So I guess one could say that our liturgical year starts with a bang! Although we may have come to expect it, we know that our season of Advent is about preparing for the return of the Lord, those texts we read from the Gospel about the end of times are always unsettling and difficult to understand. We have heard this morning a passage for the chapter 24 in Matthew, which is certainly one of the most challenging chapters in the Bible, and hearing only one short extract does not make it easier, so if you have both the time and the curiosity, I invite you to read at home the whole chapter, to which you can also add Chapter 25, and I’ll explain why later. But let’s get back to our immediate context. We are at the end of Jesus’s ministry, after his triumphal entrance in Jerusalem. In Chapter 24, Jesus has just spent some time teaching in the Temple, a teaching that has become quite confrontational with the religious authorities. As they exit the place, Jesus’s disciples invite him to contemplate the beauty and sturdiness of the foundations of the Temple, to which Jesus replies that soon all of it will fall apart. They all head to the Mount of Olives, and that’s when the disciples ask for more details: “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the signs of your coming and of the end of the age?” (v3). And so, if you go back to the whole chapter, you will see that Jesus had two answers: One about the destruction of the Temple (4-35) and then, and that’s our passage today (36-44), another answer about the end of times and his second coming. And I am insisting on this because Matthew makes it very clear that there are two different answers to two different questions, when we have often come to smush it all into a big prediction about the end: famines, earthquakes, persecutions, signs and great omens. Most scholars believe that all what Jesus describes, although wrapped in apocalyptic poetry, has indeed happened after his death and Resurrection, and his coming to his kingdom in heaven. The Temple has been profaned and then destroyed by the Romans during the first Jewish war. From now on, a complete different era starts: The Jews will be in exile and worship in their synagogues, there won’t be any more sacrifices, whether in the Temple or elsewhere, and the canons of the Scriptures will be closed. As for the followers of Christ, although attacked and persecuted, they will be gathered in the church. That’s all the first part of Chapter 24, and now Jesus starts responding about the end of times, that where our text starts today in v36: “But about that day and hour (…)”.
So this makes for a long introduction but I think this is important to take the time to break it down because this chapter has been so often used to predict the end and also manipulate, terrorize and be weaponized against believers and unbelievers alike. In fact, Jesus first made a prophecy about events that were to come shortly after his time (during in own “generation”, see v34) and not to scare his disciples, but to encourage them to faithfulness and endurance, and then he says plainly that, as for the end of times, no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father (v 37). So I want you to have that in mind next time you hear about the end of the world: No one knows, and although there are prophecies in the Scriptures (and most of them, we believe as Christians are about Jesus), there is no way to use them now to predict the future. If Jesus himself didn’t know, then how could we?
And actually, if we look closer, the coming of Christ, far from being a terrifying event, seems to happen rather casually, in the middle of everyday activities. When he comes, people will not be distressed and hiding away, they will be enjoying their lives, eating and drinking, and planning for the future, marrying and giving in marriage. The passage about the one left and the one taken whether in the field or while grinding meal has been used to develop the idea of the rapture in the 19th century, but it’s rather used here to describe the suddenness of the events, as well as the unpreparedness of the people. Far from generating all sort of catastrophes on the path, the coming of the Lord is as unnoticeable as certain, and that’s actually why Jesus warns the disciples. It is not dangerous because it generates catastrophes, rather it’s dangerous because it is so quiet. We don’t know what this coming of the Son of Man is really about, most Jews expected the Messiah to come on earth to establish his peace and justice, some now believe it could be the time of our death, I had a professor at seminary who claimed that since when we die time is no more, we are automatically brought to the end of times! I have to say death is certainly the end of our world. But that’s a lot of speculations. What we need to understand and to remember is that our time is our timeis ruled by God, oriented towards the coming of Christ, and our time will find its completion in the Kingdom.
