“Send us your light.”
God’s people of all eras have recognized the human
need for divine guidance. We find and
feel ourselves in situations beyond our understanding and control. We ask, “what should we do?” We people of faith recognize God has a claim
on us and cares about our behavior and our choices. We people of faith understand God values us
and is invested in us. God’s people
affirm the hopeful statement in today’s reading from Isaiah:
Many people shall come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that
he may teach us his ways
and
that we may walk in his paths”.
Our vision for the human family is all people might
come to know and embrace God’s dream for all of creation. Our prayer is that God will send us God’s
light.
Light is an Advent theme, enhanced by the growing
darkness surrounding us as the days get shorter and shorter. We pray for light: not sunshine, but
spiritual enlightenment – inner light to make us luminous and to help us
understand with greater knowledge and clarity what is happening around us, to
us, and inside of us so that we can respond in a godly, faithful way.
The Advent theme of light is easy to get our head
around. Another theme, especially
prominent on the first Sunday of Advent, is more elusive – the theme of
time. It always feels odd to begin a new
church year by focusing on the end of time.
Jesus’ return is a big deal to the faithful living
during the years when the various New Testament gospels and letters are being
written. Many people who traveled with
Jesus personally vividly remember his promise to return. After the Ascension his followers expect it
to happen at any moment, perhaps in a day or a week or in a few months. What will happen, they wonder, if Jesus
returns at night and they sleep through it?
To use a phrase from today’s jargon, will they be left behind as Jesus guides
those awake into his kingdom?
Early on, no one even thinks it important to write
down Jesus’ teaching or an account of his ministry. They can not imagine a need to document his
life because his return is thought to be close at hand. But a year goes by, then two, then ten and
another 10. Some hold fast to the
promise of an imminent return, but others give up hope. The theme of time and the question “what time
is it?” is woven throughout the various New Testament writings because the
faithful are trying to figure it out.
Paul weighs in through today’s reading taken from his
letter to the church Rome. He tells them
to wake up because the day of salvation is near. He uses the phrase ‘wake up’ not to mean
literally stay wake, but more like how we might say, “Snap out of it.” The “snap out” relates to their
behavior. They are to shed the darkness
of drunkenness, debauchery, licentiousness, quarreling, and jealousy. Lay aside these works of darkness, Paul
instructs them, and put on the armor of light.
Our reading from Matthew adds to the discussion. Chapter 24 begins with Jesus describing the
destruction of the Temple and a terrible time of tribulation. As I said a few weeks ago, the events which
Jesus describes in around the year 30 AD are now current events as Matthew
writes his gospel. Jesus states in verse
31 when these dire events are at the darkest point, the Son of Man will return
in great glory and “he will send
out his angels with a great trumpet sound, and they will gather his chosen ones
together from the four winds, from one extremity of the heavens to their other
extremity.” Today’s reading picks
up at this point as Jesus states no one knows when this will happen, but all
should be ready.
Jesus then puts forward four separate teachings and
examples of why being ready is important.
First, he reflects on the days of Noah and how everyone other than Noah
was carrying on as if nothing bad could ever happen. When the flood comes and they are swept
away. Next, two men will be in a
field. One will be taken and one
left. The same happens with two women
who are at a grinding meal. It is not at
all clear if it is better to be taken or to be left behind, but given the first
reference to Noah, those swept away or taken away are the ones who are
lost. Finally Jesus describes a
homeowner who sleeps through a break in.
Had he known when the thief was coming he would have been awake.
What does being awake look like? Should we commit to a lifestyle of neurotic
sleeplessness laced with anxiety and fear?
Or does staying awake look like something else? Jesus himself gives us the best clue.
Immediately following the passage we read this
morning, but as a part of the ongoing discussion, Jesus tells this parable:
Who then is the faithful and wise slave, whom
his master has put in charge of his household, to give the other slaves their
allowance of food at the proper time? Blessed
is that slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives. Truly I tell you, he will put that
one in charge of all his possessions. But
if that wicked slave says to himself, “My master is delayed,” and he begins to beat his fellow
slaves, and eats and drinks with drunkards, the
master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an
hour that he does not know.
For Jesus, being awake is equivalent to being faithful
and steady. It is an idea we have named
the last two Sundays: enduring in all that is right and good and godly. What time is it? It is time to be who God has called us to
be. It is time to live and act in a
manner in keeping with the teaching and witness of the One for whom we
wait.
In a little less than a month we will gather in this
space to celebrate God’s advent – God’s coming – into this world in the person
and presence of an infant, God’s only Son.
We know when it will happen. The
service times are printed in your bulletin.
What we don’t know is how God will come to us. As with the first Christmas, God’s advent is
always unexpected and always unpredictable, but always welcomed by those who
perceive it. Pray for God to send light
to guide you and commit yourself to living faithfully, doing what God has
entrusted to you to do. Do this and you
will be awake when Jesus returns.
