Dec 1 2019 First Sunday in Advent Matthew 24: 36-44

Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

Today is the first day of the new year in the Church, the first Sunday in Advent. I’ve always appreciated having a jump on the New Year’s festivities and commitments. Why wait until January 1, when you can get the new start about a month earlier?

Advent is all about preparing. We hear about John the Baptizer who was a harbinger for Jesus. In my tradition, we hold off Christmas songs until after four weeks of preparing, so we get four weeks of Advent songs, which are decidedly less upbeat. And then when Christmas finally arrives, we celebrate Christmas for about two weeks, until the day the Church commemorates the arrival of the three wise men on Epiphany, as memorialized in the English Christmas carol, the Twelve days of Christmas.

So for the next 45 days, I’m on a different calendar than the rest of the culture. Poignant Advent songs for the next four weeks, no Christmas carols here. Then Christmas carols begin Christmas Eve, then Christmas continues for 12 days. We always got our Christmas tree late, so it would be up and still holding its needles 11 days after many jettisoned their trees.

It’s a little off-kilter, my Advent and Christmas calendar and celebrations. But it’s precisely that differentness that has always felt meaningful to me. When the rest of the world is singing about Santa Claus lane, or jingling bells, I’m singing about the voice in the wilderness crying, or preparing the way, or Emmanuel coming.

As a Christian human person, I’ve always pondered the nativity more than the resurrection. As a human, I’m intrigued that God became human, to better understand humanity. That’s a notion that’s worthy of forethought and preparation.

The appointed Gospel reading for the first Sunday in Advent is all about being prepared. God will come like a thief in the night. If we knew when the thief was going to come, we’d wait and prepare for precisely the thief’s arrival. But we don’t know when, so we are to prepare for the unknown day and hour. 

 

This morning, I’m thinking about the difference between preparing for a specific time and hour, versus preparing for an unknown time. We are not, in my estimation, predisposed to a state of constant readiness. We’d rather have terrorist threat levels, or fire risk levels, or charts for our health, so we know when trouble is imminent; we’d rather prepare for a specific event, rather than just be prepared in general.

Advent is a time to think about just being prepared for an unknown time, because we do not know when Jesus will be in front of us. Yes, this is the season of Advent that precedes a date on the calendar when we celebrate God’s arrival in human form – Christmas. In that respect, we are preparing for a specific day. But in a larger sense, we are spending a month thinking about and preparing for Jesus’ appearance, whenever and wherever it happens – just like a thief in the night.

I don’t think this is as much about some Left Behind theology – Jesus arrives and takes some with him, and leaves some behind. Rather, I think Jesus appears to us dozens of times a day, with every human interaction. With family members, friends and strangers. With people we see as good, and people we see as evil. Christ is in all. I am grateful about this month that the Church calendar sets aside for preparing to meet Jesus. It’s hard to fathom that God became human in a little baby born to homeless refugees. It’s even harder to fathom that I can meet God every day in the people I encounter. All of this unfathomable-ness demands some preparation. A very merry Advent to us all.