First Sunday in Advent, 11/27/2016

Sermon on Matthew 24:36-44, by David H. Brooks

As a child, I read Tolkien’s The Hobbit many times over. One of my favorite scenes from the book was the famous moment when the hobbit Bilbo Baggins escapes from the evil and deadly Gollum with the famous ring, and Gollum calls out after Bilbo, “Thief! Thief! We hates it forever!”

Being called a thief weighs hard on Bilbo, as it might well weigh hard on you. Who wants to be called a thief, a robber, someone who steals into a home in the night and takes what belongs to another?

So perhaps some of you noticed, and wondered what Jesus is thinking, calling God a thief in the night. Now, perhaps to be fair, Jesus doesn’t put it that bluntly. Jesus simply notes that the activity of God in the world is often very much like flood that no one saw coming until it was much too late; God enters into life, your life, my life like a thief that sneaks in the shadows, even as the householder is completely, utterly unaware.

It is one of the things that most drives us to distraction about God. We want to think of God as predictable, describable, in the same way that we would describe a principle of physics or a law of nature. So we talk about how God comes to people during tough moments or difficult circumstances, reasoning that in those moments men and women are particularly open to the idea or the intervention of God. Or again, we think that God is available to us during particularly moving or ecstatic events—profound or beautiful worship services or life passages or some such. We look to create the emotion, or the mood, or the circumstances, assuming that God will make himself available to us.

But Jesus says that this is not how God works. God does not enter into life except on his own terms, for in the end God comes into life as a gift, as a expression of pure grace, and such things can not be controlled, maybe not even anticipated, but only welcomed. Indeed, there is in a way an inverse relationship between our efforts to “conjure” up God and God’s work in our lives; in truth, the more that we act to summon God, the less likely that summons will work, or, at least work to our liking.

There is something else interesting about Bilbo the Thief that shows Tolkien understood what Jesus was trying to say. This hobbit is one thief that always seems to show up at just the right time. He comes upon the ring of invisibility and claims it at a moment unexpected but certainly timely. He hides in the shadows during his first encounter with the dragon Smaug and is the first to see that there is a vulnerable spot in the old dragon’s hide, a weakness that will be exploited later. Again and again Bilbo arrives or makes a discovery or contributes at the right, the propitious, the opportune time.

So it is with God. Jesus declares that the moment of appearance, the moment of Advent, of breaking into life happens in the midst of the most ordinary and mundane, while fields are being worked or grain is being milled. I have been told stories of people encountering God while having breakfast coffee, while driving to work, while moving through airports, while watching television, while doing homework, while running or walking or cooking or doing nothing at all. Some might declare these are strange places, strange times for God to be at work. Yet, given God’s personality, given God’s care and love for us, these are not strange times and places; our Lord always arrives at the perfectly right time and place, just as any thief knows the right time of night and the right house to burgle.

So in this Advent season, learn to watch for the strange thief that is our God, a thief that comes at the right time and right place sometimes yes, to take from us things—things that burden, cripple, prevent us from living a life free for God, but sometimes yes, to give to us things—gifts of hope, love, joy, peace—even and especially when we didn’t request them, didn’t realize we needed them.

“Thief, thief, we love you forever! Come Lord Jesus. Amen”

The Rev. Dr. David H. Brooks
Raleigh, NC, USA
E-Mail: Pr.Dave.Brooks@zoho.com

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