My second sermon at Pilgrim Lutheran Church and School during my Ministry in Context Field Placement in 2022-23 during my third year at LSTC.
Title Slide
Happy New Year! Today is truly the New Year, for the church, as we joyfully await and prepare annually to welcome Immanuel, God With Us, our God who became human in order to show us the way of Love and Life!
The next few weeks are designed to help prepare our hearts and minds through themes of hope, peace, joy, and love for Jesus’s coming. We who live in the middle of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection 2,000 years ago, and Jesus’ return in the soon but not yet, know that the season of Advent touches on both the incarnation and the Second Coming
Gospel of Matthew slide
First, let’s meet our writer for the majority of the gospel lessons over the next year. The gospel of Matthew is traditionally ascribed to the disciple Matthew, for a community of Jewish Christians, written about 35-40 years after Jesus’ resurrection. They lived in eager anticipation of the return of Christ and expected it to happen in their lifetimes. And with every year that passed, people became more confused, complacent, or downright cynical about the idea that Jesus was coming back at all.
So, Matthew’s gospel spoke to his generation and the generations to come about preparing for that moment, that hour, that day, that much-awaited event. There’s an emphasis on time, both Kronos (or clock time) and Kairos (which means God’s time). And that’s where the text has taken on a life of its own:
Matthew 24:40-44
Then two will be in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken, and one will be left. Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore, you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
Those verses have been used by faith leaders and writers to create anxiety, dread, and fear – pretty much anything but Hope, Peace, Joy and Love!
Preaching about the Rapture, sermons about the End Times, the Left Behind series of fiction novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, and similar apocalyptic writings have created among some Christians a culture and attitude of fear, of not being good enough to spend eternity with God.
I am convinced that Matthew had no agenda with this text to create fearful, paralyzed disciples of Jesus who were terrified about their loved ones being whisked away mid-sentence and being left behind because they weren’t prepared. These Christians in the latter part of the first century had enough to be frightened about.
Siege of Jerusalem slide:
In the year 70, the Roman empire destroyed the temple and overran Jerusalem. These followers’ lives were hard enough, believing in Jesus the Christ when other Jewish people still awaited the Messiah’s coming. We know they had challenges. We read in Paul’s letters when he and others were starting churches, they were collecting money for the church in Jerusalem.
So, when Matthew recalled the words of Jesus to be prepared, he was using them to rally the followers of The Way into joyous hope! Keep awake! Be ready! Jesus is coming soon! Really! Keep the faith!!!
What do we, as Christians, do with these texts in 2022, when Jesus still hasn’t come? Are we any different than Matthew’s early Christians? Aren’t some of us a little confused, complacent or downright cynical about the idea that Jesus could show up any day?
Save the Date slide
I know people who belong to churches whose leaders keep making predictions about the day of Jesus’ return. Many of those dates have passed. So the leaders read some more, recalculate, and give their followers a new date that Jesus is surely coming back. Talk about FOMO: the Fear of Missing Out.
But how did the Gospel today end: Therefore, you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
Every morning when I was young, my mom stood watch at our kitchen window, looking south over County Highway K, waiting for a glimpse of red flashing lights a mile and a half up the road, telling us it was time to run down our long driveway in time to catch the school bus. But there are no flashing lights, no billboards, no true predictions to tell us Jesus is coming. Nowhere in the Bible does it say when it will be. We have to live ready.
So what does “living ready” look like? I can think of three things that mark people who are living ready.
Living Ready 1 slide
First, people who live ready believe in Jesus as their Lord and Savior.
OK, this seems obvious, but it’s a very serious matter. We asked our three confirmands about their belief in Jesus Christ just three weeks ago. We asked Camryn’s parents and sponsors last weekend at her baptism. As part of our worship, we profess our faith through the Apostles’ Creed almost every week. Why? It is ultimately a statement of belief AND belonging. As Ben Sternke put it:
“To say ‘I believe…’ is not so much to confess individual confidence but to confess corporate belonging and participation in the Church of Jesus Christ, across time and space. The communion of saints throughout the world and throughout the ages who belong to Christ and participate in the life of God by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
To say “I believe” is an act of faith that we need to practice regularly among people of faith. It is a communal building up – to increase our faith while we increase the faith of others.
Living Ready 2 slide
Second, people who live ready live as “set-apart people.”
They live in the world, but not of this world. They act upon their faith in how they live every day, not just under this roof. They live generous, thoughtful, helpful lives, because of who they are. From the people who allow someone with three items and three small children to go ahead of them in the grocery line, to the couple who set aside their lives for months to assure Mike and I were packed and moved to Chicago, they are considerate in things small and great. They consider their lives a gift, every action a way to use that gift.
Right now, think of one person who has modeled for you that Christ-like generosity, thoughtfulness, and helpfulness. Someone who is living in this world, but living set apart. Now on the count of three, we are going to shout those names together, in a burst of gratitude. Ready? One, two, three! ……
Living Ready 3 slide
And, third, people who live ready want everyone with them.
When that unexpected day comes, I couldn’t help but be disappointed if the crowd was underwhelming. I picture an uncountable mass of all people from all times and places. People who live ready want a party, a banquet for everyone on that day. They can’t help but share the Good News of God’s love and God’s grace for all people.
Many of you have heard the story of the anthropologist studying an African community who set a basket of candy by a tree and offered the candy to the child who could get to it first. The children joined hands, ran together and shared the candy. One child explained it to the anthropologist: “Ubuntu. How can I be happy if all the others are sad?” Ubuntu: I am because we ALL are.
In what seemed to me a twist on that Ubuntu story, a good friend of mine wrote about Life as a headlong race toward Home: sometimes picking up others along the way, sometimes being carried yourself when you fall or falter. Knowing that we are going to make it, she said, by the grand-slam that is God’s grace. And learning how to absolutely, positively, no-matter-what trust in that. That has become my own vision of what our hope, God’s kindom, looks like. Not something I win, not a date that I need to calculate, not something for which I sit passively in the window and wait, but living ready, running toward Home, holding hands with others until we all reach Home.
That, Pilgrim, is our hope this Advent season. Living ready means not living in fear, but living every day filled with hope. Believing in Jesus as Lord and Savior, living grateful, thoughtful, and helpful lives, and bringing everyone home.
Final Slide
That is our hope this Advent season. As we wait for the arrival of Immanuel, and as we wait for the return of Christ. As we prepare for Christmas parties and negotiate stores filled with impatient shoppers. As we try to hold space in our own lives and hearts for some much-needed Christmas peace. Stay awake, my friends. Stay awake, be prepared and live ready!
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