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Sermon: The First Sunday in Advent Year A - 28th November 2010
St Aidan's Anglican Church West Epping 8:30am
Readings: Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 22; Romans 13:9-14; Matthew 24:36-44
When you think of you future, how do you imagine it? When you think of life beyond the grave, what will it be like do you think? No doubt, like me, you have some fairly high expectations – that, in the end, heaven is going to be heavenly, that no matter how we get there, and it will involve some dying, it will be very good in the end, it will be ideal. The Jews thought in much the same way. But they had an extra feature. For them, the future always included Jerusalem. This is an idealised Jerusalem. So we have Isaiah 2 and verse 3,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths. The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”
Going up the mountain means going to the Temple to meet directly with God. And he will rule all the world directly from Jerusalem. Its an ideal picture. And that’s what the Jews looked forward to. The whole world would be put right. There would be both peace and justice as God ruled the whole earth. That’s why we have that great hope of verse 4,
“They will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war any more.”
Psalm 122 has a similar idea of rejoicing over going to the Temple. This is not a normal day for going to worship. This is a special day when God will rule from his Temple. So Jerusalem and the Temple were central in Israel’s thinking as they hoped for a better future.
And so you can imagine the confusion in the minds of Jesus’ disciples when Jesus asked them to consider a future where there was no Temple, there was no Jerusalem. They had hoped for a day of peace and a day of justice but Jesus is now explaining that the day of justice and peace will include the destruction of the Temple.
So its not surprising that the disciples wanted to know when all this would happen and what would be the warning signs that these events were about to take place. And Jesus is telling them that no one knows when this day of justice will happen.
Now as Jesus goes on to explain his teaching, he is probably talking about two events. They are separate but they are also linked. The first event is to do with his death on the cross, coupled with his vindication in heaven and the destruction of the Temple in AD 70.
The second event is the ultimate fulfilment of these events that Jesus refers to as “the end of the age” which means the end of the world as we know it, which will be characterized as a time of both justice and peace – two events where the second is the final consummation of the first. And Jesus’ point is that we won’t know when these events will occur. It will be like the days of Noah. The flood was coming but no one expected it. Instead, people went on with their everyday lives, eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage. Everything was normal, and then the flood came.
Jesus gives us a second picture to describe the coming of the Son of Man. Two will be working in a field, one will be taken, and the other left. Two women will be grinding at a mill and one will be taken and the other is left. Again it is an image of people getting on with their lives when they are suddenly overtaken by these coming events.
So how are we to prepare for the end of this age? Jesus instructs us to keep watch because we do not know the hour of the Son of Man’s return. Jesus compares it to the coming of a thief. They usually don’t give us a warning before they break in. Therefore, we must be vigilant. We need to be ready. Fortunately, today we have alarm systems so we can be prepared.
But the question remains, how do we prepare for the return of Jesus? How can we be ready for the end of this age? Perhaps it may seem more relevant to ask, how do we prepare for the end of our own lives, when we will meet Jesus face to face after our lives are over? Jesus command is to be ready but what will that mean for us? How do we prepare for whatever future we face? It’s a big question and Jesus provides us with several answers over the next few chapters in Matthew’s gospel.
But for now I want to focus on today’s gospel reading. Here Jesus tells the parable of the faithful and wise servant. He was put in charge of the other servants. His job was to make sure the other servants received their food at the proper time. It seems simple enough but what the master was doing was putting the servant in charge of the household finances while the master was away. He would be responsible for purchasing food for everybody. With this access to the family funds, the temptation would be to steal from the family and consequently starve the servants.
But the faithful and wise servant is the one who chooses not to cheat his master and his fellow workers and do the job he was entrusted to do. Compare that to the wicked servant who uses his position of power to beat the other servants and to spend the money in drunkenness. The faithful and wise servant is rewarded while the wicked servant will receive the punishment he deserves.
It’s a simple parable and it makes sense. Its also a very mundane parable. There is no deep profound teaching here. Rather, Jesus is saying God will reward those who are faithful and honest and treat others fairly. This is a theme that continues through the next chapter. Jesus is teaching that the future may be uncertain, it may include all sorts of troubles – we don’t know – but it is clear how we should live in the meantime.
There is the expectation that we will live treating others well. It’s a simple teaching but it is also true that we have trouble with it. Daily we hear stories of people who abuse the trust they are given, the teacher who abuses their students, the accountant who embezzles the company, the lawyer who becomes engaged in criminal behaviour, the parent who is up on charges of child abuse.
These stories are well known to us – people who are given specific responsibility and who fail to honour that trust. So the negative side can be a problem. But notice that Jesus is telling us that the well prepared person is the one who is faithful in human relationships. It is this area of life that Jesus draws our attention to.
In the next chapter Jesus fills out this teaching by describing feeding the hungry, giving the thirsty something to drink, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the sick and visiting those in prison. He draws our attention to these things because the alternative to being unfaithful in our duty to others is to have nothing to do with anyone else at all.
We may be tempted to shut ourselves away from the world, to focus only on ourselves and our day to day needs. But that takes us down the path of loneliness and isolation and an extreme selfishness. This is not what Jesus has in mind for us. At the beginning of Matthew’s gospel Jesus has some very radical ideas about how we should be engaged with our community.
“Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, turn the other cheek, if someone wants your tunic, give him your cloak as well. Give to those who ask you and do not turn away the one who wants to borrow from you.”
There is an old saying, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” That is, its wiser not to be engaged with the needs and lives of others. But Jesus is commanding us to do the opposite. He calls on us to embrace life and the people we meet along the way, to minister to them when we can, to support them when we can, to be faithful and honest with them at all times, to live as salt and light in a world that has lost its way, and often cannot see the light for itself.
The end of the age is coming and a new age is dawning. By the mercies of God we are the people of the new age and the challenge is to live as citizens of that new age, to bring heaven down to earth. To bless our community – by being a blessing to it.