Text: Matthew 24:36-44 Revised Standard Version (RSV)
The necessity for watchfulness
36 “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son,[a] but the Father only. 37 As were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of man. 38 For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, 39 and they did not know until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of man. 40 Then two men will be in the field; one is taken and one is left. 41 Two women will be grinding at the mill; one is taken and one is left. 42 Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. 43 But know this, that if the householder had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have watched and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 Therefore you also must be ready; for the Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen
We’re still looking for that baby!
It seems an odd thing that the Gospel lesson for the First Sunday of Advent has to do with the Second Coming of Jesus – we’re still waiting to hear about the first coming! And, looking ahead, I found that the Baby Jesus isn’t even mentioned until the Fourth – last – Sunday of Advent, on December 18th, and then only in passing! It makes you wonder what exactly the scholars charged with putting our cycle of lessons together were thinking.
The background of the passage is that it is part of a long discourse regarding what Jesus tells the disciples of “last things.” It starts back in verse 3 of this chapter when the disciples, in response to Jesus telling them that the grand and wonderful Temple will one day lay in ruins, ask in shocked disbelief “Tell us, when are these things going to happen? What will be the sign of your coming, that the time’s up?”
But Jesus doesn’t answer them directly, at least, not at first. The first thing he tells them is to be on their guard against false prophets, false teachers, and doomsday deceivers. He talks about wars and rumors of wars, a dog-eat-dog mentality, lying preachers….he talks about the day of judgment when one of two men in a field will be taken up to face judgment, or one of two women at the mill will be taken up to stand before the Throne of Grace…He doesn’t paint a very pretty picture at all.
And we’re left saying, “Wait a minute! We’re looking for that baby!”
Maybe the biggest clue is the subtitle for today’s lesson: “The necessity for watchfulness.” In other words, stay awake! Pay attention! Be ready!
Normally, when we’re told to watch out, pay attention, and be ready, it’s meant to help us avoid bad things – “keep your eye out for pickpockets when you’re in unfamiliar places,” “avoid going down that alley after dark,” “keep your doors and windows locked at night,” and so on. But none of this is particularly uplifting. It seems so very “un-Adventlike”…
But Advent is a time of preparation. For most of us, the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas is certainly a time of preparation, but it’s always the preparation for the festival of Christmas Day – shopping to do, gifts to buy, cookies and treats to bake, parties to plan for and attend. For me, ever since our kids were little, it’s been a time of watching their growing excitement and wonder, their belief that magic things can happen, that reindeer can fly, and an old fat man in a red suit can come down the chimney into your house and leave presents, even if your house doesn’t even have a chimney! It’s a time for watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” and the 1951 version of “A Christmas Carol,” with Alistair Sim as many times as possible; it’s a time for sending and receiving Christmas greetings from friends and acquaintances far and near; it’s a time for allowing warm feelings of goodwill to well up inside of us and wash over the world like sunshine on the snow…It’s a time to think about that Baby in the manger so long, long ago.
But Matthew’s lesson today gives us something different – it gives us part of the underlying reason for all of these preparations, and why that Baby is coming in the first place: To usher in God’s own Kingdom.
Just before today’s lesson, Matthew’s Jesus tells his disciples: “30 “Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth[a] will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.[b] 31 And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.
“Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. 33 Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it[c] is near, right at the door. 34 Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.”
At the time Matthew’s Gospel was written, approximately fifty years had passed since Jesus had walked the earth. The first generation of believers had died. In fact, the reason why the Gospels were written in the first place was to record the teachings of Jesus and the experiences of that first generation so that later generations could keep the flames of faith burning.
So people were understandably anxious about what was to come and how they were to live in the meantime. Our modern concept that “in waiting there is fulfillment” hadn’t been developed yet. So the question “What are we to do?” was extremely relevant to these early Christians. After all, they’d been waiting fifty years!
And we’ve been waiting two thousand years! For a culture like ours, which can’t wait a few hours for Thanksgiving Day to pass before crowding the shopping malls, a wait of two thousand years is just plain impossible.
Waiting can be hard, sometimes excruciatingly so. Yet that is exactly what we are called to do in this time of Advent. “In waiting there is fulfillment” was not a concept back then, but it is now. Jesus calls on us to be patient and have faith. David Lose reminds us that: “Sometimes you have to wait a while to see where God is at work and that can be painfully hard. Yet the promise throughout Scripture is that God reliably meets us at our point of greatest need and accompanies us even and especially in the most difficult of circumstances.”[1]
That’s the key, isn’t it? When we say we’re waiting for that Baby in the manger, what we’re really saying is that we are living in that promise that God will meet us at our sore spots, that God will meet our greatest needs, and that even our most difficult circumstances will be no match for God’s loving grace. When we sing those great old Advent hymns, like “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus,” we raise our voices in that hope that not just exists in the face of great difficulty, but in fact grows stronger because of great difficulty.
Remember that two thousand years aren’t even the blink of an eye to God. Can we keep waiting? Can we hold firm? I think so. I know so!
We’ve got to keep our eyes on the prize so that we don’t fall short. Advent reminds us that we are part of a long story. It is a story that is much, much bigger than just our own individual pieces of it. All of us go through trials and tribulations. But God’s purpose will ultimately be fulfilled; God’s Kingdom is a fact, not some pipe dream. It will become reality. Are we there yet? No. But we’ll get there someday.
Advent reminds us of one of the most fundamental – and also one of the most paradoxical – realities of our Christian experience. That is that we live in the tension between the “now” and the “not yet.” The Kingdom of God is here, yet it is also coming toward us like a freight train that will not and cannot be derailed. God has already saved us through His Son, but that salvation is not yet fulfilled. The ultimate direction and conclusion of history is already set, but it has not yet reached its end. We live in hope now, but the fulfillment of that hope is still ahead of us, out there in the future. And we live in between.
How to live in this tension is not easy. On the one hand, I don’t think we’re called upon to simply say – as many do – that, well, “Christ has died for us. He’s punched our ticket for us. We’ve got it made. All we have to do is sit back and then, one fine day, it will be ‘pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by.’” That is not a particularly healthy or helpful option. That is not the way to “get ready,” because no preparation is taking place. That’s not being particularly faithful, either.
On the other hand, it’s not helpful to get so focused on that future day that we miss the real work Christ gives us to do here, today, right now.
What we are called to do is to show God’s way in and through our lives. We can’t do that sitting on our hands, or looking at the stars for signs. God’s Kingdom breaks into our world whenever and wherever God’s Will is being done. Wherever hope is given to the hopeless, wherever love is shown to those to whom love has been a stranger, wherever forgiveness is shown to people who we think might not even deserve it, and even more so to those who believe they don’t deserve it, wherever, in short, “deeds of love and mercy” happen, that’s where the heavenly Kingdom comes.
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] http://www.davidlose.net/2016/11/advent-1-a-watching-for-god-together/