Advent 1A
December 1, 2019
Matthew 24:36-44
INTRODUCTION
Happy New Year! Each Advent we begin a
new lectionary cycle and a new liturgical year, as we turn our focus to
preparing ourselves for Jesus’ coming. With the new lectionary cycle, that
means we also start hearing from a new Gospel – where we’ve been hearing mostly
from Luke the past year, now we will start hearing from Matthew.
I’ll tell you more about Matthew’s
Gospel on some future week, but this week, I’d like to focus on the themes of
this first Sunday in Advent. Always on this first Sunday of the new church
year, we get a lot of, “Pay attention, and look at this new thing that God is
doing! Don’t miss it!” We’ll see that theme very strongly in both Paul’s letter
to the Romans and in the Gospel reading. In Isaiah, we get a glimpse of what
that new thing might mean for our broken world – it could be a world in which
all people will gather on God’s holy mountain, and there will be no more
weapons or war. The Psalm also reflects on this world of peace. And in all four
readings, we’ll see bits of the persistent Advent themes we think about every
year: we wait, we watch, we hope, even as we anticipate the light of God
breaking into the darkness of our lives.
This time of year is, for many, replete
with warm fuzzies, and nice feelings. But this first Sunday in Advent is really
more challenging than nice. So as you listen to these texts, here’s what I want
you to do: just notice how they make you feel. Especially the Gospel – what
feelings does it bring upon your heart? How do you think the original audience
felt when they heard it? And be forewarned – I am going to follow up on this
question in the sermon, so, in the words of Jesus, “Keep awake!” Let’s listen.
[READ]
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus
Christ. Amen.
So?
Tell me about your emotional response to these texts? …
For
me, this Gospel text makes me feel anxious and uncomfortable. I think part of
this is cultural: this is one of the texts used to support the theory of the
Rapture, the belief that when Jesus comes back, those who are the “real”
Christians will be taken up to heaven, sort of in the way this text describes,
and those who fell short of a Christian life will be left. The theory has been
around for a couple hundred years or so, and the concept was made popular to
the general public by the Left Behind book series. But the
theory is, frankly, made up: a scare tactic used by fundamentalist Christian groups
that lacks biblical support and has done more harm than good in the world.
Still, fear is very powerful, and so even though I know that the Rapture is a
misconstrued interpretation of Scripture, when I read this I think, “Yikes,
creepy.”
But
I believe the anxiety I feel is more than some lingering fear of the
possibility of the Rapture, because that possibility, truth be told, is not
something that occupies my mind on any sort of regular basis… yet this text
still makes me feel uncomfortable. And I think the reason for that is that it
draws on a fear and anxiety that I do feel on a regular basis, and that
is: the fear of the unexpected, or the fear for that for which I am unprepared.
Oh
sure, sometimes the unexpected can be a lot of fun. An unexpected gift, an
unexpected promotion, or even a trip on which you decide just to fly by the
seat of your pants and see what happens – these all provide a certain thrill.
But those are all good unexpected things. The thrill does not transfer
to bad news. No one gets a thrill out of an unexpected call from the doctor, or
a phone call where your loved one’s voice trembles like it has been crying, or
a surprise pink slip.
Anxiety
about the unexpected has even spawned a whole industry – that is, after all,
why we buy insurance. Some years ago there was a commercial for an insurance
company where it shows several accidents both small and large – a man squirting
ketchup on his date, an A/C unit falling on a car below, a car door being blown
away by passing traffic. The stuff that America’s Funniest Home Videos are made
of, but none of it is very funny in the moment. The voiceover says, “Humans. We
mean well, but we are imperfect creatures living in a beautifully imperfect
world. Sometimes the little things get us, and other times, the not so little.
It’s amazing we’ve made it this far. … At [our insurance company],
we get that it’s tough out there, and our job is to make it less tough.” It’s
an effective angle for an insurance company, because we all know that
unexpected bad things happen all the time, and it does bring us some sense of
calm to know that if we pay up front now, we won’t be alone, and maybe those
unexpected things won’t be quite as devastating. It’s the best we can do to
feel prepared.
