1st Sunday of Advent

 

Mathew 24:36-44

Today is the start of the Advent season here at church and for many of us, this weekend also marked the start of our full swing preparations for Christmas.  Many of us spent the weekend hauling boxes of Christmas decorations up from the basement, braving Black Friday crowds to get a jump on our Christmas shopping and breaking out the Christmas music.  Even here, those old familiar carols are starting to permeate the service.  And all of this is ostensibly because someday soon, an adorable baby will be born in a manger in Nazareth. 

But this is also the start of Advent and Advent isn’t really about all that.  Advent is a season not so much about preparing for Christmas as it is preparing for Jesus.  And I don’t mean the baby in a manger but the real living, crucified and resurrected Jesus who is alive and working in the lives of his followers.

This is the Jesus we are called to watch for today, for he is coming and already here.  And this Jesus is not the helpless infant tucked safely in the manger for us to admire, but the disruptive teacher who pushes boundaries and brings great unexpected change that is sometimes, well often, quite unwelcome in the settled lives of those around him.

But whether we like it or not, Jesus is coming and when he shows up, everything changes.  Just ask the people in our bible stories for today.  Especially in the gospel story, where we encounter an awful lot of people just minding their own business, going about their lives, eating, drinking, building families, working and hanging out at home and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, Jesus shows up and changes everything. 

Right down to those poor men in the field and women at the mill, just minding their own business at work.  And suddenly Jesus arrives and some are taken and some are left, but what’s worse, we don’t even know what is good and what is bad in the story.  Most of us probably think we know the answer.  If we survived the ‘Left Behind’ craze of the 90’s or any of the subsequent waves of rapture speculation that have periodically rolled around even as recently as this fall, we know that supposedly, when Jesus comes, the righteous ones will be ‘taken’ away to heaven to relax while the unrighteous are ‘left behind’ on earth to endure great tribulation until Christ finally establishes his kingdom on earth.  But there is a problem with this line of thinking. 

You see, these two words that Jesus uses for taken and left ‘paralaumbano’ and ‘afiami’ in Greek are strangely common and can be translated in a bewildering variety of ways.  It is true that sometimes the word for ‘taken’ can indeed have a very positive meaning like being taken away to safety as the traditional interpretation implies, but this word also can mean ‘to place under arrest’ as in 2 chapters later, when Jesus is ‘taken’ by Roman soldiers to be brutally beaten and crucified. 

Similarly, ‘afiami’ which we read in English as ‘left’ in this verse does indeed sometimes mean to leave behind, abandon or neglect but it also is the word for ‘forgive’.  In fact, we say this word every single time that we pray the Lord’s prayer when we ask God to ‘forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us’.

So it seems to me that it is just as likely that the faithful are not raptured away to some magic place to sit around and wait but that they are the ones who are forgiven and invited to stay behind and work alongside Jesus to build the kingdom of God.  I don’t know about you, but when Jesus comes, I hope that I am among the ones forgiven and left to stay with Jesus, rather an arrested and hauled away.

But the reality is we will never really know what Jesus meant.  He chose his words carefully in order to keep us guessing.  Because the point is not to figure out exactly what will happen at the end times or to spend a lot of time worrying about exactly who is taken and left, who is redeemed and who is not, but to be reminded that Jesus is coming.  Suddenly and without warning and when he arrives, lives change. 

And this is the purpose of Advent, to take time in the midst of all the busyness and craziness of preparing for the baby in the manger to keep an eye out for the living Jesus working in the world.  For Jesus may have been born as a baby in a manger, but he didn’t stay there.  He long ago grew up and climbed out of that manger and into our lives.  He is here and active in the world and he is calling on his faithful forgiven disciples to aid him in his work.

For Advent is a season where we not only wait for Jesus’s immanent spectacular arrival at Christmas but where we can also become ever more aware of the ways he is already present and working in the world and calling us to help.  So keep a look out for Jesus.  He is here in more places than you might think. 

And so I encourage you to take up a daily practice to keep yourself mindful of Jesus in this hectic season.  To pick up a daily devotional practice, by subscribing to Forward Movement or praying morning or evening prayer or lighting an advent wreath at home.  To make a point of praying for someone special or reading the bible every day.  To find a way to keep Jesus front and center this season.

And the ways that Jesus is calling you to aid him in his work in the kingdom are not limited to these special acts of devotion, but they can make us more mindful of every opportunity to welcome Jesus into our lives this season.  Whenever you serve others this season, when you perform a random act of kindness or pick something up at the store for one of our service projects or make a donation to your favorite charity, when you prepare food that will give someone joy, or mail those Christmas cards, when you wrap a gift that will make someone happy or sing a Christmas carol.  Spare a moment to say hi to Jesus as he smiles alongside of you as you go about his work in the kingdom.

And when it gets hard.  When you feel overwhelmed with all the work to be done, when the line is ridiculously long or you can’t imagine how people can be so rude at this time of year, when you realize you just can’t do all the things you once did or the travel plans don’t work out, or when you find yourself really missing that person who isn’t here to share the holiday anymore.  Spare a moment then as well to look out for Jesus as he helps you through this season.

For Jesus is coming, and not just in a manger, but in the midst of our work and our play, our eating and drinking, in every mundane everyday moment of our lives.  The kingdom of God is there too for those of us left behind to experience it.  Amen.