Advent 1A am

First Sunday in Advent, Year A

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Brothers and sisters in Christ: grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Does it make a difference whether we know how a movie is going to end? With the advent (see what I did there?) of the internet and social media and instantaneous propagation of information to the entire world with the click of a button, we had to come up with the term “spoiler alert”. I mean, it used to be “don’t talk to me about the game - I taped it and I’m going to watch it later.” Normally, that was all you had to worry about - don’t let your family and friends tell you who won.

Now, if you were going to miss the live broadcast of a game and wanted to watch it later, you would literally have to turn off your phone, avoid any electronics of any kind (TV, computer, probably even radio), no exposure to any internet… can you imagine how hard this is in this day and age?

But what if someone *did* tell you the final score, perhaps even the highlights of the best play, or the game-winning event on the field? Would you still want to watch the game? Or how about that new movie - what if someone spoiled it for you before you got to see it, giving away the “gotcha” moment, or the big surprise, or the mind-blowing plot twist? Would you still want to see it?

It takes away the excitement. Before you see something like that, there’s some adrenaline happening. An eagerness to see something new, new possibilities, something we haven’t seen before… new entertainment… maybe new players or new actors. It almost becomes something close to hope. So for someone *else* to tell you about it ruins that newness. It robs you of that experience.

And what happens after that? How do you feel? I’ve heard people say “well, no point in watching it now” when this happened to them. They literally gave up the entire experience because of that. They were extremely disappointed… somewhere between hopelessness and and numbness. It’s pretty far on the other end of the spectrum from “hope” and “eagerness”.

The people who lived in the time when Jesus was born were looking for reasons to hope. It was a really dark time for God’s people. Living under yet another occupation by a conquering nation - losing their sovereignty to Gentiles and their pagan, immoral ways. Where were the prophets to tell them what God had planned for them?

Well, they still had the writings of the prophets (like Malachi in last week’s reading, and Isaiah this week), but they forgot what the prophets told them about *why* God allowed them to be conquered by these Gentile nations. The Israelite people had stopped living the way God wanted them to…the way God had *commanded* them to live. And, by the way, the way the people had agreed to live. Exodus 24:3 “And all the people answered with one voice and said, ‘All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do’.” But they didn’t. Time and time again, they went back on their part of the covenant with God. And God let them feel the cost of that disobedience - He let them feel His wrath. He let them be conquered.

And that is when the people would always cry out to God, “please save us! Remember us - your Chosen People!” And every time, God would save them. This time of crying out is what the Israelites were experiencing just before Jesus was born.

But they *had* the prophets. They knew what Malachi and Isaiah and Ezekiel and Daniel had prophesied. Have you read Daniel? It’s strikingly similar to Revelation. It talks about the end of the ages. It talks about God’s plan. The people knew the end. If you knew that God would ultimately be triumphant over everything that stands against Him, would you disobey Him? Because that’s precisely what the people did.

In the Gospel lesson today, Jesus is explaining this. I can hear it now: these prophets told us about the end of time coming, and some Messiah coming to save us and fix everything that’s broken or wrong… well *when* is that going to happen? It’s been 1600 years since Moses. How much longer do we have to wait? You know, because God is *so* likely to change His timeline when the people get impatient...

“But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” That’s a pretty startling statement, honestly. I’m always on the side that says the Son *is* God, and he knows what the Father knows. Except this. Jesus has decided to use his divine knowledge only when he needed to, and this is not one of those times. This is part of the mystery of how Jesus is both human and divine. But this is what he tells us in this lesson from Matthew, and it is true.

So they know the end, but they don’t know when it’s coming. Well Jesus, then what are we supposed to do until then? I’m curious as to Jesus’ choice of metaphor here. “If you knew when the thief was coming, you’d make sure you were awake at that time to catch him.” I suppose he uses that because it’s SO obvious. The thief is going to come when you don’t expect him. The only way to catch him is to be ready all the time. Constantly. Never letting your guard down.

Jesus also compares the people of Noah’s time. In the days leading up to the flood, people were living care-free, as though there was no judgment about to strike them. Have you seen this thing going around the internet: “Noah was a conspiracy theorist, until it started to rain.” Love that.

