First Sunday of Advent, 2025, rcl yr a
ISAIAH 2:1-5; PSALM 122; ROMANS 13:11-14; MATTHEW 24:36-44
keep awake
When St. Matthew set down to write his Gospel, he had a problem.
It’s a problem that might feel familiar to us, as we encounter a similar way of thinking that has its grip on some folks today: people confident in their reading of the signs, confident that Jesus will, indeed, come very soon, folks who are confident in their knowledge of the timetable of the “rapture”—(a word you won’t find in the Bible, by the way.)
Matthew had communities of people around him that were sure about God’s timetable Matthew knew of folks that were sure that they were the chosen people of God—and equally sure about who was not the chosen people of God—and they were fleeing to the countryside, getting ready for their imminent trip to heaven.
Part of the problem Matthew faced was that this confidence that God was close to setting all things right meant that people were not paying attention to what was right in front of them. Barbara Brown Taylor—among the finest of Episcopal preachers—puts it this way: “Once they had gotten themselves all worked up about this [trip to heaven], Matthew found it just about impossible to impress them with the fact that there were widows and orphans in the community going hungry because no one was signing up for the soup kitchen, or that there were still some people in jail who needed visiting, as well as some sick people at home who still needed looking after. [Because] what did that really matter, when the end was right around the corner?”
This wasn’t the only problem that Matthew faced. And this might sound familiar to us in another way. Some had given up on the idea that Jesus was ever going to come back at all. When Matthew wrote his gospel, there were people around that had heard Jesus say that he would return before their generation would pass away—but they were, for Matthew, the seniorest of citizens, and passing away themselves.
Again, as Barbara Brown Taylor puts it, “If [Jesus] was so full of love, then why hadn’t he come back?” Jesus had predicted some awful things would happen: that “two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left,” and that “two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left.” This had happened, not as a prediction of some future rapture, but because the Romans had done exactly this: armies raged through the countryside and into Jerusalem, killing some and leaving others alive. The temple was destroyed, and Jerusalem fell; and as Matthew wrote, awful, turbulent and violent times, were in very recent memory. And they wondered, “where are you, Jesus? Were you not to return, and make all things well?”
I remember, as a kid in Portage la Prairie Manitoba, lying awake at night in the knowledge that in the case of nuclear war, the Soviets would target missile silos in the Dakotas, and all of us, in places like Portage la Prairie Manitoba, that we would see the primary nuclear fallout, and die slow painful deaths. I was a kid who grew up in a church confident in Jesus’s return, and I certainly wondered, “why wait, Jesus? We do not know what we are doing here. We are ready to destroy one another. Why are you not making all things right?”
We have our own existential threats like climate change and the political instability that will create, violent nationalisms, no end of new wars. Why wouldn’t we be tempted, too, to despair, to giving up on God?
With all this going on around Matthew—people giving up on others because they were sure that God would soon come and save the day, other people giving up on God because things were going so bad around them—with all this in mind, Matthew makes sure to point out something very important. He says two things: yes, you can trust the Lord to come again and make all things well. “Your Lord is coming,” he tells us. However: “you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” “About that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Matthew was keen to tell his people, and to remind us too, that Jesus himself did not know the divine timeline, and just when God would make all things right, fully and completely.
It’s an effective way to curtail both despair about God and any disregard to the plight of others. When Jesus says that we should “Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming,” we are we are reminded that God will make all things well—this is a promise that will be made good—and we are reminded that we have work to do in the present. We are prompted, clearly, to pay attention to what is happening now.
Barbara Brown Taylor, again, points out this has deeply personal implications for us. We are often tempted not to be attentive to what’s happening now—but rather to live in the past or the future. Perhaps we have trouble building new relationships because we are so reliant on relationships we built in the past—and that can make us blind to the needs, and possibilities, of those who are new in our lives, and in our communities.
Don’t get me wrong— sometimes we do have to take care of ourselves, or people close to us, and sometimes it is right to say “I am being good and attentive already ….” But it’s also not unusual for us to postpone the things we know would be good for us, and that the person we hope to be, is the person we will be … later. Sure, we say, I will be a more faithful person of prayer—tomorrow. I will be a more faithful reader of the Bible—next week. I will volunteer and offer myself—sometime in the future?
And sometimes we end up stuck where we are, living in the past or the future, and not paying attention to what is happening now. Which can be disastrous not only for us as individuals, but for humanity as a whole.
But this is not the way of Jesus. The way of Jesus is this: “Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” Be attentive not to your past self or your future self. Instead, be present. Nostalgia is not the way; believing in a magical God who will conveniently fix all things for us is not the way; despair in an absent God is not the way, either.
Instead, the way of Jesus, as we are reminded especially in Advent, is this: “be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.
As our parish musician, he provides both support and leadership so that a variety of parish programs can find musical expression and attract participation. When our handbell choir is in season, he is one of our ringers. At parish dinners, he provides popular piano music for the guests to dine by. For both worship services and concerts, he will rehearse and accompany vocal and instrumental soloists from our congregation on piano, organ, or even accordion.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.