It’s not the apocalypse that matters but what it reveals.
For Sunday
Advent 1A
Collect
Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
Reading
From Matthew 24:36-44
“For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.”
Reflection
We begin the Advent season with apocalyptic predictions: about the end of things, reconciling creation, and how upsetting such a moment would have to be.
I suspect most Christians don’t actually care for that reminder. We prefer not to think about our own deaths, let alone that of those closest to us. People are famously talking-about-death avoidant.
This avoidance is also famously unhealthy. We all do it, know it’s bad for us, and then do it anyway.
Yet still we lash out at those who remind us. Like doctors reminding us to eat better or loved ones encouraging us to quit bad habits or get therapy. Exposure to what we wish to avoid yeilds anger and anxiety.
The church knows that confronting death is central. So we do it. Even when we’d rather not.
A Reasonable Warning
When Jesus compares the time he’s speaking of to the time of Noah, there is little doubt that we fixate on the flood. But he is referring to the time before it. When people are carrying on in the world like nothing’s the matter.
The reference may be ominous. It no doubt is. But it is also a reasonable warning.
In the time before the deluge, the people weren’t just minding their own business and then BAM! God flooded the world. They had so distorted the world that there was only one good person left in all of creation.
It’s not about the terror.
So, in other words, Jesus isn’t warning us about some terrifying thing God will do to us, as if we have no role to play in this drama. He is specifically naming the importance of recognizing our relationship to that world.
Because, unlike them, we can change, prepare, survive.
Our purpose as followers of Jesus is, after all, to be like Jesus, align our vision with his, and prepare the Kin-dom here. So that when the reconciling events occur, we are already living it, embodying it, sharing it. That the Kin-dom is happening within and through us.
This week, we’re reminded of that work and that reconciliation. That God’s dream for humanity is better than the world we live in now.