Jesus is telling his disciples that heaven and earth will pass away, but his words will not pass away. He likens that time to a man who leaves on a journey and leaves the slaves in charge. Keep awake, for you do not know when the master will return, at cock-crow, midnight or dawn – Keep Awake.
At the risk of showing that I don’t have very solid end-time theology or understanding, here’s what this means to me.
We pray in the Lord’s Prayer, ‘your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven’. To me, this is about the immediacy of God’s kingdom on earth, now. It’s not about a time in the distant future where we meet Jesus. Rather, it’s about the opportunities we are presented every day to meet Jesus here and now. As we pray in our Baptismal Covenant, seek and serve Christ in all people. That’s imminent, here and now. Christ is in all people. God’s reign can happen here and now. If we’re awake.
Our charge and challenge is to be awake and see it. We can see Jesus and serve Christ in every interaction, every conversation with family, co-workers, strangers. That takes vigilance, though. We need to be always on guard, always watching for the Christ in them. It’s so easy to wander through my days half asleep.
This morning, I’m thinking about how hard it is to keep awake throughout my days, to see and serve Christ in every encounter. If I truly believe that Christ is in all people, that to feed the hungry is to feed Christ himself, that to care for children is to care for God, then I must be vigilant – keep awake. My opportunity to meet Christ happens hundreds of times a day. And while it’s true that I don’t know when the time will come, I do genuinely believe it will happen at every encounter I have. 
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