First Sunday of Advent, November 27, 2022

Pastor Jonathan Linman
Faith Lutheran Church
Matthew 24:36-44

Happy New Year! Liturgically speaking in terms of the church’s calendar, today, the First Sunday of Advent, marks the beginning of a new year in the life cycle of the church’s Sunday celebrations.

Advent is from Latin, meaning “to come,” or “coming.” It’s a four-week season of waiting. Waiting for the coming of the Lord. 

And it’s a waiting for the comings of Christ in multiple dimensions of time – past, present, and future. Thus, one focus of Advent is a waiting for the coming of Jesus at Christmas, which is a looking back in time some two-thousand years ago when the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth in the baby Jesus born of Mary. 

Then also, in addition to the past, Advent focuses on the future and the promise of Christ to return to complete in fullness what he began two millennia ago, ushering in the consummated reign of God’s justice, peace, and well-being for all of creation. 

Finally, Advent seeks to open our eyes to the ways in which Christ continues to come to us in the present time, in our lives, right here and now – when Christ comes to us anew in the proclamation of his word; when Christ comes to us at baptism and in Holy Communion; when Christ comes to forgive our sins when we engage in confession; when Christ is present when two or three gather in his name in the community of the church. And more in the mystery of the ways God in Christ comes to us.

Today’s gospel passage from Matthew (the Gospel which will be our focus for the coming church year in our three-year lectionary cycle) makes it very clear that only God the Father knows when the Son of Man will come – “for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” And “about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” So it is that we are instructed, “Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” Therefore, the element of surprise is featured prominently in Matthew’s writing and thinking. 

Thus, Matthew’s perspective suggests that we shouldn’t waste our time speculating about when, where, and how the Son of Man will come again, either in the present or in future time. 

That leaves out certain types of Christians who spend a lot of energy (and sometimes make good money) coming up with predictions about the when’s and how’s of Jesus’ promised return. Matthew’s Jesus has no time for that kind of speculation.

In Matthew’s version of the story, there are no signs to look for that give clues about the return of the Son of Man. People just go about their normal lives, eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage. Then suddenly, the Son of Man comes completely unawares. We’re called simply to be poised for the element of surprise.

But here for me is the most intriguing verse in today’s gospel reading, where Matthew reports that Jesus said, “But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, the owner would have stayed awake and would not have let the house be broken into.” 

In essence, Jesus here compares his promised return to that of a thief who breaks into a house in the dead of night to steal. Jesus as thief! What are we to make of that? 

First, consider this: the vigilance of the owner of the house would prevent the thief’s breaking into the house. Here’s what I take that to mean. The more we try to figure out when, how and where the Lord will come to us, the more we try to be in control of the situation and circumstances through our speculations. And the more we pretend to be in control, the more likely we are to miss the surprise of Christ’s coming! In terms of personal comings of Christ, he might find a more willing household to visit where folk are more amenable to surprise and less controlling. 

Because in Matthew there are no signs to look for, we are invited to relinquish our efforts to control and simply to trust in the element of surprise. Jesus in Matthew, therefore, is making an invitation to faith, to trust that even though we don’t know when, where, or how, Christ will nonetheless make good on the promise to come to us in surprising ways, when and where perhaps we least expect it. Thus, true readiness for Jesus’ coming is simply the posture of faith, of trust in his promise to return.

But there’s more to this feature of the story of Jesus coming as thief in the night. If Jesus in Matthew is imagined in today’s reading as a thief, what is it that he is coming in the dead of night to steal? Here are some possibilities:

Jesus might come as a thief in the night to steal from us the fears and anxieties that keep us awake at night. Jesus might come to rob humanity of the malice, arrogance, ignorance, hatred, injustice, warring madness that afflict us as a species. 

Jesus coming as a thief steals from us the sting and reality of death and replaces our mortality with resurrected new life. In short, Jesus wants to steal all of that which robs us of peace, security, well-being, and of life itself. 

