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Tuesday, December 3, 2019

"Unannounced" (Matthew 24:3, 36-44)


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First Sunday of Advent, December 1, 2019

          2019 is almost over and I just you wanted you to know that in 2020, we’re going to have Christmas; just in case you wondered.  We will have Christmas in 2020. 
          I suppose this seems absurdly obvious.  Every year we have Christmas!  It always comes on December 25th.  Ah, that’s the catch!  In 2020, we don’t know what the day Christmas will fall.  It could be December 25th.  But, it could fall on one of 364 other days; no, 2020 is a leap year.  It could fall on any of 366 days.  January 3; May 29; December 1.  One day in 2020, you’ll wake up and be informed that today is the day!  Today is Christmas. 
          I’ll get back to that weirdness in a minute, but before I do, I’d like to lob this oddity into your laps.  To prepare for this message, I read Matthew 24:3, 36-44, and then I looked at some commentaries written by Bible scholars and theologians.  One made a suggestion.  Introducing his approach to writing about Matthew he says, “I hope readers will [see] that by following along [this commentary] they may discover how we are read by the story Matthew tells.”[i]  We read the story Matthew tells.  How are we read by it?  How does Matthew read us?
          We come to this text on the first of the four Sundays of Advent.  Advent leads up to the church’s celebration of the birth of Jesus.  It may at first appear odd to be reading a passage from the end of the Gospels in anticipation of the birth, something that happens in Matthew chapter 1.  But, we know Jesus was born 2000 years ago.  Our Advent anticipation is a rehearsal.  We try to again feel the wonder the shepherds and Mary and Joseph felt when the Savior first came into the world in a human body. 
          That reenacted anticipation is Advent.  So too is our hope and longing for Jesus’ promised return.  In the final words of Matthew, Jesus tells us, “I am with you always to the end of the age.”  On that day at the end of the age, we believe Jesus will return in resurrected, bodily form, and we, also resurrected will be with him forever.  This Second Coming of Jesus stirs our anxious longing with greater pull than our rehearsed celebration of his first coming.  Advent, the season of waiting and anticipation begins with Matthew awakening our deeper sense of hope, but not yet fully realized hope. 
          That’s why I proposed the scenario of changing the date for Christmas 2020, but not telling the new date!  In Matthew 24, Jesus and the disciples are in Jerusalem in the days leading up to Passover, and we know, because we have read Matthew, leading up to the crucifixion.  The temple and the entire sacrificial worship system is about to end and a new age about to begin. 
          When Jesus tells the disciples a new age is about to begin they breathlessly beg him, “Tell us when this will be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”
          That question is posed in Matthew 24:3.  Jesus spends the rest of the chapter answering that question.  When?  He warns them not be swayed by false witnesses.  When?  Jesus tells of coming natural and man-made catastrophes.  When?  Jesus tells his disciples they will be hated, arrested, tortured, and executed precisely because they are faithful to him.  Who can be saved in such dire times?  “The one who endures,” Jesus says (24:13).  Jesus warns of terrifying, ominous signs and foretells His coming (24:30).
          Finally he brings us to the word of today’s reading, still answering that simple, obvious, necessary, burning question.  When?  “About that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (24:36).  Throughout Christian history and especially in the history of American evangelicalism, Bible readers have attempted through convoluted reading that combine Mark 13, 1 Thessalonians 4-5, and Revelation to predict the date of Jesus’ return.  Hal Lindsay’s book The Late Great Planet Earth ranked as America’s top selling non-fiction work of the 20th century other than the Bible.  He, like so many before and after him predicted the date.  How?  Why?  Jesus couldn’t be clearer.  He is coming back.  No one knows when. 
          The doctrine of the Second Coming of Jesus is a central Christian belief.  It is at the heart of our hope.  We absolutely count on Jesus, God the Son, returning, setting things right, and initiating the resurrection of all who had died in Christ. Of course we want to know when.  Jesus didn’t reject his disciples for posing the question.  But his answer is crystal clear.  When?  We don’t know.  If a famous author or a famous Christian on TV or someone you greatly trust tells you they know when Jesus is coming, listen carefully. They’re wrong!  To claim to know is to contradict Jesus, something I don’t want to do. 
