Texts:  Ezekiel 7:1-9, Romans 10:1-9, Matthew 28:20                                                           New Years Eve

The End

            In the name of him who is the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, dear friends in Christ: at the Christmas Day service, as we pondered the mysteries of the Lord’s birth among us, I spoke about Christ our Beginning.  And so it seemed only fitting that this evening, as the last few seconds of the Year of our Lord 2002 slip away forever into history, that we turn our attention to Christ our End.

            It’s often asserted that all good things must come to an end.  And I don’t know for sure, if whether from your perspective, 2002 will be listed among those good things that are fated to finish – maybe for you it was a bad year and you’re looking forward to its coming to a close – but in general, the statement holds true:  the good things in life never last.  They always come to an end; and when they do, there’s disappointment, pain, sorrow, and loss. That isn’t to say that all ends are bad – some are very good.  For example: people usually look forward to the end of schooling so they can start new lives built on what they’ve learned; we always hope for the end of recovery from illness or injury; and from what I’ve gathered, the end is just about everybody’s favorite part of the sermons I preach.

            So, sure, some ends are good; but probably most of the ends we face are not so good – and some are truly devastating.  There’s the end of innocence, the end of youth, the end of negotiations, the end of peace, the end of benefits, the end of friendships, the end of a marriage, the end of health, and of course, we all face the end of life; and you’d have to agree that all those ends are the pits.

But as bad as they are, they don’t hold a candle to the end that we heard about in this evening’s reading from Ezekiel where the Old Testament prophet proclaims the end of the day of God’s grace.  We know that the Lord abounds in patience, forbearance, and mercy.  He overlooks peoples’ sin and rebellion against him – not because he approves of their behavior, but because he earnestly desires that they recognize the awful consequences of following the path they’re on. He wants them to turn back to him – so he needs to give them time in which to do it.  We call this time the day of grace.  And during this time, the Lord doesn’t just sit there waiting passively for people to come to their senses:  he puts up clear signs and bumps in their way so that they’ll be warned of their peril.  But mostly he reaches out by actively calling to them through his powerful Word.  He wants them to come to repentance because he is not willing that anyone perish.

But the Lord is also a God of justice.  He cannot allow rebellion and sin to go on forever unrestrained and unpunished.  That would not be a loving thing to do.  And so his patience and forbearance have limits.  For those who persist in their rebellion, hardening their hearts, stubbornly refusing to listen to him and so despise his grace, there comes a point when the window of opportunity for repentance closes. That’s the end for them. On that day he unleashes his justice and closes his ears forever to their cries for mercy.  He says, “That’s it, it’s over; you had your chance.  From this point on, “I will not look with pity or spare you; I will surely repay you for your conduct … I will pour out my wrath on you and spend my anger against you.”  I cannot think of a worse place to be than on the receiving end of that terrible, final judgment.  It’s the end of all hope.

            And we may be tempted to think that it applies only to those who are outside the church.  That’s not true.  Through the prophet Ezekiel, the Lord is here addressing people who would have considered themselves faithful people of God.  But they had divided loyalties.  They had other gods in their lives; other things they looked to for fulfillment and happiness.  And they despised God’s grace.  Sure, they brought the required sacrifices for their sins – but there was no sense of repentance in their hearts.  They thought of the sacrifices as a way to appease the Lord – almost as a way of buying permission to keep on sinning.  “Oh, I had another affair … I guess I’ll take God his goat and make everything better.”

And so I hope you see that the prophet’s warning of the coming end applies also to us.  We too have other gods in our lives.  We worship regularly at the altar of the almighty dollar, and in the temples of personal happiness and pleasure.  We seek to find fulfillment in people and things rather than in the Lord.  And we despise God’s grace; using the Gospel of Jesus Christ and his forgiveness as a license to keep on sinning.  “I know this is wrong; but I’m going to do it anyway and then go back and ask for forgiveness – and God will, because he loves me.”  That’s a dangerous game of spiritual Russian roulette.  Keep on playing that game, the Lord says, and one day you’ll find a round in the chamber.  The Day of Grace will come to an end.  Your opportunity to repent will be over.

            And so this evening, while the window is still open, the Lord calls us to come to a different end.  He calls us to turn from our idols and our steady despising and abuse of his grace, and to come with broken hearts to the foot of the cross where Christ our Lord faced the end of the Day of God’s Grace for us.  There, during the hours of his agony, he absorbed the full force of God’s wrath against sin.  There he knew the end of pity, the end of God’s mercy, and the end of life with his Father.  There he experienced the totality of the justice of God’s law against us:  the “unheard of disaster” and the “doom” the prophet spoke of.  He took it all on himself until the wrath of God was completely spent, and when it was he cried out, “It’s finished” – it’s over – it’s ended.

  And in this way he has become our end.  By taking our justly deserved end on himself, St. Paul tells us, “Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.”  When we turn to him with contrite hearts, when we kneel here to receive the end of his life given for us, he assures us with his own sacrificed body and blood that the end we most fear won’t befall us.  Jesus is for us the end of God’s wrath and judgment, and the end of our sin and disgrace.

            And there is another sense in which Christ is our end. In the language of the New Testament, the word translated “end” has another meaning.  It can also mean “completion” or “perfection” – like when a project is finished, and everything is right and proper, it’s ended in the sense that there’s nothing left to do; it’s the way it’s supposed to be. Through the process of bringing us to sorrow over sin and assuring us of his forgiveness, God is working to change us. We are works in progress.  Through his Word and Spirit he is conforming us to be like Christ Jesus his Son.  And when we are complete, when the process is ended, we will be as he is:  perfect, holy, righteous, loving.  Even our bodies will be transformed to be like his glorious body.  So for we who trust in him, Christ is our end in that when it’s all over – when the end comes – we will be made completely Christ-like.  That’s the end we look forward to.

            In the meantime, while the day of grace goes on, we are his disciples – a word that means “students”, or “learners”.  We are such until school is over and we graduate to begin our new lives.  So, as his disciples, we do what he commanded:  baptizing, repenting, receiving his supper, and learning everything he taught.  And as we do, he who is our End has promised to be with us through every trial and hardship until we reach the end.  And then, if you’ll allow me to end this sermon with a line from Shakespeare, we will all see that, ”All’s well that ends well.”  May God grant it to us for Jesus’ sake.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!