Life as we know it can change in an instant. We may not expect the big change, and most of the time it is not welcome. There are any number of ways we can be brought up short. Perhaps you suddenly find a lump where it should not be while you are taking a shower. Or your spouse tells you that he or she wants a divorce. Maybe the police show up at your door and tell you there has been an accident. Your boss calls you into his office and tells you that you are going to be laid off. Suddenly life seems a whole lot less secure, your best laid plans go up in smoke.
Not all of these sudden changes need to be negative. Perhaps you win the lottery, so you never have to worry about money again. Or you get a letter of acceptance into the school you want to go to, which will give a whole new career. You find out that you are going to have a child, or you have been accepted to adopt a child. These are all life-changing events. It will never be the same again. Whether we view the sudden event as beneficial or detrimental, it will take time for us to absorb its impact, to adjust to new realities. Sometimes we can anticipate them; sometimes they come as a complete surprise.
During this season of Advent which begins today, we enter a season of anticipation for an event that changes not only us, but the whole world. Of course, we look forward to the birth of the Christ child at Christmas. The baby Jesus did not come into the world in the way we would have expected, and he will not likely come into our hearts in the way we expect either. Unless we prepare for him and expect him, we may not welcome him as we should – in fact we may not recognize him at all.
But today’s readings are not about Jesus’ coming at Christmas; they are about Jesus’ second coming. They sound apocalyptic, about the end times when Jesus will come back to judge the earth. But Jesus comes into our hearts again and again, a second coming, a quadrillionth coming. We push him away, but he is always there ready to return again. I suppose there may be a last coming some day, when the fires of earth grow dim and we reach the end of time, but right now Jesus wants us to respond to him. And time is short. There is an urgency in what he says and in what Paul says. “Salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers,” Paul says. We can keep putting this off, but at some point we must be prepared to make a commitment.
Jesus says, “Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” That is not an easy thing to do. We need our sleep. We can’t stay on high alert all the time. I read that the country is about to drop the color coded alerts that began after 9/11, because it loses its impact, we get used to them and begin to ignore them. We need to do the daily acts of living that we do, to go to work and earn a living, plan for retirement. We need to eat and drink, to marry and give in marriage, as the gospel says. Do you remember when the millennium changed in 2001, and there were people who believed that it heralded the end of the world? We cannot be like those people who drop all their responsibilities and just wait for the apocalypse. But it is easy to get caught up in those daily things we do, to forget that there is a larger story, and that we have a part to play in that story.
So if we can’t stay awake, can’t stay on alert all the time, what does Jesus mean when he tells us to keep awake? What does Paul mean when he says now is the moment to wake from sleep? What do we do during this Advent as we anticipate Christmas or the second coming? How can we come to expect the unexpected?
Perhaps the best advice, and it may be close to what Jesus meant, is summed up in the Boy Scout motto: “Be Prepared.” For Boy Scouts, that may have meant having the necessary equipment along on the camping trip. More often it meant having the training and knowledge to deal with unexpected situations. It means developing the attitude that you can deal with just about anything that comes up. For new parents, being prepared may mean gathering all the new paraphernalia for a new baby, picking out names, or creating a nursery. These are ways of getting ready for a huge change about to happen. For us in this season being prepared means preparing our hearts, to develop an attitude which will help us deal with the unexpected fact that God is with us. Advent has traditionally been a time, somewhat like Lent, in which we spend a little extra time in prayer, study and self-examination, in preparation for this life-changing event.
Jesus may not have meant that we have to literally stay awake, but I do think that he wants us to be alert to the signs of his coming. The signs of apocalypse, war, rumors of war, famine, plague, have been with us a very long time. They seem to be nothing new. But perhaps instead of those awful signs, what we should be alert for are the signs of God’s grace. These are the signs that indicate that the Kingdom of God is at hand, already begun if not fulfilled. They too are all around us. Wherever there are acts of kindness and compassion, wherever there is reconciliation and forgiveness, wherever the light of understanding and truth overwhelms the darkness of ignorance and corruption, there is a sign of God’s grace. So this Advent, why not contemplate where love has cast out fear, where truth and compassion and forgiveness have triumphed. These are the signs that Jesus is coming, and the kingdom has begun.
Jesus tells us to be awake so that we can watch, for we do not know on what day the Lord is coming. In the very next chapter of Matthew, we have Jesus praising those who feed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, took care of the sick, and visited the prisoner. “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” This Advent season, we are being called to be awake and watch for those who are in need and to be generous in the giving of our selves. For Jesus may appear in the most unexpected ways.
You see, this time of Advent, not just these four weeks before Christmas, but all of our Christian lives, this time of preparation and waiting, is not a passive thing. It has never been for any of the biblical writers. The time in the wilderness has always been a time that formed a people into God’s people. We are to cooperate with the coming of God’s kingdom, even while we are still in the wilderness. If we want to live, as Isaiah suggests, where nations will not learn war any more, then we need to try to find ways to beat our swords into plowshares, and our spears into pruning hooks. Or as Paul says, if salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers, we must try to live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy, but by putting on the Lord Jesus Christ in self-denial and loving our neighbor as ourselves.
Be prepared, be alert to the signs of God’s grace, and watch out for your neighbor. Do these things, and we may be ready for the unexpected. Our lives will be changed, but this change is nothing less the beginning of the kingdom of God. It is time to get ready.