The Lord sets a limit.  We’ve all had acquaintance with suffering, pain, sorrow, grief.  Some of us have been there for what felt like a long time.  Maybe a few of us are feeling as if we’re still out in that wilderness.  And there is a limit.  There was a limit.  The pain diminished.  The suffering eased.  The edges of the sorrow began to wear, blur, soften.  Light began to tint the grief.  None of this should be taken to mean the pain wasn’t real or didn’t matter.  The hurt was oh so real; we still remember it: our bodies remember, our hearts remember.  And a change, a turn, another chapter came.  We woke up one morning, or looked out over the pasture and trees at sunset, or knelt and prayed again and found, somehow, a change had come.  So there is hope, because there is God, who sets a limit.

What we hear the very human voices in Scripture wrestling with is how it is that God who sets the limit is also God who permits the trouble.  “To everything, there is a season.”  Healing comes, but also trouble, and though trouble come, there is also healing.  There’s some reason in it, some reason at work within it.  But if God loves us, why would He ever allow us to be hurt?  I’m neither excusing nor defending God—He’ll have to do that, and I trust that He can, very well.  I’m inviting all of us, like Jacob, to struggle together with God who has called us.  Jesus tells us that the days of suffering for the sake of the faith will come, and that they will be terrible, and that God has set a limit, for the sake of His Chosen Ones: “for the sake of the elect, whom he has chosen, he has shortened” those days (13:19).  Our trials and troubles, and the trials and troubles which the church must endure in this world, will last only so long as may be necessary for God’s purposes.

What is God doing?  Jesus is also reminding us of something we sometimes overlook, or to which we maybe don’t give due weight.  God has chosen some for salvation; He has elected these.  In this election season, the word elect comes with certain associations for us, but let the word elect itself tell us what it’s all about: the word means to pick out, to gather out from, to choose.  God gathers a people out from living life the world’s way for living life God’s way.  We weren’t already inclined that way; God will cause His elect to walk that way by renewing them, renewing their minds, changing their hearts.  God’s way does not look like the world’s way.  Every Christian gets this, and every Christian endures a lifelong struggle with getting the two ways all jumbled, confused, and knotted.

The world does not understand and mostly does not like God’s way.  The world will generally tolerate those believers who agree to live on the world’s terms.  Those faithful who set themselves to live God’s way no matter the personal cost in this life in this world land themselves in trouble.  The world and its institutions have all manner of mechanisms to trouble us and make life difficult, as any devout Christian has already discovered: in school, at work, in the marketplace, or in engaging with entertainment culture.  Our consolation is the same as has always been for God’s elect, His chosen: He is with us and will see us through according to His plans, His way, for His glory.  When we love His glory more than our personal comfort or temporary happiness in this world, we find power to live as faithful disciples.  Disciples know this: we are safe, no matter what, because God has set His heart upon us.

And there’s a gap between knowing and living out our knowledge.

For us tender-hearted, the hard part of what Scripture teaches about election is that not all are chosen.  God chooses whom God chooses, without respect to any supposed merit or deserving on the part of those whom He chooses.  God’s choice remains a mystery in the heart of God, may He be blessed.  Those whom God chooses, God changes: the hearts of the chosen yearn more and more for God rather than the pleasures and perks on tap here in this life.

Jesus warns his faithful ones, God’s elect, not to be too quick to scamper off after rumors.  He warns them to be dubious of people who start waving and shouting that they know the day and the hour of Christ’s return.  “At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ or, ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe it” (13:21).  This way!  That way!  Here is the Jesus way—we didn’t know it then, but we know it for sure, now!  Be wary of substitutes, even holy-looking, righteous-looking substitutes for God’s way, God’s salvation.  Be wary of ways that claim to be the way . . . with adjustments, revisions, reimaginings, and “openness to new possibilities.”  What new possibilities?  What has been or needs to be reimagined, reheard, revised?  What is in need of adjustment, and why?  Who made the adjustment, and what qualifications do they have for such a task?