          To amplify his point, Jesus goes on to talk about the days before the great flood.  Noah and his family built an ark.  The rest of society went on with life as if nothing was coming, “eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage,” as Jesus said (24:38).  His second coming will be unexpected just as the world had no idea what was coming before the flood. 
          To drive the point home, Jesus paints a picture.  On the day He returns and, the end of the age comes, he will call his followers to himself, and those not with Jesus will face God’s judgment.  Two will be working in the field, and one will be taken, one left behind.  Two will be grinding meal, and one will be taken, one left behind.  When Jesus returns, the world will be going about normal, daily life, whatever that is.  Jesus has no use for people watching the sky, wondering “Could today be the day.”  He encourages the longing, but forbids stopping life or predicting the day.  No one knows when.
          To review, Jesus is returning and when he does, it will be the end of the age.  No one knows when that will be.  There will be signs, but the indications call us to a type of living.  We are not to stop life.  We are to be actively engaged in life.  His return will be unannounced and the world will not be ready. 
          One more important word comes from our Lord in Matthew 24, and this is where we find the answer to the question, how does Matthew read us?  “Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know the day your Lord is coming” (v.42).  Keep awake; not as straightforward as it sounds at first.
          Several years ago, someone was going through our neighborhood in the middle of the night committing crimes, or trying to.  One neighbor was home in the middle of the night as the burglar tried to break in.  He manage to keep his door shut and the thief ran off.  Others came out in the morning to find that sometime in the night, they had had their cars broken into. 
Would my house be the next one the invader visited?  I started trying to keep watch and sleep at the same time.  You can’t do that.  If you’re watching out, you can’t sleep.  I went for a month without much sleep as the smallest of 3AM creaking noises in the recesses of the house convinced me the intruder was at my door.  Keeping watch and sleeping cannot be done simultaneously.
In the final verse of the reading Jesus says “you must be ready because the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”  Unannounced.  How do we stay awake?  How do we get ready? 
Try this phrase on for size, this phrase Bible scholar Michael Wilkins calls his life’s motto.  Live as though Jesus is coming back today.  Plan as though he is not coming back for 100 years.
Live as though Jesus is coming back today.  What do you want Jesus to catch you doing when you don’t know He’s watching?  This is not Santa’s naughty-and-nice list.  We are saved by grace, our sins forgiven, our punishment nailed to Jesus’ cross.  But our understanding and closeness to the eternal life we’ll have with Him in resurrection is related to how we live here and now.  If on his return, he catches you loving, giving grace, spreading hope, and helping people, and doing good in his name, your entry into his embrace will be akin to diving deeper into the glorious soft warmth of God cavernous love. 
Live as though Jesus is coming back today.  What do we want Jesus to catch us doing when we don’t know He’s watching? 
Plan as though he is not coming back for 100 years.  How do we live our discipleship for 80 years, the course of a lifetime?  Commitment to prayer, immersion in the story (the Bible), deep connection to Church (the community of believers) and regular practice in Christian ministry, mission, and faith-sharing; we need all of this to be the content of our lives.  In  these things, we grow in Christ and see more of God.  Staying awake does not mean watching the skies forlornly hoping this’ll be the day we see Jesus in the clouds.  Staying awake is living life engaged in the world as an on-mission disciple of Jesus. 
Don’t worry.  Christmas in 2020 will fall on December 25, just like it always does.  Don’t worry.  Jesus is coming back.  Even though it will be unannounced, his disciples will be ready.  You are invited to be his disciple. 
AMEN
  


[i] Hauerwas, Stanley (2006).  Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible: Matthew, Brazos Press (Grand Rapids), p.19.

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