The first Sunday in Advent, 12/01/2013

Sermon on Matthew 24:36, by Paula L. Murray

"But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into.Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

Hope

It is one of those unremarkable facts of life that distance equals time. If I go from the office to the fellowship hall for a cup of coffee it takes not only distance but time to accomplish my intent. How much time depends upon the speed of travel, or who is doing the traveling. If it is five-year old Faith or six-year old Maddie that distance is going to be covered much more quickly than if it is this middle-aged pastor at her rather more stately (hopefully) rate. I like travel but I mind the time it takes, which is why I look with great interest to the eventual invention of the transporter beam. Like Captain Kirk, I long to smartly tap my upper left chest and command Scotty to, "Beam me up." Instantaneous travel, what more could one want?

The problem with this particular want is that the time travel takes is intrinsic to the very idea of travel, and not just because that's the physics of it all. Distance traveled and time are directly related for other reasons, reasons which have to do less with the efficiency of travel and more to do with its consequences. We travel for business, for family reasons as we do this week, Thanksgiving week being the busiest travel week of the entire year, and for reasons of relaxation and learning. Maturation requires new experiences and cogitation on those new experiences, and travel, even travel between two well- known places, provides both. We need to move to grow and live.

Often, more often than we realize, the geography we cover as we travel is not physical but spiritual. We come again to Advent, to the literal wheel of time represented by the Advent wreathes in our churches and our homes. These are not mere toys meant to manage the children's excitement over the arrival of Christmas and the gifts under the tree and in stockings. Nor are they just a change of scenery for more mature disciples who need help fighting the early winter blues. The wreath, the readings, the hymnody of Advent all draw us again into the life of God and move us from the familiar cradle of the stable in Bethlehem to the uncertain skies of Christ's return. But the journey we make is different every year. We are a year older, and a year different, reformed by the events of the intervening twelve months. Children have been born, have gone from playful preschoolers to anxious kindergarteners, a spouse or a parent has died. Tornadoes have erased a portion of a cityscape or a new memorial has risen up to renew the site of an old disaster. Economies have toppled, and new inventions are on the horizon that will remake our common culture just as the invention of the wheel remade the Neolithic era. The annual journey that is the Church year is begun again, but it is not the same; the spiritual geography has changed.

As it had for the disciples of Jesus after he entered Jerusalem in triumph. He entered the city as a conquering king, and his disciples followed in his way, basking in his reflected glory. Jesus entered the Temple as its rightful owner and immediately cleaned house. The whole of chapter 23 of Matthew's Gospel is a recounting of his charges against the onetime stewards of that house of the Lord, of their greed, their mismanagement of God's gifts for their own reward, and their many injustices against God's people. Even as Jesus' repute grew among the inhabitants of Jerusalem so the spiritual topography of the disciples was raised, making mountains of the valleys where sin hid itself from the sinner's willfully blind eyes.

And now it all comes crashing down, down, down as Jesus laments the future fall of Jerusalem and the disaster to be visited not only on its citizens but on the very stones that make up the fabric of the temple. Simultaneously, he prophesies his return, to happen when the remnant of Jerusalem can say, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." Privately, away from Jesus' fans and his enemies alike, the disciples demand to know when this will happen and even how. And Jesus says to them only, "But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." Note, that the faithful remnant of Israel does not bring about Jesus' return; what they do is cry out for it from the depths of their tribulations. To be blunt about it, they beg for the return of the Christ only when they have no other hope to which they can cling.

Human beings do not, for reasons of sin, easily put their hope in the saving grace of the Lord. Human beings would rather go to a lot of trouble to try to ensure their own security, especially when they know storm clouds lay ahead. We only have to look at the mess made this week of supermarket shelves as holiday cooks and anxious storm watchers converged in the parking lots of local grocery stores. But there are no clouds on the horizons of the stories Jesus tells the disciples to illustrate his teaching. People are carrying on with life as usual before 40 days of rain obliterated them, with the exception of Noah's family, from the face of the earth. Two women working in the field are absorbed by their aching backs and the passing back and forth of local news and gossip when one is taken and one is not. Sin is not, directly, anyway, the dividing line between who is swept away and who is not; a watchful waiting makes the difference.

To make sure we absolutely get the message, Jesus makes it explicit. "Keep awake, therefore," commands Jesus to the men before him, devastated by the fall they themselves just took from the world of putative fame and fortune, "for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming." Stay alert, he tells them, like the homeowner stays alert, to keep the thieves from his livestock and his few treasures. What they are waiting for is made clear in the next set of parables or teaching stories Jesus tells, both tales of stewards that did not wait faithfully on the return of the Lord, but squandered or sat on his gifts.

Jesus did not waste breath at the near end of his earthly life on these warnings so books could be written or movies made about the end of the world. The warnings come to us now, as we wait on the coming of Christmas, so that we might acknowledge before we celebrate the birth of Jesus the reason for his birth, and his death. We are that reason. In bondage to sin, despairing, even over small things, fearful of losing what we have to job loss or the government or catastrophe or the doctoring that comes with old age we live hopping like honey bees from one flower to another following the latest fad that promises an end to the aches and pains of life without the nasty interruption of death. Vitamins, legislative trickery, weight loss pills, new exercise regimes, too good to be true schemes to get rich, the lottery, the newest self-help guru on the net, all of it so we don't look to the only One who can give hope that is real, real and strong enough to withstand the uncertainties of life and even its most obvious certainty, death. This hope tells us that even when the stones come crashing down around our heads that the future will not be bleak and despairing but light and joyous. This can only be true if our hope is founded not in our fallible selves or the false prophets of the world around us, but in Jesus Christ.

We come again to Advent, to follow behind our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ and alongside one another from David's city of Bethlehem to the cross strewn hill called Calvary, and beyond. But if our journey looks as circular as the Advent wreath we must realize that the spiritual topography of our journey changes as we proceed, year by year, in hope. Hope lifts up, hope lights the way, hope leads to a deep well of belonging and contentment in the loving fellowship of God and Christian friend, even as we continue to wrestle with all that would turn hope to desolation. Hope in the Christ who came, and will come again, leads to peace, and peace to joy, and joy to true love of our neighbor. It begins and ends with hope, hope born of faith, hope in our Emmanuel, in Christ with us and for us, now and forever. Amen

Pastor Paula L. Murray
Glen Rock, Pennsylvania
E-Mail: smothly@comcast.net

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