Isaiah 2:1-5
Psalm 122
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:36-44
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen
You know, let’s begin with this, I’m a little conflicted. Wednesday evening was great at the beginning of Wonderland of Lights. The community, the fellowship, the music, and of course the lights; it was a lovely evening. On the way home, Marie and I drove down Burleson to see the church, see the bells and hear the music. It’s glorious, everything I was told it would be even before the bells were set to swinging. Then we shared a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner the next day and caught up with family and friends. What a joy!
Then we move to this morning beginning with the lighting of the Advent wreath. We sing the glorious hymns of the coming of the season; and remember, Advent means coming. Then we come to one of the central pieces of worship, reading scripture.
We move to reading this passage from Matthew with those wonderful words of the holiday season, “If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into.”
This just makes me want to say “Merry Christmas, God bless us everyone!” I guess the people who selected the readings for this morning were hoping we would be careful on the way to and from the mall this season.
Let’s face it; this isn’t the first passage you want ringing in your head at Christmastime. We want Luke’s manger story. We want the arrival of the Three Men from the East on Epiphany. Well, don’t worry, we will get to these readings, but today we start somewhere else. We start with what’s coming.
One of the most striking things about our faith, a faith that began when Abraham was told to pack up his things and go where the Lord would make him a great nation, one of the most striking things is that until the story of Abraham, people thought of time and history much differently.
To the people of antiquity, time and history did not exist in the way we think of them. Time and history the way we think of them is a gift of the Jews. To the ancient Jews and on to us, earthly time and history are what is real. To other ancient peoples like the Greeks, Egyptians, or Babylonians; the real was what was heavenly and ideal. To us, earthly time is real time where to the other ancients, eternity was their real time.
According to author Thomas Cahill, to the ancients who were not people of the book, the future was always a replay of the past and the past was simply an earthly replay of the over-the-top drama of the heavens. This would explain how so much of the over the top drama of the gods in Greek mythology resembles what we can see on The Jerry Springer Show any day of the week.
We have an old saying; those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. To ancient Greeks, Egyptians, and Babylonians this repeating of history was the normal state of affairs. To the Jews, history is more of a process of unfolding through real time.
To the Jews and to us, the future will not be what happened before. The future is unknowable and cannot be discerned by reading the stars or some such thing. It will happen as it happens and unfold as it unfolds. It is not in a cycle but is a path leading where God will have it lead.
Pardon me for this quick foray into ancient history, but it is important. What this means to us is something very special. What it means is that from the very beginning the people of faith, the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, thought differently than those around them. If you have ever wondered why it seems that the people of the Old and the New Testaments are different from the rest of the world it’s because we are. This is the way it has been for over 5,000 years. We believe something different. Our faith is not a run of the mill faith.
Again according to Cahill, for the first time ever, for the first time ever, the future will not be what has happened before. There is a promise that something new is happening. The future is no longer written, it is in the hands of those who shape it. The future is no longer about what has been but something that is coming.
As Christians, we believe that the future is in the hands of God and we are called to participate as partners in service to God and all God created.
So if our faith is not your run of the mill faith, so too the words we use to ring in the season of our dear savior’s birth aren’t your run of the mill words either. And if our faith is not your run of the mill faith, then so too the use of the words of the Old Testament as they are spoken and fulfilled by Jesus the Christ will not be ordinary either.
Jesus speaks of the return of God to the nation. Nobody knows when that will be, not even the Son, only the Father knows. Jesus speaks of the days of Noah and of a time when people will be working side by side in the fields and the mills. So too it will be one day when people are doing ordinary things and living their ordinary lives on the day that the Lord will come.
Often we make mistakes interpreting this sign of Noah and the sign of the field and the mill though.
Honestly, we read too much into the sign of Noah, we remember too much history. Reading this passage “As it was in the days of Noah,” too often people remember the wrath focused stuff. For example from Genesis 6:11-13 we read, “The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, ‘The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.’”
Continuing at verse 17 we read, “And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.”
I chose the King James Version for these readings. To me it just seems to have 10% more wrath than modern translations.
