Matthew 24:36-44

December 2, 2001

Carol Blaine

Sometimes we tend to think of God primarily in the past tense. In some ways, our biblical heritage itself encourages us in this mistaken way of thinking. We read stories about Moses, Noah and Abraham, and we know that these events happened 3,000 or more years ago. The events of the New Testament times happened over 2,000 years ago. Because our Bible and church tradition so often look to the past or so often recount God’s mighty deeds of the past, we can develop the unspoken assumption that God is history. God is primarily yesterday, way back then. But the Bible is a document that does not look backwards, but forward. It is a document that anticipates what God has promised to do, what God is going to do, what God will be involved in - not just yesterday - but also today and tomorrow. The Bible is a book about the future because it is about the acts of God in the past bringing God’s future.

Isaiah, writing over 2500 years ago, dreamed of a new era of human life and history. He anticipated a day when all the nations of the world would stream to Jerusalem. They would come, not in war, not in commerce, but to receive instruction from God about how to live according to God’s ways. Isaiah dreamed of this day when human beings would beat their swords into plowshares. It would be a day when instruments of war would be transformed into instruments of life. Isaiah is looking beyond even our own times, to a day when the armies of humankind come together in peace and when God will act to bring fundamental changes to the ways of humanity.

Today our church begins a new year. It is now the season of Advent, a time of anticipation. But today’s message from Matthew doesn’t seem to point to a very hopeful future! Jesus and his disciples are making their way to Jerusalem, and Jesus instructs his followers about the coming judgment of God, that is, the final identification, sorting out, and separation of good and evil. He tells his disciples about the day when the Christ will come to reign in victory over all the world. He uses imagery of ordinary folks going about their daily lives when they are taken totally by surprise. Two workers will be toiling in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding grain together; one will be taken and the other will be left behind. If we relied on statistics alone, that would mean only half of us, one out of each two of us in this place, will be taken to live with God forever. That’s a sobering thought, indeed. And we have to ask, where is the hope in that?

Jesus also reminds his disciples that the coming of the Son of Man will be as surprising as the flood was for the people of Noah’s day. Don’t you know that Noah suffered the scorn and ridicule of his neighbors as they watched him build that big boat on dry land under a cloudless sky? They were busy eating and drinking and marrying - doing the kinds of things that presumed life would continue on course. The images Jesus uses and the suddenness of the disaster that happens to these clueless people evoke feelings similar to what Americans are feeling today. You see, we were eating breakfast, driving carpools, going to school, opening offices - doing the kinds of things that presume life will go on as usual - when evil slammed into our lives on a clear, late-summer day. Now nations across the globe are shaken by the events of September 11th. We ask where is there hope for blessing and well-being for the nations of the earth?

Fortunately, our God is not a God who operates according to statistical probability. Our God is a God who breaks into the present, into the ordinary, with a plan to make us new and different. So often we read the stories of the flood or of the second coming with attention only to their judgmental aspects. But let us remember that the main symbol in the flood story is a rainbow. The rainbow is to be a natural, perennial sign of renewal and peace, a witness to the covenant of grace that constitutes God’s ultimate relationship with all of creation. More than that, Noah himself becomes one of the 1st great signs of faith, even before Abraham, the father of faith, comes on the scene.

Faith is the touchstone of the flood. Noah’s faith reflects total trust in God’s presence and operation in disaster. It is not that Noah is excused from the flood. It is that he rides it out by faith, losing everything but his life and his family, but finding in the disaster itself the grace of God. In recalling the story of Noah and the flood, Jesus is pointing out the centrality of faith to the mystery of the second coming. We are to watch and wait for the Savior who reigns in the midst of uncertainty and tragedy, and who, if we will only believe, is the cornerstone of our new creation.

Faithful, watchful waiting is not idle passivity. It requires action. Jesus tells his disciples that no one knows the time of the Lord’s return - not the angels, not even the Son of Man himself. Only the Father knows. The Lord will come as unexpectedly as a thief in the night. If the homeowner had known the thief was coming, he would have made preparations, just as the victims in the World Trade Center, in the Pentagon, or on the four hijacked airliners would have changed plans if they had had an inkling of the disaster that was to befall them.

