First Sunday of Advent: Are You Waiting?

Isaiah 2:1-5

Psalm 122

Romans 13:11-14

Matthew 24:36-44

The earliest Christians believed Jesus’ return would be soon; and so we find, just twenty years or so after his resurrection, Paul writing to the Romans: “You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep.  For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.”  (Romans 13:11)  He communicates a sense of urgency, using the image of “waking up” to get across the idea that “business as usual” will no longer do.  The gospel writers convey a similar sense: “Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” (Matthew 24:42)  Living in the context of Jesus’ imminent return, early Christians writers and teachers exhorted their fellows to be prepared, while at the same time to continue to wait.  So, what we can discern among the earliest Christians is a life lived within the context of paradox: the tension between being always prepared, alert, but still always waiting.  Certainly as the years passed and Jesus’ return revealed itself to be less than immediate, that tension relaxed.  As a Church, we lost that edge sharpened in the space between preparation and expectation, and we got on with business as usual.  In many ways, we stopped waiting, and in so doing have skipped out on something rather central to the Christian way and vision, because when we stop waiting – in the Christian sense – we also stop hoping.  I mentioned in the most recent issue of the Householder how in Spanish the words for “waiting” and “hope” are etymologically related, and how the Latin word for “wait” translates literally into “look out for”, as in looking out into the distance for something or someone to arrive.  Christian waiting does not signify “business as usual”, but instead a commitment to both waiting and preparing, and doing both in sure confidence, sure hope, of a promise to be fulfilled. 

The prophet Isaiah living in the midst of a divided Judah and Israel encourages his listeners to look beyond the present crisis and wait in hope for a new kingdom to be revealed when “the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; [and when] all the nations shall stream to it.” (Isaiah 2:2)  Still, it was a political crisis, the disruption of “business as usual”, that enabled the discerning of such a vision, the discerning that there was a future for God’s people that went beyond even the glory of a united kingdom, a future that went even beyond the limits of the Jews, a future that included “all the nations” streaming into the city of the Lord.  It was the disruption of business as usual that allowed for the expectation – the conscious and hopeful waiting – of the full revelation of God’s will for creation. 

Jesus too presents a future vision when he as Son of Man will return, and he counsels his followers not only to wait faithfully, but also cautions them about the dangers of “business as usual” that keeps them – and us – from active and hopeful waiting, that keeps us from “looking out for”, expecting, God’s fuller purposes and designs: “For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.  For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man.” (Matthew 24:37-39).  He uses imagery of people caught up in the normal events of daily life –working in the field, grinding meal – and warns his followers how that simply carrying on with things day in and day out with no larger vision, without expectation of a greater reality to be revealed is not enough;  even more, it is foolish and dangerous, because there is a future better than we can ask or imagine, and for those not waiting, not actively expecting it, it will come like a thief in the night, roughly shaking them our of their narrow pursuits and endeavors.  The time of “business as usual” is over, for, as we will hear next week “the kingdom of God has come near.” (Matthew 3:1)