We read in these translations about people being horrible and God being angry and filled with wrath toward God’s own people. We read in the time of Noah that “all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.” We then can pick up the paper and read of the horrors of our own time, and I don’t have to remind you of the horrors of this world. It would be pretty easy to come to the conclusion that if God was unhappy with humanity in the days of Noah, God’s anger could be in full effect today.
So it’s very easy to come to the conclusion that “as it was in the days of Noah” is about the way all flesh has corrupted the earth, but Jesus doesn’t say that. Looking at the rest of the passage, the way people are working in the fields and mills, Jesus is talking about daily living. He speaks of the days before the flood when people were eating and drinking marrying and giving in marriage. People were doing ordinary things and living their ordinary lives, oblivious to what was going to happen next because they expect no change from what’s happening now. If folks expect history to recycle itself they won’t expect it when something new happens. Jesus goes on to describe the Son of Man’s coming the same way.
We also have a tendency to misinterpret the passage as it says that some will be taken and some will be left behind in the fields. Some theologians and readers of the “Left Behind” series use the words “dispensationalism” and “rapture” when talking about this passage. For those of us who speak English; some believe that this passage speaks to a time when believers will be removed, taken from the earth during the final times of trial and tribulation described in the Revelation to John.
Well, this isn’t so. First, Matthew’s gospel was written before John’s Revelation. Matthew was not describing something that had yet to be described. Then we add the fact that Matthew’s gospel was written to the Jewish community and Judaism has no theology of what comes after the Messiah comes so we wouldn’t expect to find reference to what comes after the Messiah’s coming. This is one source of misunderstanding of this passage.
Second and more importantly, Matthew was describing a people would be gathered into the holy assembly of the Church on Earth, into the body of Christ. Matthew’s gospel points to a church that is to “faithfully endure the tribulation which is part of the church’s mission.
Jesus is comparing the bringing of the people into the body of Christ the same way God describes Noah bringing the animals into the Ark. The people are gathered into the body as the people are gathered in from the fields and the mills to the community of Christ. Our mission is not to escape, but to live especially in the hard times as the body of Christ serving the world when it needs it most.
But I guess there’s no misunderstanding about the last pieces from our reading this morning, the coming of the thief. It is obvious that a thief will come when he is least expected. If a thief shows up when the police are at your house there won’t be a big haul. So too the Son of Man will not come when we expect him to come, so we must always be alert. We must always be prepared for the coming of the Messiah. As the old expression goes, the bible doesn’t say “get ready,” it says “be ready.”
We are to be ready for the one who is coming, the one who is coming as described in the words of the Lord from the prophet Isaiah. He is the one who will judge between the nations, the one who will intercede for many peoples. He will bring peace to the world. After all, only when there is peace will we be able to beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks. This is when nation will no longer rise up against nation. This is when we will no longer need to learn of war.
And after watching the news this morning, there may be no better time than the present.
So how do we prepare for this day, for this day when the Son of Man returns, this day when swords will be turned into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks? For this part of the Body of Christ, that process continues tonight. Tonight is the first time I will serve this church as moderator of the Session. Pray for your Session. Pray that we will discern the will of God for this part of the Body of Christ.
Pray that we will discern how we are called to serve the world as the men in the field and the women in the mill. Pray that we will discern how we are called to serve creation as God’s people in creation. Pray that we will discern how we are called to serve creation as the redeemed people of God, the people who are separate from those who do not know God.
Friends, these are exciting days. We are called to look to a glorious future, one completely different from anything that has ever come before us. We are called to look to a time when God will reign. We don’t look to the past to see what this will look like because we have a faith that is not your run of the mill faith. We look to what will come. We sing “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus,” not “Baby, One More Time.” We remember the past, but we also know that when you glorify the past the future dries up. So we look at history, not to it. We stand on the promises of God, not on the circle of life.
This is the Advent, this is the day of the coming of the Lord. As we prepare to celebrate his coming as the fully human and fully divine Jesus of Nazareth, as we prepare to celebrate the coming of God Almighty as a weak and powerless baby, let us celebrate what has already happened on the cross, and let us be ready for what is to come in power and in glory.
References
Cahill, Thomas "The Gifts of the Jews." New York: Nan A. Telese, Doubleday, 1998.
The New Interpreter's Bible, Volume VIII, pages 446-447
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