Prepare to Be Surprised

Sermon by Rev Mary Alice Mulligan, PhD

1st Day of Advent - Scripture: Matthew 24:36-44

Happy New Year! Today we begin again the yearly journey of faith. This is week 1, with hope-filled anticipation of the coming of the Messiah. We shift from our year with Luke to opening Matthew (the first book of the New Testament) as our major Gospel book. This first season, the 4 weeks of Advent, was traditionally a penitential season, a time to prepare ourselves with prayer and repentance for the coming of Jesus Christ. The lectionary committee (the international, multi-denominational group which suggests our weekly Bible verses for worship services) traditionally chooses to begin the New Year with an apocalyptic passage, which is a portrayal of a cataclysmic end of the world as we know it, full of judgment and confusion. How can we be saying: Happy New Year? Yet today’s passage fits right with our Advent theme: A Season of Preparation. Of course, we are preparing for the birth of Jesus, but we also know he was already born, 2000 years ago. Matthew’s words from the adult Jesus signal the need to prepare for something brand new. So turn now to Matthew 24:36-44.

Suppose one of your closest family members calls you up to say they are picking you up in a couple hours to take you on a 10 day vacation? You are told not to worry. Your boss has given you the time off; substitutes have been gotten for your church responsibilities; even your suitcase is packed and sitting at the door. Just pack a carry-on and wait for your ride to arrive. Would you feel confused? Excited? Angry?  How you respond probably depends on how much you trust that family member. It could be the greatest trip of your life, but if the person isn’t trustworthy, it could be miserable. All you can do is wait and wonder in uncertainty.

Every apocalyptic promise is vague. Who can figure out what is going on when the speaker paints such an obscure picture? Apocalyptic is a genre of literature which usually shows upheaval, destruction, and judgment. The First Testament uses apocalyptic language when speaking of Yahweh’s power to set things straight after Babylon’s conquest of the people of Judah. But the visions set out are not step-by-step predictions. Rather, writers use vivid language to predict Yahweh’s coming, but the specifics are vague.

The vision Jesus sets out is no exception. Dramatic broad strokes, but unclear details. He talks firmly about “that day.” But what day? The day the Son of Man comes. But the particulars are purposely vague. No one will know what is going on, just like what happened in the story of Noah, when even Noah didn’t really know what was going on. Jesus is speaking of sometime in the future when, on that day people will be separated. But it isn’t clear what the criteria are for being taken or left. Or what will happen to the one who is taken? Something good? Or more like when the Gestapo came for a neighbor, who would never be seen again? In the midst of all the murky lingo, one thing is clear. Namely that no one knows the details. Even the Son doesn’t know when. Which is an important point. Jesus says explicitly: even he doesn’t know the details.

For centuries people have claimed to have “figured out” God’s hidden timeline in biblical passages or in current events. But this is impossible, since even the Son of Man doesn’t know. Although volumes have been written describing what it will be like when Jesus returns, they can’t know, although they do get rich selling millions of books. Jesus says, “No one knows!” The Late Great Planet Earth, the entire Left Behind series are all just works of the imagination. Interesting speculation perhaps; but not true. Apocalyptic visions show chaos and uncertainty. There is no sense trying to guess when God will make an appearance or what exact rewards or punishments will be. Apocalyptic details are purposely vague.

Ordinary life is more certain. Day-to-day life offers some predictability. Every day God’s power causes the sun to rise (even if you aren’t up early enough to see it) and then set. You can depend on the regularity of day following night following day. Seasons come and go in a predictable orderliness. You trusted it would happen: eventually the blistering heat of Sarasota summer would give way to these delightful cooler mornings. And you can already feel the lower humidity many days and the promise of the delight of winter in paradise. You can count on it.