But
life insurance, while it financially supports those who are left, doesn’t bring
back our loved one. Health insurance makes illness more affordable, but it
doesn’t eliminate the need for painful and extensive treatment, nor the
enduring frustration of long-term side effects. And car insurance doesn’t
prevent black ice or hydroplaning or distracted driving, and their potentially
devastating results. Insurance may lessen the pain and brokenness of life, but
it sure doesn’t eliminate it.
Still, we want to be
prepared for things, as much as we can, right? That is, after all, why we start
preparing for Christmas beginning the day after Halloween. People want an early
start on all that cheer, after all. I wonder, though, while we are busy
preparing for Christmas, if we forget to prepare also for Christ. We
bustle about, making sure all the traditions happen, but then for many, even
many Christians, December 25th comes and goes, and when all is
said and done it doesn’t really matter in our lives whether or not a babe was
born that day in Bethlehem who would become the savior of the world, just as
long as everyone got what they wanted under the tree, and Christmas dinner
didn’t get burned, and goodies were made and distributed, and the family didn’t
fight too much.
It
is easy to get swept up in preparations, and all their fun and festivity, and
then to breathe a sigh of relief when it is over, but in all that, to forget
why we are even doing it. And so maybe it is good, on this first Sunday in
Advent, that we do have a text like today’s uncomfortable,
anxiety-provoking one to remind us why it matters that Jesus was born.
Because Christmas trees and beautiful bows and cookies and reindeer games can
be a lot of fun, but they don’t have much ability to help us through the
difficult and unexpected turns in life. The insurance commercial is right,
those things will happen, but insurance will not help our spirits to cope with
it.
But the promise of
Jesus does. The promise of God-with-us, of a light shining in the darkness
does. No, it doesn’t eliminate pain or protect us from an uncertain future, but
it does assure us that we will not face that uncertain future alone. Whatever
life throws our way, we can be sure that Jesus, Emmanuel, will be by our side,
granting us courage through our struggles, remaining with us even through
death, and drawing us into new life.
But sometimes it is
hard to recognize all of that in the midst of our struggles, isn’t it? And so
perhaps the part of this text that causes the most anxiety of all is that last
line, in which Jesus implores us to be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at
an unexpected hour. I know that this is supposed to be a text about the second
coming, and Jesus is talking about when the Son of Man will return. But we sometimes
feel that way in our day-to-day challenges, don’t we, like we don’t know when
God will come, will make His presence known to us. Like we are waiting and
waiting and God just doesn’t seem to make an appearance. It is a wonderful
thing when we are faced with a crisis, and we can say with confidence all the
way through the experience that we know and feel the presence of God, Emmanuel.
But there are other times when that presence is harder to detect.
Hard to detect, maybe…
but never absent. Because that promise that came to a stable in Bethlehem all
those years ago, that promise of Emmanuel, God-with-us – it never goes away.
Sometimes it is harder for us to see it, when we are overcome by sadness and
blinded by tears. Sometimes it is harder for us to believe it, when the
darkness presses in on us. But that is what this time we call Advent is all
about: it is a time of watching, waiting, and hoping. We watch for God, seeking
Christ in all things. We wait with patience, knowing that God promised to be
present, and so God will make that presence known. And as we wait, we
hope – lighting candles to fend off the darkness, lights that brighten the
nights as they grow ever longer and darker, and remind us that we do not face
the darkness alone. For this is the season we remember that the light of the
world has come, and is leading us forth not in fear and anxiety, but in
confidence, and courage, and hope.
Let us
pray… God of hope, there are so many things in life that we
cannot expect, for which we are not prepared, in which we can so easily lose
our way. Shine your light in our path as we wait and watch for your coming, so
that we may know your presence always, and live in the hope of your promise. In
the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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