On the last day, our bodies will rise immortal from their graves: purified and purged of all sin and of all the effects of sin. We will be brought home to the Zion of God’s beauty and perfection, in the new heavens and the new earth, where righteousness dwells forever. For now we do still…
Psalm 39:4-5, 7-8 People have always been interested in knowing when the end of the world will come, and when judgment day will be upon us. During the Middle Ages, the approaching end of the first Christian millennium, around the year 1000 A.D., aroused a high level of apocalyptic expectation. In the sixteenth century, the…
Matthew 25:31-46 “And He shall come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead.” With these words, or words like them, we regularly confess in the Creed our expectation that the momentous and sobering events described in today’s Gospel from St. Matthew will indeed happen. Christ will visibly descend to the earth…
Matthew 25:1-13 The full meaning of some of the Lord’s parables is not immediately clear to us. Jesus’ parables were spoken to a first-century Jewish audience. He often told stories that drew on certain unique customs of first-century Jewish people that are not familiar to us today. Today’s parable from St. Matthew, about the ten…