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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