be a cold winter and they had better start collecting firewood in order to be prepared.
The young chief then told his tribe that he needed to go off into the forest by himself to study the weather some more to ensure he was right. He went deep into the woods and when he was convinced that no one could see him or hear him, he pulled out his cell phone and called the National Weather Service and asked, “It is going to be cold or mild this winter?” The meteorologist at the weather center said, “It looks like it is going to be cold this winter.” So the chief went back and told his tribe to collect even more wood in order to be prepared. One week later, the young chief went back into the woods, called the National Weather Service again, and asked, “Are you sure it’s going to be cold this winter?” The man at the weather center said, “Yes, it’s definitely going to be a very cold winter.” The chief again went back to his tribe and told them to collect every scrap of wood they could find.
Two weeks later the chief again went deep into the woods and called the National Weather Service one more time and asked, “Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?” “Yes, we are absolutely sure,” said the man at the National Weather Service, “in fact, it is probably going to be one of the coldest winters ever.” “How can you be so sure?” asked the chief. The weatherman replied, “Because the Indians are collecting wood like crazy.”
God knows what is going on at all times, and He doesn’t call us to do good things for nothing. But it’s hard when we don’t know or understand His ways, and I think that our sinfulness often keeps us from not knowing or trusting that God has our best interests at heart. We don’t know when the end of time will come. We don’t even know what is going to happen tomorrow, but God does and we need to trust Him with everything.
God makes it clear that life is not going to be easy. There will be joys and there will be hardships. But there is more to come as someday He will return so that we can live with Him forever and that will be a glorious day. While we would like to know when that will take place, the best way to prepare is to simply live your life for God, praying each day for the strength to face whatever challenges life may hold for you. After all, shouldn’t we trust the One who breathes life into our bodies, the One who came and lived as one of us, who died on a cross to forgive us, who gives us the promise of abundant life right now through Holy Communion, and eternal life in heaven through the waters of Baptism? Shouldn’t we trust that God always has our best interests in mind, even though we do not know everything about life and death? I pray that we will always be able to answer “Yes” to those questions and to trust God in all circumstances.
