Jesus tells us to live a life ready for the Kin-dom here.
Being beacons of Christ here and now
Advent 1A | Matthew 24:36-44
This feels like we’ve walked into the movie theater before the previous showing is done. There’s stuff we would know if we’d seen it, but we don’t have the context for it now. He’s talking about people disappearing from the world. And we’re like, I thought this was a love story…
Welcome to the first Sunday of Advent! This is what we do. We start the new church year off with talk of the apocalypse: when God’s dream for creation becomes real and all is reconciled.
This, of course, sounds great until we realize it’s probably going to be messy. Because: free will. If God doesn’t want to make us do the right thing, we’re going to have people choose to not.
Anyway, this is how we end up in church, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, being reminded of the great flood that wiped out humanity, the disappearance of many people, and a thief breaking in. This all can feel so disorienting. And not what we hoped to hear today.
Let me remind us, however, that fear is not a positive motivator. It isn’t what Jesus is after. So if we hear this stuff and tighten up because it kind of freaks us out…then we’re bound to miss what Jesus is talking about.
The Three Things Jesus is Talking About
Let me quickly run through the three things Jesus is referencing so we can get a better understanding of what he’s getting at. That’s Noah, the disappearances, and the thief in the night.
1. Noah
When we hear the name, Noah, what comes to mind? The Flood. The Deluge. And what does that make us think of? The arc. Animals. And the death of everything.
Note that Jesus doesn’t speak to the flood itself. He speaks to the time before the flood.
He describes the normalcy of life, the carrying on. People living as if nothing was going to happen to them.
What is significant about that?
Well, when we focus on the flood or on God’s action, we aren’t thinking about the action that precedes it.
Life wasn’t normal in God’s eyes. What God saw was a world that was utterly irredeemable. God saw no way to fix what was so corrupted.
Jesus isn’t referring to the people’s ignorance or carrying on, but how they were living so out of sync with God’s vision. And yet, they were also not prepared for the consequences.
This sets up the future vision.
2. The Disappeared
Jesus describes a weird vision of a potential future with people just disappearing from the world. It is disturbing, as many evangelicals will tell you. Some traditions are built around preparing for this moment.
Those who grew up in that sort of tradition or who’ve read the Left Behind books will immediately think of the rapture. A relatively recent conviction that the good people will be taken up to heaven and the bad people will be left behind to duke it out with the devil.
But Jesus paints the opposite picture here.
Like the deluge wiped out whole populations, this disappearing would wipe out those who didn’t prepare for it. In this case, that’s the coming of Christ.
A frightening image, for sure. But one that points us toward preparation. Not to travel to the great beyond, but to receive a better world here without evil.
3. The Thief
Jesus describes the need to keep watch, wait, prepare for the time to come. Not because of a disaster. But because living now like you want to in heaven is the point.
Now, Jesus doesn’t give us the most helpful example of the need to prepare. He compares the Son of Man’s return to breaking and entering. This was always a messy metaphor, but in a world of Stand Your Ground laws and the public support for self-defense, we’re likely to hear the wrong message.
Jesus offers a metaphor about preparing so as not to be surprised. Knowing what is coming into the world.
We might be tempted to think that preparation means guns in our schools and nightclubs, even as Jesus rejects weapons.
Or perhaps sending our children through training to defend themselves from gunmen. Rather than deal with the cultivating of gunmen directly.
However, the metaphor of the thief is not about thieves. If anything, Jesus is comparing himself to a thief breaking in. It’s a confusing metaphor because the point is to live better now because we are not to rely on a better future.
Jesus isn’t suggesting we prep for the apocalypse.
He’s telling us to live like God’s Kin-dom is coming now.
Christians have always struggled with hearing this as hope. Because we want to take that literally. From day one, it was like, Jesus, is it coming next week or the week after? Because I’ve got some people coming over…
And it’s been the Rapture Ready folks who love to predict using numerology the day of the Second Coming (in spite of Jesus explicitly saying that’s not how it works!). They get it wrong and say Oh, I just miscalculated, it’s really in 8 months.
The whole thing avoids hearing Jesus’s point by focusing on the metaphors themselves. The flood, the disappearing, the thief: collect those guns, ‘cause it’s all coming together!
Even as none of this sounds like the stuff Jesus actually teaches. We can’t help ourselves. Because it sounds like what he’s saying here. But it’s not. Not if we’re paying attention to the whole story.
We hear “prepare” differently, then. And stay awake: this isn’t guidance for doomsday prepping, but to stop putting off following Christ. We don’t know the hour, so don’t wait for a deathbed confession. You never know! Just do it now and live like someone who believes.
This is about urgency.
Which means it is not about the sorting of people. It’s not about the nature of God and divine metaphysics. Not literally, anyway.
This is about us. And our acting today like Jesus’s Way of Love matters to us right now.
The old 19th Century sermons that led to the late 20th Century WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) craze put this urgency into practice. They invited us to imagine Jesus arriving in church on a Sunday morning and whether we’d act like we’d learned anything in our hours attending church.
Jesus showing up like someone experiencing homelessness. Or mental illness. Who is the “wrong” gender or presents differently than we’re comfortable with. Wears the wrong clothes or prays the wrong way. Every way we judge differences and condemn the children of God.
Reminding ourselves and one another that Jesus loves and shows mercy and teaches us to listen to kids because they’re closer to the Kin-dom than adults!
This isn’t rhetoric, ideology, creed, or law. It is living like we ourselves are the way God’s love is revealed. That we are the way God’s love is felt.
If we take anything literally about this passage, let it be the urgency!
Not the images, but the intention!
Let it be the way we see one another as Christ’s own! And the need to reach out to the person next to us and say You are blessed! And I am blessed to be here with you!
This is who we are and what we are for!
Loving this world and all of its people.
And this is what love looks like:
It is mourning the dead in Colorado Springs. And protecting those who seek sanctuary from the evils of this world. The glorification, not just of violence, but the hunting of God’s blessed children is grotesque and God grieves for us.
It is loving people by building more housing in this community and providing more food because poverty doesn’t go away by underfunding it.
And it’s ensuring that this is a safe place. Because hospitality, justice, restoration, mercy, hope, faith, love. That’s the hallmark of Jesus.
So then let it be ours. And let it be so now!