Year A
Matthew 24:36-44
The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn
The New Advent
This morning, the first Sunday of Advent, is the first Sunday of the new church year. Happy New Year! We begin this new year in cycle A, which is Matthew’s year, so our gospel lessons this coming year will be mainly from the gospel of Matthew. Matthew was Jewish, and his gospel was written for the Jewish community, probably sometime just before or after 70 AD, 35 or more years after Christ’s death and resurrection. His purpose, as we shall rediscover during this liturgical year, was to present Jesus as the Messiah to the Jewish people who had been patiently awaiting the coming of the One who would deliver them. Having been trained in the Jewish religious tradition, Matthew was able to make connections between the Old Testament prophecies, like the ones from the prophet Isaiah, and the life of Jesus for the masses of first-century Jews who were unable to meet the Messiah in person.
When I read the gospel text this morning, I noticed a couple of things and you may have noticed them also. The passage read is near the end of Matthew’s gospel. It may seem strange to read from near the end of the book at the beginning of the new year. Shouldn’t we start from the beginning? We don’t actually read from near the beginning of the book until the fourth Sunday of Advent. The other thing you may have noticed about this passage is that it doesn’t sound very much like Christmas. It certainly isn’t jolly. Nothing about it helps us enter into the Christmas spirit and none of us would associate this passage with the season of preparing for Christ’s birth. Instead, we find ourselves catapulted into the midst of what we understand now as Jesus’ description of the end of times.
Matthew paints for us four scenes that were intended to get the people in his day prepared for the coming of the Son of Man using examples of people who were not ready. These examples get our attention today also and teach us about what verse 36 calls “that day and hour.” First, Jesus reminds us of how the people in Noah’s time did not take God and God’s ominous calls to readiness seriously. We know the story, but we often miss how terrible it really was. God was sorry for making human beings because they were doing evil in the sight of God. So God decided to drown the whole lot of us. God told Noah to build an ark and except for the people and animals on the ark, everyone and everything would drown. People were simply going about their business and with no warning, the floods come down.
Like them, we too are relatively unconcerned most of the time about being ready for God’s coming, and we go on living in a business-as-usual manner, not looking too closely at the wickedness that is running rampant in our times. Jesus promised that he would return one day, time and hour unknown. Advent reminds us again that we are to be ready for that day. The question with which we are challenged by in today’s Gospel is, are we ready?
The next two very similar scenes continue the theme of readiness. Jesus presents two pairs of people. In both, the people are working hard at tedious jobs. From each pair one is received into God’s realm and one is left outside of God’s realm. This seems quite harsh at first but because this example doesn’t threaten total destruction, it offers more hope than the first scene, at least for the one person in each pair.
The text’s final example doesn’t make us feel any better than the first three. Here Jesus describes God breaking into our world with the image of a thief breaking into a house. The unwary householder should have made preparations to prevent a break-in. As we reflect upon the beginning of a new church year, we must ask ourselves if we have made all the preparations necessary for the breaking in or coming of Jesus. Not only at the end of time but also for the coming of the Messiah at Christmas. These stories seem like the last thing we need to hear right now as we are coming into the Christmas season. Yet, they do remind us again how important it is to put Jesus into the center of our lives.
How do we place Jesus in the center of our lives again? Perhaps we need to take time and reflect on what it means to be a Christ follower. We might want to study anew what Baptism and Holy Communion are all about or review what the creeds of the church really say. We might want to explore again what the ministry of all the baptized is about as we go about our daily lives. We might need to rediscover what it means to put God first; to let go and to let God, to recommit our lives to Jesus. Because let’s face it, Christmas isn’t always the most cheerful time for some and life can be difficult. We need Matthew to remind us that Christmas is about serious business. Christmas is about a God who aches over the sin of the world.
We don’t like to hear stories about judgment, especially this time of year but God’s judgment means that God cares and loves us. These unsettling stories proclaim to us at the start of Advent that God hears the cries of all God’s children but especially the oppressed, the abused, and all who are the world’s victims. If God could come in a flood or like a thief in the night, then there are no problems that God cannot solve when we allow God to direct our lives and our days. Matthew shows us that preparation for the season means more than making sure the presents are wrapped. We a called to discipleship, and obedience, and to resist the world’s evils.
Paul charges us today, in his letter to the church in Rome, to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” We are to put on the light of Christ because we know what time it is. This is the moment to wake from sleep and begin this new year resolving to put Jesus at the center of our lives, recommitting them to him and becoming prepared to receive him whenever he shows up. The fact that the floodwaters didn’t come yesterday or this morning means that God gives us more time. Yet, we too live in turbulent and dangerous times. Who knows what will happen tomorrow, next week, next year? Are we ready, awake and keeping watch?
We may not like it that God speaks right before Christmas through Jesus and Matthew with these frightening stories, but God needs to get our attention. We are the church called to show and teach the world what it means that this baby was born. Let’s face it! We have more to do this Christmas season than we thought. For what are we watching for? The new advent!