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First Sunday in Advent, 11/27/2016
Sermon on Matthew 24:36-44, by Andrew Smith
Matthew 24:36-44 [English Standard Version, © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.]
36 “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. 37 For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, 39 and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Then two men will be in the field; one will be taken and one left. 41 Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one left. 42 Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. 43 But know this, that if the master 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. 44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Today marks the beginning of Advent, and the beginning of a new Church Year, although from the sound of the readings today, the tune hasn’t changed much from last Sunday and the end of the Church Year. Advent is what Thanksgiving Day seems to have become recently, an awkward pause in the Christmas season. I noticed it over a decade ago, that once the Halloween merchandise left the stores it was replaced by Christmas stuff. The Christmas music has been on in the stores for at least 3 weeks already. We’ve already had multiple Black Friday sales and then, Thursday, there was this weird “Turkey Day” pause before the madness of the second half began. The merchants don’t know what to do with a holiday that celebrates being thankful for the stuff you already have but I’m certain that with another decade they’ll figure out something.
Advent is an in-between time. It is but it isn’t quite yet. It’s preparation for Christmas, but people think preparation means decorate, not prepare your hearts, which is a coy way of saying “repent”, and so it’s an unsettled and unsettling time in the Church Year. I’ve used the example in Bible class of standing in a doorway. If you’re standing in a doorway, are you in or out? Yes. The Church itself can’t quite make up its mind about what Advent is either so it’s not just our fault. I’m sure most of you remember because it was not long ago that the color for Advent was purple. Purple is a color which signifies repentance in the Church and so we use purple for Lent. But Advent is not quite Lent, is it? Or is it? We can’t make up our mind. So for now, the Church has said that color of Advent should be blue. I think this is interesting because blue is short of purple by an equal shot of red. We use red in the church to signify the shed blood of the martyrs. So Advent is, for now, blue, missing the red, and so not clearly purple. Advent is this in-between time.
Our Gospel reading today doesn’t help much either. If we came expecting to hear stories of angels and shepherds already, we are disappointed if not confused. Jesus is clearly talking about the Last Day, not the day of rapture, by the way, a relatively recent false teaching that crept into the Church in the last 150 years or so. Jesus is talking about Judgment Day, the day of the coming of the Son of Man in glory and with great power. You don’t have to go back two paragraphs in Matthew to see that. And we should be ready for that day. And we won’t know the day. No one will. Especially no radio or television preacher will have insight into the mind of the Almighty when clearly even His Son does not know. And yet, Jesus is not talking about His first Advent, His birth, but His second coming on the Last Day. That is what Advent really should be about for us. It’s why the whole season seem to be a continuation of the readings from the end of the Church Year. Understanding these points helps us to understand not just this season of the Church Year but the truth to which Advent points.
When Matthew recorded his account of Jesus’ teaching on the end of days, he was writing to Christians who had been waiting for Jesus’ return for the better part of 40 to 50 years. This is lost on us, because we’ve been waiting for what’s now approaching two thousand years. Christianity has morphed and mutated into many things since that time. The father for whom our little band of Christians is named, Father Luther, remember, sought to restore the preeminence of the Gospel of the forgiveness of sins through Christ alone, something that had been lost in the medieval Church. As unthinkable as losing the Gospel itself, what Christianity has mutated into in the United States is something else altogether unrelated from the texts of the Scriptures. All the best things of what it means to be an American, our insistence on the rights of individuals, our rugged individualism, and our personal liberties have turned the religion of the New Testament into something very different. Only in the US is Jesus described as a “PersonalLordandSavior.” Only here is the forgiveness of sins some sort of individualized therapeutic accommodation to the disappointment that results when our individualism runs out of control. Only here is the resurrection of the dead basically just a restoration of an individual on the other side of the grave. Only here is deliverance from the devil support in the dread of personal illness or misfortune. And so if Advent is going to be anything more than just a change of the colors, it must be about something radically different than what we have come to expect. Advent must be something that points us back to the faith of the earliest Christians, of those who found comfort and assurance in the words of Jesus about his coming again.
Oddly the Church Year begins where it ends; we start at the end. The New Testament description of the end times begins with the death and the resurrection of Jesus. This is the underlying reason why when we talk about the end times we sound so different from most other Christians. Easter Sunday was not just the resuscitation of a Palestinian preacher, or worse, a story of how hope is raised in our hearts. NO! The resurrection of Jesus is something far, far bigger. It was—and IT IS!—a radical restructuring of the way things were into what God had intended them to be from the beginning. In the resurrection of Jesus, the bonds of death, sin, the power of the devil, which since the sin of Adam have ruled in this world and controlled all in their seemingly invincible grip, they are dissolved. Jesus’ resurrection is a victory over death itself; Easter morning signals the death of death. The Last Day is the Day of Resurrection and it signals the beginning of a new era, a time when those powers had free reign are now chained. A new Day has dawned. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Our new beginning starts with the end Christ worked at His cross. Our understanding of the end times is different because our end starts with our new beginning in Christ.
In this new era, this Resurrection era, all those gifts which we have twisted by individualizing them in our version of Christianity have far, far deeper implications. Forgiveness of sins is the opening both of self and community to the freedom of life lived beyond condemnation, a life of grace. The gift of eternal life is being raised with Christ to live with Him in a new and restored creation, a life where the love of Christ now shapes all reality. Deliverance from the devil is emancipation into a kingdom where Christ rules in unrivaled sovereignty. When our Lord Jesus Christ said from the cross, “It is finished,” He spoke the last word. Not just individuals but all of creation has been redeemed and is now already being reclaimed.
He has already begun to rule. It makes perfect sense then to read this Gospel reading today as we begin a new Church calendar. Jesus, the ruler of all creation rides confidently like a king into Jerusalem and so he will return again. Is our hope anything like the disciples in Jerusalem that day? Is it anything like the Christians in Corinth and Thessalonica whose white-hot expectation of the Lord’s immediate return burst forth in praises like the great Christ hymn in Philippians 2, “God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” That is something far more than great moral teacher, or even “PersonalLordandSavior.” And so we wait confidently for His return.
Dear Christians, the Lord is coming. The One who was raised from the dead has been revealed to be the Ruler of the Cosmos. Looking forward to His triumphant return, we will be ready to greet him with loud shouts of Hosanna. And make no mistake, for those who are not ready for his return, for those who use Advent as time to decorate, rather than to repent and prepare the heart, news of His imminent return is destabilizing. But for those who have already forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and freedom from power of the devil, we eagerly await his return on the tiptoes of faith. Just as He came into Jerusalem that day, he will come again in great glory. Jesus Christ is king. “Behold, your king is coming to you.” Amen.