In Advent we are reminded to keep awake, to be aware that the Lord could come at any time. It is foolishness to speculate or worry about the timing of the Lord‘s coming. Although we don’t know when it will be, we do know what we are to be doing in the meantime. We are to be engaged in the deeds of mercy, forgiveness, justice, and peace that characterize kingdom people.

The early Christian community was convinced that Christ would come again in their lifetime to complete the work of salvation begun in Bethlehem. This was their fervent hope - that God would finish what God had started, and that if they survived God’s judgment, their lives would be completed and made whole. The timetable of the early Christians proved to be unrealistic - after all, here we are, 2,000 years later. It seems what the church is trying to tell us in Advent is that what was started with that baby in Bethlehem is not yet completed. The work of salvation is still in process.

The reality that confronts us this 1st Sunday in Advent is that things are not the way God intends them to be. The mightiest nation on earth has mobilized for war, and has dropped millions of dollars of bombs on a country suffering from 23 years of war and a scarcity of resources. Hundreds of thousands of refugees are fleeing Afghanistan in search of safety and one meal a day. In our own country, there are mothers on welfare with no hope for a different future, youth who succumb to the drug culture out of a sense of alienation, and children who are subjected daily to abuse of body, mind, and spirit. You and I know that life is not whole. Our politics, our relationships, and our souls are far from perfect.

Advent calls us to communal reflection. It is too easy to consider our society’s problems as belonging to someone else, such as those in pockets of urban poverty or in a far-off country. Advent stirs in us a longing and a hope for that day when the weapons of war and the injustices of political power will be no more, and all of God’s people will live in peace and wholeness.

This Advent season we need to admit that the world is incomplete, we are incomplete, and that we need and want God to do something new in our lives. As we begin to remember the new thing that God did in a cradle in Bethlehem, we are also called to yearn for God to do a new thing in the cradle of our unfinished hearts. Advent calls us to personal spiritual renewal, to wake up from our spiritual timidity and have the courage to see, hear, and speak the truth of our deepest selves. Jesus suggests we should not wait for an ultimatum or a disaster to begin living the kingdom life. Being ready for the coming of the Lord means avoiding being so preoccupied with the routines of life that we are virtually incapable of perceiving the meaning of the experiences we have every day. Being ready means that we are open to experience God.

This means we have to be willing to change. Let’s face it. Our human nature is such that we do not want change. A wise person once said: "I am 100% for improvement and I am 100% against change!" We are all that way. We want things to get better, and we want things to stay the same. Yet God is not just a God of the dusty past, but a God of the present and of the future. God is seeking to mold and make and transform us into what God wants us to be. During this Advent, let us be open, let us be ready because God may yet break into our lives - where we least anticipate it - with hope and transformation.

God’s promise of salvation shines as a single candle on the Advent wreath today. We do not know when Christ will come, but we know that when he does, he will expect for us to be ready in our hearts. The people of Noah’s time didn’t prepare, and about the 10th day of rain, they probably realized they were in trouble and came shouting around the ark to get in. Sadly, it was too late. We have a loving and forgiving God who keeps on giving us chances. But the gospel also teaches that when the Lord comes on the last day, he will recognize his own and not recognize those who are not ready.

As we ponder God’s promises to us, we need to remember our own promises as well. We made some pretty big ones at baptism and have renewed them many times since: to reject Satan and all his empty promises, to reject sin and refuse to be mastered by it. We affirmed our faith in God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We committed ourselves to love God and our neighbor, to keep the commandments, to proclaim the good news to others, and to work for justice. The work of waiting in Advent calls us with even more urgency to take up the cause of the church in the world.

God keeps God’s promises. Christ will come in glory to renew the face of the earth. If we keep our promises, we will be ready on that day. May it be so for you and me. Amen.