Advent 1

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Advent 1
PROPER: A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 29, 1998

TEXT: Matthew 24:37-44 - Therefore, you must also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

ISSUE: Matthew is preparing the early church for the fact that the Lord's second coming is delayed. People of that time had little sense of future. In sharp contrast, the people of today have little sense of the present and a greater sense of future, i.e. saving and planning. The gospel message is relevant to both situations. When the Second Coming occurs is not so much the issue, as our preparedness. We as disciples of Jesus Christ need to be constant in our faithfulness and forbearing in our ministries. The coming of Christ at Christmas is something of a metaphor for us and calls into awareness our need to be prepared to receive him. It is our time to examine our commitments.
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This Sunday marks the beginning of the Advent Season and the beginning of the new church year. The four Sundays of Advent (Advent meaning "coming" from the Latin.) are a time in our tradition for looking forward to the coming of Jesus Christ at Christmas. The purples and blues of Advent mark the season, in the church at least, a time for spiritual preparating through prayer, self-examination ushering in repentance and readiness for receiving the spirit of Christ into our lives. It is time of readiness and renewing of our own spirits. Needless to say, it is extremely difficult to think of Advent in our time as a season that is spiritual and penetential in a world that comes alive with hussle and bustle in shopping and partying. but then a goodly number of you are here today, so obviously we are continuing to plan and prepare for our spirits for the special holy time. I'm glad we are all here.
As we begin this new year, the church's lectionary readings shift to the "A Cycle" of readings. This year the emphasis on the majority of Sundays will be on the Gospel of Matthew. We left Luke's account of the Gospel behind last week. We'll still read some of Luke's writings this year, but it will not be the emphasis. Matthew's gospel was written, it is believed, sometime between 80- 85 AD. His emphasis was to address largely the early Jewish Christians, that is, those Judeans who were accepting Jesus as Messiah. You will find that much of Matthews writing deals with Matthew relating how Jesus was like or had an affinity to Jewish prophets out of the past, and how he was in many ways a continuing revelation of God out of Jewish writings in the Old Covenant.
We begin this morning with the Apocalyptic writing or section of Matthew. He calls upon these very early Jewish Christian followers to be prepared for the Second Coming of Christ, which was thought to occur after the end of time the age. The issue for Matthew is not merely that they look forward to the end of the page, but that they remain ready and prepared for it. In Matthew's time, people did not have much of a sense of future. Life didn't change much for them. There were limited goods and supplies. Day to day was pretty much the same. There was little planning for the future. You lived more day to day. Thus, the concept of the return, or Second Coming of the Messiah was not for these people something that was off in the future. For them everything was imminent. By the time Matthew is writing in 80 A.D., the Temple in Jerusalem had already been destroyed in 70 A.D. The destruction of the Temple for these Jewish folk was the end of the age. It was an end of an era. It was an enormous disaster. It was also about fifty years since the death of Jesus upon the cross. Thus, they expected that the end should have come. These early Judean-Christians are being taunted by non-Christians as to why their Messiah has not yet come. It may well be that the early Judean Christians are themselves becoming disenchanted with the idea that their deliverance has not come in all these fifty years and certainly not since the recent fall of the Jerusalem temple.
Matthew, then has Jesus saying that the church must not be concerned about when the end of the age will come, but that they must remain faithful and prepared for the coming of the Lord. It was like the time of Noah (and notice how Matthew uses an Old Testament Scripture example) people who were not prepared for the awesome day of the Lord when the flood came were washed away. Only Noah in his preparedness and faithfulness was ready when the time came. Women grinding in the field need to be ready for that awesome day, as the unprepared will be left behind, and the faithful taken into the hands of the Lord. If you know a burglar is coming, you stay awake and make yourself ready. So the work of the church for Matthew in his Gospel is that the church in times of uncertainty and despair must remain ready for the Lord and the Light, the new dawning whenever it may come.