So the people just lived their lives, as Jesus describes: eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. Now, those things are not sinful at all. The activities Jesus describes are not the problem. The problem Jesus is pointing out is the total disregard of God’s warnings while they’re doing these things without a worry. And they kept doing it, living life care-free, until the very day when Noah, at God’s command, entered the ark. “They never ‘realized’ anything until the final, fatal moment. The fact that an ark was being built on dry land, that Noah told them why he built it, seemed a great joke to them ‘until the flood came and took away all’.” Judgment Day will come the same way - warning after warning, more than enough to get their attention. But it will fall on deaf ears and hardened hearts. And “every sign [will be] explained away ‘naturally,’ ‘reasonably,’ even ‘scientifically’ until the fatal day arrives. It is not the wickedness of immorality that Jesus stresses but this ungodly, guilty, and damnable blindness.” [R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Matthew’s Gospel (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1961), 956.]

I have stood in this very pulpit and said that I do not believe that we are in the Biblical “End Times”. It was Sep 6, 2020, to be exact. I still don’t think we’re in the times described by Revelation. Those times are going to be extreme and violent beyond anything we’ve seen.

But what are the chances that we’re feeling God’s wrath? And by “we” I mean our country…our society… not necessarily “we” the church. If you read Romans chapter 1, there’s a list of sins that Paul calls out, and many of them are not forbidden by western society anymore. In fact, quite a few of those sins are now celebrated and even protected. So, is it possible that God is letting us feel the effects of our disobedient decisions, just as He did with the Hebrew people 2,000 years ago? Romans 1:24-25 “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.”

So yes, I think it’s entirely possible that all the awfulness we’re seeing around us - the violence, the division, the blatant and shameless corruption… quite possibly what Paul describes. It would certainly be fitting.

But we know the end! Why would we do this? Why would we behave this way? Because the hearts of our non-believing sisters and brothers have been hardened, and their ears are deaf. In many cases, deliberately so. It isn’t just that they don’t want to hear the Gospel. Many have taken a stand in direct opposition to it. Again, Romans 1.

So now, church, where does that leave us? In general terms, we are to follow Jesus’ admonition to stay awake at all times. But more specifically, follow Paul’s advice in Romans 13. If disobedience brings wrath, Paul is describing what obedience ought to look like. In fact, it’s not only obeying the law; it’s fulfilling it. “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” (vs 10) And as Paul begins this chapter, the only thing we need to owe to anyone else is to love them. Agape, Christ-like, self-sacrificing love.

This is something that’s painfully missing in dark times. The awfulness that we see on every TV channel, that’s dominant on your Facebook feed… what produces that awfulness? What’s missing? Christ-like love for neighbor. That’s what’s missing. That’s what Paul is encouraging us to put into action.

Now notice how Paul finishes this section. It’s almost like he is picking up where Jesus left off in Matthew 24. Jesus tells us to stay awake at all times. Paul says, “you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light… put on the Lord Jesus Christ...” (Romans 13:11-14, ESV)

In other words, we’re not asleep anymore, like the Jews in Jesus’ day were. We know how the story ends, even better than they did. We know that God is victorious, that Jesus has conquered sin, death, and the devil already, and that we have the promise of eternal life because of him. We know and believe it. We taste it every time we come to receive the Sacrament.

I like how Luther explains this part: “The night, the letter of the Law, which is the night of the mind and the flesh, even sin, in which the flesh sleeps, is far gone, the day, the Spirit, the Gospel, the light, righteousness, is at hand, through Christ, the Sun of righteousness, in which we must awake and arise. Let us then cast off the works of darkness, of the Law and sin and the letter, and put on the armor, good works, of light, of righteousness, of the Spirit. Let us conduct ourselves becomingly, properly, with decorum, as in the day, let us live in such a way as is proper in the daytime, for in the day men walk about conducting themselves in such a way as to be honest and pure… But put on, through imitation and conforming to His image, the Lord Jesus Christ, in sufferings, abstinence, and good works, and make no provision, none at all, neither care nor concern, for the flesh, to gratify its desires, or lusts.” [Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 25: Lectures on Romans, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann, vol. 25 (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999), 112.]

Yes, we members of Christ’s Church, we know how the story ends. But as people of faith - as disciples of Christ, as a Great Commission Church, this does not take away our hope and our eagerness for it. Knowing how the story ends builds our eagerness. In fact, we PLACE our hope in the end that God has promised us. We place our very hope in the end that Christ has won for us. No, it’s not hear yet, but we wait for it with hopeful expectation. THAT is the mood of this entire season: hopeful expectation.

And Paul’s encouragement is the perfect explanation of how we are to to spend that time. That is what we are called to do in this time of hopeful expectation. And by following Paul’s wisdom, which is God’s wisdom, we may just find that we’re noticing less of God’s wrath, and more of God’s kingdom…the very kingdom that we await in hopeful expectation.

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.