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
The older I get, the more I want at this time of year to feel the warmth of good cheer, enjoy the company of loved ones and friends, and hear uplifting Christmas stories of a miraculous birth, and shepherds watching their flocks by night visited by angels who say: “Fear not, for I bring you good tidings of great joy.” I really do want to sing along with Andy Williams that this is “the most wonderful time of the year.”
And that will happen. All of that joy and fulfillment of dreams will happen.
But we’re not quite there yet. This is Advent – the time when we look forward to that Birth in Bethlehem, when we yearn for God to break into our history, but we realize that we have to wait just a little longer. We realize that we have to prepare, get ready, make the paths straight.
You might be wondering, as I did when doing the research for this sermon, why the Gospel reading for this First Sunday of Advent focuses, not on the first coming of Jesus, but on the second.
Part of the answer is that this reminds us that the work of the first advent of Jesus is not complete. Our work is not yet done. The risen Jesus instructs, and – thankfully – strengthens, the church to continue its witness until the second coming (Matthew 28:16-20).
Each of the Evangelists had a particular point of view. Matthew focuses on the End Times. He believed that history is divided into two ages – a present age full of Bad Things, and a new age, which we have come to call the Kingdom or Realm of God or the Realm of heaven. The old age is marked by the presence of evil, idolatry, sin, injustice, exploitation, sickness, strife between nature and humankind, violence, and death. In other words, the stuff we see on the news every day. The new age, by contrast, will be characterized by the complete rule of God and the angels, and by authentic worship, forgiveness, mutual support, health, blessing between nature and humankind, and eternal life.
For Matthew, God is acting through Jesus Christ to make all of that happen. The birth, life, and resurrection are the first phase; the second phase is the transformation of the world at the second coming. Meanwhile, Matthew’s community – and by extension, the rest of us – live in a conflict zone between the ages. God calls us to follow the instruction and model of the Jesus Matthew describes.
Some scholars say that many in Matthew’s congregation were losing confidence in the coming of the Kingdom. The apocalypse was delayed. Horrible things were happening right and left. Their witness was fading. This kind of echoes what we talked about last week in the discussion of why bad things happen to good people. Matthew wrote his Gospel to encourage his community to continue.
This passage 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. It’s not a very pretty picture at all.
All of it is by way of saying that they – and we – just need to pay attention, to watch out.
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 that’s not exactly what’s meant here, I don’t believe. I think it really has more to do with anticipation, not paranoia. Advent is a time of preparation, but it’s one of preparing ourselves on the inside, taking stock of our souls, putting aside those things that might get in the way of truly embracing and rejoicing at what’s to come in just a few weeks.
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 delightful 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 makes us take a step back to consider the point of it all: That that Baby is coming to usher in God’s own Kingdom, and bring to pass all those things we yearn for. But we’re reminded that this will happen in God’s good time; it can’t be rushed. We need to be patient. We need to wait.
But 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 is to say that God is there at the worst of our moments, just as God was there for Matthew’s community of beleaguered Believers.
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 believe we can.
Advent reminds us that we are part of a very, very long story. It is a story that is 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. It will happen, just as surely as the sun will rise in the East tomorrow morning.
Advent reminds us 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 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!
Prepare the way, O Zion! Your Christ is coming near!
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/