Jesus may have engaged in an apocalyptic discourse, but the people he shows you are clearly going about typical activities in their everyday lives. When God intervenes in the world, Jesus assumes people will be living normal lives. The specific examples he uses show them going about their daily work. Women are grinding meal together; men are tending the crops. They are paying attention to their responsibilities. One commentator says, Jesus lifts up activities that are noteworthy only for their ordinariness. People are just living their lives, which is an important key. Life’s regularity. The early church had to determine how to keep living. If Jesus is not returning as soon as they hoped, they had to figure out how followers are supposed to live. So they learned: You carry on. Jesus paints the scene. When God intervenes, people are falling in love. They have parties, get married. Families are raised. People die. Babies are born. One normal day follows the next. So note, when Jesus creates a scene of when God comes, people have not separated themselves from the world. You don’t see people who have gathered with family and friends in a fully-stocked bunker to wait for the coming of divine judgment. No one in Jesus’ vision is trying to unpack some mystical numerology to figure out how many days before the Second Coming. Jesus just shows you normal people doing normal work. So, you too can focus on living your regular life.

But, still, we live in watchfulness. We are to live our days, ready for God. Sure there are lots of details we don’t know, but we follow Jesus’ suggestion. He says we should live in active vigilance, believing God will come.

Let’s flashback 2 millennia. No one expected the Messiah to come as a vulnerable baby, born to a simple peasant couple. But that’s what happened. The Word of God became incarnate in Jesus Christ. And most of us believe somehow God will intervene on earth again, But just as the folks 2000 years ago never could have predicted the birth of Jesus, so can we not imagine how or when God will come again. We might label now as “the between times,” celebrating the birth of Jesus and believing God will come again. “Be on guard,” we might say to ourselves, “so we don’t get caught off guard.” In all circumstance, always be ready for Christ to make an appearance.

Years ago, some homes had embroidered samplers on the wall which reminded the family: “Jesus is the head of this house. An unseen guest at every meal. An unseen listener to every conversation.” Not bad advice. We can be ready for his arrival at every moment, even though the promise of his return is all the certainty we get. Jesus’ words teach us to live each day as if this were the day of his appearing. Which means we need to get ready now!  No need to postpone forgiving someone, because today may be the day. We don’t need to start being kind to the disagreeable sister-in-law next Thanksgiving. God may sneak in before then. We might as well behave every day the way we want to behave when Jesus comes among us.

Someone estimated that St. Teresa of Calcutta picked up 17,000 dying persons off the streets, to give them comfort during their final time on earth. When asked how she could rescue 17,000 persons, she replied, “One at a time.” Each of us may ask ourselves, what would we do if we knew we would meet Jesus face to face today? Would we spend time harboring a grudge? Watching meaningless television? Or maybe we might give attention to one person who needs care? We get to live, ready for God’s appearance. We are to live in watchfulness.

Then we trust God’s surprises. We can trust God’s life-giving presence to surprise us. Exactly how God will be manifest is not for us to know. We get the memory of God among us as a human baby, and the promise that God will come among us again. But we get no blueprint for that next coming. So we just trust God to do God’s surprising part in God’s good time.

No one can guess what such manifestations might look like, but we receive occasional glimpses. Like the United Methodist Church in rural Iowa, where membership dwindled to a handful, and the bishop helped them make the painful decision to close at the next summer’s conference. Amazingly, this decision gave them tremendous freedom to be open to how God wanted them to be church during their final months. They decided to give themselves away as Jesus had done. So, they went door to door in town, asking how they could be helpful. We can guess. Over the next months they probably babysat; listened as people wept; taught someone to can peaches; raked yards. Then on Sunday mornings, curious townspeople wandered into the church building to learn about this self-giving group. By the time conference rolled around, the congregation was thriving with new members, so they didn’t close. We know, God didn’t come swooping down to save that church by driving people in the doors. Rather, through their sense of freedom following the decision to close, they found new purpose and new life. They never would have predicted God to be incarnate among them in the needs of others.

Our plans for our future don’t have to be firmly set out. We only need to be confident that God will be incarnate among the St Andrew family as we move forward. We don’t have to be able to predict the future, only trust God’s faithful presence which will carry us, wherever we go. We can trust God’s surprises.

So, St Andrew, as we prepare for a pastoral installation in January and whatever else our new liturgical year brings us, we remember the birth of a surprisingly vulnerable baby and we prepare for whatever surprises come with God’s new manifestations among us. During these important days of Advent, we can be sure of God’s eagerness to be among us. So we need to prepare. We show our ability to trust God by opening ourselves to God’s presence, which means, for instance living together as a congregation confident that God is already at work among us, clearing the way for whatever new calling is being prepared for us. We can trust the purposes of God will continue to erupt around and among us with glorious surprises.