As you know we will have a visit from the bishop soon, in January, and so we have a little class for those who want to be received in the Episcopal Church (You are welcome to join). What we are going to talk about today is “Liturgical time”, and I love how the authors explain how the way we use our time and mark our time say a lot about what we value and what we work towards. They say that for example, teachers mark the time starting in September, bookkeepers mark the time until April 15, and if you work the land, it’s probably harvest season that determines the beginning of the count down. Well, they say, for us the main event is Christ, and our time is organized around the main events of his life: Birth (Advent/ Christmas), manifestation (Epiphany), suffering, death and Resurrection (Lent and Easter), and so on. Our liturgy shows that our life as Christians is encapsulated in God’s time, and it is not just a nicety about the way we organize worship, it says deeply that the Kingdom of Christ and its coming is what we value most and what we work towards, in the same way, the bookkeeper works towards Tax Day and the teacher strives to wrap up his program by mid-May. And this is what we are reminded of today as we hear this passage of the Gospel on the first day of the year: We are working towards the Kingdom and we need to get ready, because God’s time is so wrapped up inside our time with its own schedule, obligations and deadlines that we risk to forget about it. There is a big theme in Matthew, especially in those two chapters 24 and 25, about the “falling asleep”, and we see it here in v 42-44: “Keep awake” Jesus says twice. Now we don’t understand what it means if we assume it’s about dozing off on the job, like when you’re a little bored with a sermon. Rather, Jesus compares the everyday life to sleeping, whether it’s eating, drinking, planning weddings, working in the fields or fixing dinners. Jesus has shared people’s everyday life and he worked too, so he is certainly not saying everyday life does not matter, but he’s warning people against being so caught in it that they forget they are on God’s time first. They all need to realize that what should determine everything they do is the coming of the Kingdom. And it’s very hard to do because it’s not obvious, right? What’s obvious in our lives is the baby crying, the dog who wants to go out, the bills to pay, the doctor’s appointment, another dinner that needs to be put on the table.
So how do we do that? How do we adjust to be on God’s time and get ready for what’s to come? Do we have to put all of that away? But how would it even work? Jesus uses this image of the thief in the night, do we have to assume that we have to get ready for him to take it all from us, and should we live as completely detached from all we possess and from all those whom we love? After all, the best way not to be robbed is to not possess a thing! And we spent a whole year reading Luke’s Gospel who keeps reminding us that wealth is the main thing that comes in the way to the kingdom as well as human attachments. Yet I don’t think Jesus is saying he will be coming to rob us. Rather he talks again about how silently God’s time unfolds, and although it is certainly a tradition around the mystics and the saints to renounce the life of this world as of right now, Matthew has a much more nuanced answer, an answer that certainly works best for all of us where we are. How do we get ready for the kingdom? Matthew responds with four different parables (End of Chapter 24 and Ch 25), and all of them are about good stewardship. We prepare for the Kingdom by taking good care of all God has confided to us in this life: The servant takes care of the household (24:45-51), the bridesmaids fill their lamps to welcome the groom (25:1-13), the servants invest the money of the Master (14-30), the people feed the hungry, cloth the naked, visit the sick and the prisoner lest they will be separated as the goats from the sheep (25:31-46). Matthew, the tax collector, gives us very concrete advice to prepare for the Kingdom, do your work but do it all not for your own gain (and we know he used to do that in his job), rather do it for God’s glory and for God’s purposes. That’s how you prepare, that how you are awake while it’s still dark. Matthew was not a mystic and he talks to real people who were trying to build the church while longing for Christ’s return: Be a good steward of the church of Christ, use it to do good and to save the people, not for your own sake. I think this is a powerful message for the church today still. We don’t do church as a refuge in this world, our safe haven, a waiting room until the real thing, until we get our actual home. We fall asleep if we do that. On the other way around, we are to live and to serve in the church as good stewards of what God as given us, not just to make it last, but what we have we have to use for God’s ends and God’s purposes, to serve God’s people.