“Then Comes the End” (1 Corinthians 15:20-28; Matthew 25:31-46)
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Jeff Gibbs, one of my favorite teachers at the Seminary, loves to stir the pot a bit and say something like this: “Don’t get me wrong – I love heaven and I’m looking forward to it. But remember – heaven isn’t the end of the world.” Now, what does he mean by that?


Too often, we’ll hear something like this at a funeral: “Well, Grandma Schmidtke is in heaven with Jesus.” And that’s the end of the sentence. Period. Das is allis. But, while that is true of the faithful – they are asleep in Christ – there is something more to come. We are not philosophers, trying to throw off this body, thus making death the end goal of our lives. We are children of God, waiting for the fulfillment of all of His promises given us in Christ Jesus – especially our own Easter moment. It’s about more than dying and going to heaven; it’s about dying and rising with Christ when the end of the world comes.


We, at the return of Christ, will be among “the resurrection of the dead” as we say in the Creed. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15: “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.”


You see here that what happens at the Second Coming hinges on Christ’s first coming. Christ rose from the dead--that happened on Easter morning--and therefore we who belong to Christ will be raised from the dead when he returns. Christ is the firstfruits. “Firstfruits” means there’s more to come. Jesus leads the way, and we follow. He rose, conquering death for us. We too will rise, for he shares his victory with us. You and I have been joined to Jesus and his resurrection in our baptism.


Do you realize that Christ has redeemed your body? I mean this old bag of bones that is falling apart and racked with aches and pains; this mortal body that is subject to disease and death. These bodies that carry high blood pressure and thinning hair; bad eyes and worse hearing; chicken arms, flabby thighs and twelve-pack guts; kidney stones and broken bones; cancer cells and missing appendages: these bodies, your bodies…God is going to do something new with your body, long after it has been laid in the grave. At Christ’s return, the trumpet will sound and Christ will raise you up, whole and complete and better than ever. The blood pressure will be perfect and the hair line won’t be an issue; your eyes will be 20/20 or better and you can hear a pin drop from a thousand yards away into a green grassy hillside; arms, thighs, and abs will be pleasantly shaped – maybe not six pack, but they won’t look as though they slugged down a six pack, either. Cancer and all other disease will cease to exist. I don’t know exactly what that will look like in every respect. The Bible doesn’t tell us. But I do know that you will be you, and that you will have your body except in perfect holiness and whole-ness, the way Adam and Eve were created to be - a body built for eternity - and that that body will no longer be subject to all that ails you now. It will be glorious, in fact, fitted out for eternity.


The return of Christ. The resurrection of the dead. The final judgment. The reading from Matthew 25 gives us a picture of that. Christ the King on his throne. The sheep and the goats gathered before him, that is, the righteous and the cursed. There will be a division, a separation, a sorting out at that time. And the difference will be faith or unbelief. On the one hand, Christ will welcome in the sheep, that is, those who have faith in him--a genuine, living faith, which will have produced works of mercy in life as its natural fruit. On the other hand, the goats--that is, those who had rejected God’s only appointed Savior--they will be judged because they had no faith in Christ and thus had no faith-produced works. It’s not that our works save us, no. But by God’s grace you and I have been given the gift of faith in Christ, and that faith will naturally produce good works in our lives.


You have this faith, don’t you, dear Christian? You are not trusting in yourself for salvation, for that would be a dead end. You know your sins would condemn you. But rather you trust in Christ, the one God sent to save you. Kept in this faith by the Holy Spirit, growing in this faith as the Word and Sacrament sustain you, your life will produce works of love and mercy done in Christ. And this is what will be cited as you stand before the throne of judgment. Not your sins--they have been forgotten, nowhere in sight or memory. Only the good works you have done, the product and evidence of a living faith.


Dear friends, you have nothing to fear on the Day of Judgment. Christ has taken care of that. Your judge is also your Savior. For us, that day will be a blessed day of welcome, of homecoming, of entering into the eternal kingdom God has prepared for us.


And so, when the end comes, that will be only the beginning. Death is destroyed. Eternal life opens before us. Home at last, safe and secure with our Shepherd in our midst. What a day that will be! All the company of heaven, gathered together, alive and joyful, praising God and enjoying perfect peace and fellowship. The grandest worship you will have ever heard. And you and I will be singing in the choir, our voices blending in sweet harmony. I can’t imagine how good it will be--only that it will be!


“Then will come the end.” And the end, the goal, the place where all this is heading, is the glory of God. Christ will deliver the kingdom to God the Father, having accomplished everything he set out to do. Christ will have destroyed death, resulting in our glorious, bodily resurrection. Christ will declare us righteous by faith and welcome us into his eternal kingdom. What this does is give all the glory to God. God has done it all. “Then will come the end,” which is, “that God may be all in all.”

When that day comes, when Christ returns and we are raised and welcomed into eternal life, then God’s perfect plan will have reached its goal . . . the end…which is only the beginning of eternity with Jesus in the resurrection of the body.