Matthew 24:33-43; Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:11-14
We go through this every year. People ask, Why do we begin Advent with stories of judgment and of Jesus’ (Son of Man’s, Human One’s) return? Why can’t we just dive into the prophecy and the birth narratives? Why do we have to prepare for what we already know has happened?
Some answers might be:
- It’s been a whole year, and we need to rehearse the details.
- Advent reminds us that the old order is ending and that the new order – the reign of Christ – is beginning.
- Jesus’ birth is itself a judgment on human beings and their social order.
Let’s face it, most of us are not comfortable with all the talk about judgment. Judgment means that there is something wrong with the present order of things. And for the most part, we are generally happy with the way things are. Judgment might mean change and we don’t think that much needs to be changed. And judgment might just get personal; it might not apply to some faceless “them” somewhere else, it might be directed at us. And that makes us sweat and squirm.
David Bartlett(1) says that Advent produces two very different reactions among Christians. Some Christians think that Christ’s second coming is the heart of the gospel. They read the scriptures for signs of the end times and then read the newspaper, watch the news, follow along on Twitter to see if those signs are happening now. Other Christians react as though the emphasis on Christ’s appearing is much ado about nothing that can be believed. They endure this first Advent Sunday so they can get to next week and John the Baptist, a quirky yet historical figure.
Bartlett concludes that those Christians who are focused on last things are tempted to fall into a perpetual state of anxiety, while those who are agnostic about last things likely fall into a state of perpetual apathy. How easy it is to diverge just a little bit from Christ and wind up missing him by a significant distance. Advent is about faith, not apathy, hope and not anxiety.
The theme of the Matthew passage, indeed of all of Advent, is the necessity of watchfulness. The reason for this is that Christ’s return appearance is not scheduled. You won’t find it on a calendar. You won’t get a 15 minute alert on your smart phone. And yet there have been countless interpreters of scripture who have either somehow missed the point of the opening verse of today’s reading or who think that they are better than our Lord by being gifted with special knowledge. Jesus is very clear: “Nobody knows when that day or hour will come, not the heavenly angels and not the Son. Only the Father knows.” As Paul reminds us in his Philippian hymn of Christ, “Jesus emptied himself by taking the form of a slave and by becoming like human beings” (Phil. 2:7), that is, lacking in divine knowledge, and often unaware of human knowledge.
So while some have tried to correct the apparent shortcoming in scripture and in Jesus himself, others slough off the lack of knowledge as a good reason not to pay much attention at all. What we have to remember is, even though we don’t know the day and hour of the coming of Christ, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. It will. The fact that the coming will be is vitally important for our lives right now.
A lot of people talk about Christ’s second coming, a kind Christian version of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Terminator” promise, “I’ll be back.” Like many other things that we take as scriptural, the Bible never makes reference to a “second” coming. The “Coming One” is one who has come and who continues to come to us in our gatherings around Word and Sacrament. For those whom Jesus is a part of their lives now, the “coming” will not be a surprise. He already comes into their lives now. That’s one way of thinking about the seam between church years that goes from the reign of Christ to his coming – in humanity as well as divinity.
The reference to Noah is all about Christ’s coming unexpectedly. Even though the people in Noah’s day didn’t know about the coming of the judgment, it still came. Even though people don’t know about Christ’s coming, he still comes. He comes as child to an unwed mother in a patriarchal society in a country occupied and oppressed by the until then most powerful human government. He comes as the co-equal with the Father and the Spirit to judge the world and redeem those whom God calls out from among the people, be they direct descendants of Abraham and Sarah or not.
The reference to Noah takes us beyond a boatload of eight human beings, and pairs of animals, reptiles, amphibians, and avians, not to mention seeds and plants (as the Jewish midrash tradition takes pains to point out). To focus only on them is to miss the point that the story is really about those who failed to prepare themselves, who failed to follow God at all. The point is that they took no notice of what God required or of what God warned. They were doing business as usual oblivious to the specter of judgment which hung over their heads. “In those days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark.” We aren’t talking drunkenness and gluttony, just everyday meals. And the marriage image has to do with their unawareness of their mortality. They assumed that the future would happen, generation after generation. But as the Genesis saga recounts, judgment came flooding into their lives and they were all swept away.
That is the same point that Jesus’ next images reinforce: two men are in a field; one is taken and one is not. Two women are in the shared courtyard grinding grain on the communal wheel; one is taken, one is not. These are readily recognized images from Jesus’ day. They represent ordinary activity, the stuff that people do and did day in and day out. The coming judgment is no respecter of gender or occupation. Ordinary daily activities will not insulate anyone from the coming judgment.
The language sets up an interesting question. Which is better? To be taken or to remain? How the kids in the AT&T cellular phone commercial would respond to that choice? For Matthew, given his overall use of the words “taken” and “left” in his gospel, being taken is better, although we more often than not may think just the opposite. In Matthew’s vocabulary, “taken” seems to refer to being redeemed from danger, while being left behind carries the sense of being forsaken or abandoned. Who of us doesn’t remember the ignominy of being the last one chosen for team play on the playground.
Life goes on. It must. Whether we grow and grind our own grain, or merely pull the ready-sliced bread out of the wrapper, doing it is necessary to our earthy well-being. Yet in the midst of the ordinary we must cultivate the capacity to perceive the coming of the extraordinary. And we are to do it without idle speculation.
If the images of Noah and of the farmers and farmer wives being taken or left behind weren’t difficult enough, then there is the image of the thief in the night. It always grates to apply an apparently negative image to the Son of Man, the Human One. But the image raises a troubling question. To whom might the reign of heaven and the coming of the Son of Man be seen as a threat? And what is the thief in the night coming to steal? Is it our human aloofness from and arrogance about our need for God, for salvation? Or will the coming one steal our guilt, our regret, our self-built defenses of ego and pride, and leave us with nothing to separate us from God, a return to the innocence humanity violated in the Garden following creation? That would indeed be a new advent, a starting over, a saving taking away.
Advent is a time to choose between cosmic alertness and perpetual apathy. And if we don’t choose, the One who is coming will choose for us.
O come, O come, Emmanuel.
(1) David L. Bartlett, “Matthew 24:36-44: Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), Year A, vol. 1, p. 20.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com
Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
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