[Sermon preached at Faith Lutheran Church, Bloomington, IN on 12/31/25]

Audio of the sermon is here:

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Lord says, get ready to go. At the close of the day, at the close of the year, at the close of your life. Watch, and wait tonight, on the verge of the Year of Our Lord 2026, as on the verge of this creation’s end. He has prepared the eternal wedding Feast by His death and resurrection, and He will not fail to gather you for that Feast. Get ready to go, He says. That is, don’t just hang around the house in your bathrobe and slippers. You can’t go out like that. Get dressed, light the lamp, put your walking stick next to the door. Tie your robe around your waist, so you don’t trip over it. You may be leaving tonight. How blessed is the one who is ready when the Lord returns to bring His own into the Feast!

Tonight we eat the Passover of our Lord, in this season of celebration because of His birth. Tonight as we look forward to the new year, as we look forward to our Lord’s return, we also look back to the marking of the covenantal sacrifice. Tomorrow—which, for an Israelite or an ancient Christian, began the previous day when the sun went down—so tonight and tomorrow, we celebrate our Lord’s naming and circumcision, the mark of the old covenant. In Israel, if you were an uncircumcised male, you were cut off from the Lord’s salvation. You were not part of Yahweh’s people; you might as well have been an unbeliever.

And so on the eighth day after His birth, our Lord was Himself circumcised. He marked the end and fulfillment of the old covenant with the shedding of His blood, just as He would mark and bring the fullness of the new covenant with the shedding of His blood. His blood marks you, and you remember it every time you enter this House in the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. “In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead” (Colossians 2:11-12). You have entered the new covenant in Christ by baptism, and now you eat the new covenant Meal. Our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed, so let us keep the festival! And you eat that festive Lamb “dressed for action.”

What does it mean to “stay dressed for action”? In the old translations, they would have said, “with loins girded,” but it is literally to have your belt wrapped around your waist, so you don’t trip over your robe in travel or in battle. Jesus is quoting Exodus 12: “In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand” (Exodus 12:11). That is, when you eat the Passover meal, be ready to go.

Be ready to go, like the people of Israel being hastened to their salvation from slavery in the land of Egypt. The Lord was coming, and this quickly eaten feast would become the sign of the coming feast in the Land of Promise. So Jesus says to His own, Be ready to go at all times, because you are on your way out of slavery to sin and death, through the wilderness of this world, and into the eternal land of promised perfect peace. Our Lord has prepared a feast of His Body and Blood. It is a sign for us of the coming feast in our Land of Promise, the new creation. And He has kept His word: “Truly, I say to you, [the Lord for whom you wait] will dress himself for service and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve them” (Luke 12:37). He has dressed Himself for service in skin and bone and muscle and blood, body and soul. He has wrapped Himself in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin; He condemned your sin in His flesh, the Lamb sacrificed for the sins of the world, whose blood marks our doors. Faith points to Him, and death passes over us. He has risen from the dead in that same flesh, now glorified with the eternal glory of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

This Lord, whom we should rightly serve as unworthy beggars, comes to serve us! He knocks at the door of this altar, and we are ready, sinners though we are. We are ready because He has called us according to His own holy purpose in His Son. He knew you before you were formed in your mother’s womb, even before the foundation of this world, and He predestined you to be shaped and formed into the image of His Son. God is for you, not against you! He did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all! Who are we, but slaves in a great house? But He says to His slaves: here, take your place at My table! Take My place, the Son’s place, at the table. Here, eat and drink! Would you like some more of My mercy? Would you like another cup of My life? Would you like another plate of peace? Here! Eat and drink tonight!

But do not mistake this meal-on-the-way for the Feast that is coming! This is but the first course, the hors d’oeuvres of the wedding feast that never ends. We are ready, but we still wait eagerly for our sonship, the redemption of our bodies. We are still foreigners and strangers, even in this land, but no one can bring any charge against us; God has justified us in His Son. No one can condemn us. And nothing—nothing that you did or that happened to you last year; nothing that you might do, or that might happen to you—nothing can separate you or me from God’s love in Christ. Even if we die, we live. So we keep waiting and watching for the day when our table prayer will be answered in all its fullness: Come, Lord Jesus. But here, our divine Guest serves us and reminds us once more that He will not fail to do what He said; that He is not slow in keeping His promises, as some understand slowness. He always appears at just the right time; in the fullness of time He entered the womb of the Blessed Virgin, and in the fullness of time, He will come to the rest of His blessed ones and lead us in the joyful procession into the wedding hall, bought and paid for by His own blood and death.

Watch and wait, beloved, ready to go. You do not know when the Son of Man will come, but you do know that regardless of whether this new year will mean for you life or death, mourning or rejoicing, sickness or health, plenty or want, nothing in all this whole creation can separate you from Him who is the firstborn from the dead. The firstborn, that is, who has opened the womb of death to bring all His brothers and sisters into the light of life eternal. You have been joined to the Lord whom the angel named as God’s salvation, who has fulfilled the covenant of God with His people. Here we are, dressed as those who are ready to go, with lamps of faith continually filled by the Word of our Lord. Here, tonight, He knocks, and faith opens the door to His life-giving words and promises.

As you watch and wait for the beginning of 2026, and as you watch and wait for the beginning of the new and eternal year of the Lord’s resurrection favor, come and eat. Come and eat, as always, ready to go.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7, ESV). Amen.

– Pr. Timothy Winterstein, 12/31/25