“For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect” (13:22).  There is a vested interest, in the world and in the powers that motivate and move those whose hearts are set on this world—a vested interest to draw everything and everyone into the world’s orbit, including faith and the faithful: the totalitarian impulse—this isn’t confined to one end or the other of the political spectrum.  We see this gravitational pull at work every time society calls the tune and the church starts dancing to it.  You’ll hear that we need a faith for this time, for modern people.  Time to leave behind the church of the past.  And there are some things, truly, that it would be better to leave behind, but it’s what we now supposedly must add or entirely change that should concern us and cause us to think carefully and pray fervently.  The elect do not pride themselves on their election.  Rather, they glorify God for the knowledge He gives that we are safe, no matter what happens, because all kinds of things can and do happen, even to the elect, in this world, in this life.

The elect are the hardest to deceive because their hearts are most firmly fixed upon God and God’s Word, rather than the appealing words of influential people, the fashionable decencies of the present age.  And the elect must continue to be aware of the dangers as well as the opportunities of the times.  Let the elect continue vigilant because even we also can stumble, even badly.  To be among the elect does not mean we never will stumble or never will allow ourselves to be deceived; it means God will never abandon us.  O love that wilt not let us go!

The gospel accounts are to tell us the Good News, to show us the Good News: each tells of Christ’s coming, teaching, encountering resistance, being rejected, suffering, execution, burial, and rising.  The gospel writers are also reminding us of how Christ came to call and prepare disciples.  For what was he preparing these disciples?  The glory to come, amen!  And, before that, the obstacle courses that will come.  Jesus equips his faithful for perseverance: this is also the story the gospel writers share with us.  Jesus is likewise equipping us: every Sunday together here, every time we open our Bible and read with attention, read with heart as well as mind, every time we lift our hearts in prayer and our voices in song.  We are learning and growing as we do.  This is God’s way for us in this bent world.  He has made a straight path for us.

“So be on your guard [watch and pray!]; I have told you everything ahead of time” (13:23).  We can’t honestly say to Jesus that we had no idea it would be so costly to follow him.  Oh, we won’t know all that it will cost, until we do, but we already know there is a cost, and it isn’t trifling.  We can’t say we had no idea we would meet with resistance, objection, rejection, criticism, ostracism.  Jesus won’t be especially sympathetic to those who would say to him, Oh, Lord, yes, I caved: it was just too hard, and I wanted so much just to get along and be liked in the world.  It was so much easier just to believe what the powers here below told me to believe, do what they told me to do, want what they told me to want, love the way they told me to love and hate what they told me to hate.  And to call faith whatever they told me to believe.  You understand, don’t you?  You see, don’t you?

Jesus tells those listening about the end of the age, the Day of the Lord, when all this wicked and wonderful world will finally be remade, made aright, in the wrath, love, and grace of God, who has always wanted righteousness, only to find unrighteousness, who has always wanted love, only to find discord, disobedience, and violence.  “But in those days, following that distress, ‘the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken’” (13:24-25).  Darkness, terrible to us, accustomed to light as we are, but the conundrum God will be addressing is just this: He made humanity for light, and we pursued darkness.

The darkness God will then bring, restore, is the same darkness in which we began our listening for God’s Word, the darkness before He spoke the Word.  What are the first words Scripture records God speaking?  “Let there be light.”  That command continues to reverberate all through creation, all through the universe, and all through our hearts becoming attuned to hear.  God means to make all things new.  The darkness may feel terrible, yet the faithful remember that there is a glory in it, and through it.

Out of that God-darkened sky “people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory” (13:26).  It’s not only the Elect who will see, though I suppose only they will understand.  All people will see, including all who never cared enough, all whose preferences and pursuit of personal truths led them in other directions, all who didn’t know, and all who were never even curious.  All will see, then.  It’s not the case that God will say, Yes, I know that up until this moment you’ve wanted nothing to do with me and thought I was a lie and a delusion, the pinnacle of weak-minded foolishness, a prudish, Puritan obstacle to pursuing your pleasures, but I’m going overlook all that, and I just know in my heart that, now, you will, of your own free choice and all at once, fall down and worship me with true faith and deep reverence.  All forewarning will have already been given.  All urging to listen and turn will already have been made.  So, upon that return of Christ in glory in the clouds of that God-darkened sky, it will then be too late.  Maybe you’ve experienced too late in your life once, or twice.  Too late.

“And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens” (13:27).  Not one of the elect will be missing; not one will fail to be gathered: the Great Homecoming, the Thanksgiving to top all Thanksgivings.  Our celebration of the Sacrament today, our sharing in this bread and this cup today, is also a foretaste and reminder of that celebration to come.