Well, Jesus, sacred thief, you can have all those things that rob us of all the blessings of life! Come, steal away! Think of it: Jesus, as thief becomes a kind of Robin Hood for us, who steals from the rich, who steal from the poor, to give riches back to the poor. Such a thief who takes away all the things that burden us – that’s gospel, that’s welcome good news! Come, Lord Jesus, our righteous robber, our holy thief. 

Remember that Jesus was crucified between two criminals, two thieves, where he was deemed by the Roman imperial authorities and religious leaders as a law breaker, himself a criminal. And it’s precisely on the cross where we are robbed of the weight and condemnation of our sin, and it’s precisely in the empty tomb after the resurrection, that Christ ultimately robs us of the ultimate claims of death. Thanks be to God. Come, Lord Jesus. And all of this continues to happen right now, right before our eyes of faith.

Jesus comes as thief in his holy word, even now in this place, to rob us of the bad theology that infects our thinking and diminishes our quality of life, faulty reasoning that suggests that we have to earn our salvation by what we do. 

Jesus comes as thief in the waters of baptism where we he steals from us our status as rejected, abandoned orphans, where through water, word, and Spirit we are made children of God, all of us enfolded into God’s universal family.

Christ our Robin Hood comes to us in the rich abundance of a meager meal of bread and wine robbing us of fears of scarcity and replacing those fears with the rich abundance of the messianic banquet with plenty for all. 

Through these means of grace, Jesus breaks into our well-defended psyches and souls at the terrifying midnight hour, often in surprising ways, thus making us more receptive to receiving the gift of his gospel in faith and trust. In short, Jesus’ coming robs us of unbelief and replaces it with belief, trust and faith in him and the God who sent him. 

Thus, the seeds of faith are planted and sprout and grow, faith generated, watered, awakened, renewed, when our holy thief comes in the nights of our darkest, dimmest hours. Come, Lord Jesus.

So it is that we wait and watch for the surprise of the coming of the Son of Man, our Lord Christ. His coming now. His coming again in some promised future toward which we are spiraling – in the cycles of the years, but with forward movement. 

But ours is not a passive waiting. It’s a ready and watchful waiting when we are fully awake and not sleeping through our lives, despite the fact that worldly powers that be would have us be numbed, distracted, inattentive to the injustices they perpetrate. 

No. Our watchful waiting involves a significant amount of activity as we continue as in the days of Noah to eat and drink, marry, and give in marriage, that is, as we live our normal Christian lives in loving service with and to our neighbors in need. 

Today’s first reading helps us understand how we actively engage in our expectant waiting, poised for the surprises of Christ’s coming. Like the nations of old we “go up to the mountain of the Lord” where we are taught the “ways of God, that we may walk in the paths of the Lord.” That’s what we do here every Sunday. 

And like the people of old we hear this instruction echoing through the centuries: “God shall judge between the nations and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword again nation; neither shall they learn war any more.” In short, our ready, active waiting is marked by our work for peace in many and various ways as we “walk in the light of the Lord!” 

Then there’s Paul’s helpful instruction in today’s passage from Romans, where he writes: “Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us walk decently as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in illicit sex and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy.” “Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ…” Thus, having put on the Lord Jesus at baptism, our active waiting is marked by decency – a rare commodity these days. Which is to say, the witness of our decency is very much in contrast to the reveling, drunkenness, debauchery, licentiousness, quarrelling and jealousy that characterize so much of life in nation and world today.

So it is in these poised and ready and active manners, we wait for the surprise of Christ’s coming now and in the future by engaging in love of neighbor, fully attentive to the fact that we may discover in them, especially the strangers in our midst, that Christ has come to us yet again when we entertain angels unawares in the people we serve. For Jesus promised, “when you do it to the least of these, the members of my family, you do it to me” (cf. Matthew 25:31-40). 

So it is that we pray, Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.