In our time, we are quite different from the 1st century. We are very future oriented. We are great planners for the future. We buy big insurance policies. We plan for our retirement. We plan our future vacations. We begin putting away money for our childrens' education when some of them are still in diapers. (Some do.) We are rather future oriented. Time flies for us. Our digital watches quickly move us into the future. The end of the age is something that we are more inclined to put off into the distant future. The great majority of people live well into older ages. We are truly devastated by the death of young people or adults. We feel like we are owed longevity. Thus, we have to approach this Gospel reading from different perspective. We travel and move quickly as we are thrust ahead by plush automobiles and supersonic jets. So thrust into the future are we, that we miss dealing with the present. Sometimes things of the present get set aside, neglected. We can't take time so smell the proverbial roses and discover or re-discover the content and condition of our spirituality, of our faith and our spiritual attitudes. While we are future oriented, the fact remains that there are signs, signals of the end of the age, and abrupt endings.
A few years back many of were trained as children to hide under our desks at school in anticipation of a catastrophic cataclysmic nuclear end. We had to prepare. While the Soviet threat has passed, we now live with the threats of terrorist attacks with loosely guarded and unaccounted for nuclear weapons. We live with the threat of terrorist biological warfare. We live with the threats of serious illness; automobile accidents. Even as we live into what we hope will be a glorious future, we still live with the reality of our end. How is it that we wish to stand before our Lord? How do we see the deep spirituality and attitudes of our lives? These are the issues and the question of Matthew's Gospel. It is an issue of being aware of who we are in the here and now that is the issue. Is our life an expression of shame or fear of meeting the Lord or do we feel a sense of resonance with the Lord? Do we feel at peace and with a sense of comfort with the possibility of dying and being acceptable and worth of union with God?
The Season of Advent and this last of November and early December becomes one of the most frenzied times of the year. We looking ahead planning for the big day, December 25th. All the excitement is not all bad as we get ready for this wonderful feast. But we ought not let anything in our lives keep us from the evaluation and appreciation of the kind of lives God would have us to live. Christmas like other obsessions and drives of our lives can be demonic without reflection and study, and the desire to embrace the ways and teachings of our Lord. We must live now in the present that we might never be ashamed or afraid to die.
We might well ask ourselves how do we wish to be remembered, and how effective have we been in terms our witness to our Christian faith? What are the issues that have to be resolved? To be in love and charity with our neighbors is certainly one criteria. Do we really know our children and our spouses keeping faithful, and showing our children the values of uncompromising love and forgiveness? Are our lives an expression of sharing and generosity? It is not likely that we are perfect. We all know only too well the darkness of our lives. We know also that God came into the darkness and the despair of the world to enligten the darkness, and to raise up the fallen. This is the season when we seek to reclaim the grace that comes from Jesus Christ, and to become resonant with the Lord. Resonance is that physical principal whereby there is a transfer of energy. If I sing a note into the piano, the energy of the sound waves of my voice are transferred to the string inside the piano and it begins to vibrate at the same frequency. This season is the one where again, knowing full well that life is short, we seek to hear and receive the presence of Christ into our lives so that having become aware of his love and his forgiveness of us, aware of the transfer of the loving spirit of God we may be resonate with his divine energy, and live accordingly in our lives. Just as a light can be passed from one candle to another, may we receive the enlightenment of God in Christ and share it with others.
I will close with prayer this morning. These are two prayers from the (old) 1928 Book of Common Prayer Book, page 588 from Forms of Prayer to be used in Families.

Let us pray.
Dedication of Soul and Body to God's Service, with a Resolution to be grwoing daily in Goddness.
And since it is of thy mercy, O gracious Father, that another day is added to our lives; We here dedicate both our souls and our bodies to thee and thy service, in a sober, righteous, and godly life: in which resolution, do thou, O merciful God, confirm and strengthen us; that as we grow in age, we may grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Prayer for Grace to enable us to perform that Resolution.
But, O God, who knowest the weakness and corruption of our nature, and the manifuld temptations which we daily meet with; We humbly beseech thee to have compassion on our infirmities, and to give us the constant assistance of thy Holy Spirit; that we may be effectually restrained from sin, and incited to our duty. Imprint upon our hearts such a dread of thy judgments, and such a grateful sense of thy goodness to us, as may make us both afraid and ashamed to offend thee. And, above all, keep in our minds a lively remembrance of that great day, in which we must give a strict account of our thoughts, words, and actions to him whom thou hast appointed the Judge of quick and dead, thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

May this season be truly an occasion of preparation for the coming of Christ into renewed, prepared, and ordered lives.