Sermon for December 1, 2019 - Advent 4/1A - The Rev'd Jeffrey W. Mello

Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44; Psalm 122

Just before the passage we heard this morning from Matthew, Jesus is talking with his disciples about what sounds like the end of the world.  

In this morning’s reading, Jesus anticipates their question.  He certainly anticipates mine. “When, Jesus?” When will all of this happen?  They want to be ready. I want to be ready. They want to be prepared. I want to be prepared.

Ready for what, though?  Prepared for what?

While many will read these passages and interpret them to mean that Jesus is talking about the physical destruction of the world as we know it; the end-times, what Jesus is really talking about is the turning upside down of the world.  Just like we sing each week in Advent.

The world, Jesus predicts, is about to turn.  And it won’t be pretty when it does.  

But after it turns?  Oh, after it turns it will be beautiful.  It will be paradise. It will be the Kingdom of God here on earth.

Jesus’ followers want to know when, exactly, this will take place.  

But Jesus says that’s just not how it works.  

Just like Noah had no warning (though, to be fair, he had time to build the arc), the kingdom of God will break in suddenly even as we are about the most mundane of tasks, working in the field, or grinding grain.  One will be taken and one will be left.

Yet, somehow, by the time Saint Paul writes his letter to the church at Rome, the question of when has been decided.  “Now,” St. Paul writes. “Now is the moment to wake from sleep.” Now is the time Jesus foretold.

But, how does he define “now?”  Now, as in two thousand years ago?  Now as in at the time of his writing?  Or now, when we are hearing this letter?  How could he have known that “now” was going to be sometime “later?”

All Jesus tells his followers is that we are not to fall into the same trap as the homeowner who didn’t let his house be broken into.

But doesn’t that make getting broken into a good thing?

And, wait...doesn’t that make God the thief in the night?

And I think that the point.  God is the thief in the night.  And, using Jesus’ metaphor and following his logic, God does not want us to know when God might arrive because God is afraid we won’t let God break in.  

God knows us well enough to know that we will be too busy trying to make God happen that we won’t be able to let God happen.

We won’t, if we have time to prepare, let God break into our lives, or break into our hearts.  And God desperately wants to do just that.

Perhaps the wisdom gained by the early church in the intervening years between Jesus’ ministry on earth and Paul’s letter to the community in Rome is that the key to be reading for the coming of Jesus into the world isn’t to be prepared for some time in the future, but to live every moment expecting it happen in the here and now; to live each moment as though it is happening.  

The key to letting God break into our lives isn’t to busy ourselves with behaving in a way we think will make God happen, but to live our lives everyday, in every moment, with our hearts open, unarmed, and vulnerable to a break in by God.

Maybe the way to be suprised by God is to assume the surprise at every turn.  To expect it. To look for it. To wonder where God is in the world around me, not if God is in the world around me.

“Maybe this is God,” you might suggest to yourself walking down the street, or waiting on hold, or looking in the mirror.  “Maybe this is God.”

Maybe one is taken and one is left because one was expecting God to show up in the mundane details of life and the other was too busy working to notice God had, in fact showed up.  

God will show up, but only the one who expects God to be there in the field, or at the grain mill, or in the meeting, or on the street, while raking leaves, or shoveling snow, while grocery shopping or visiting the sick will know it.

Last week Chris Dulla, Andrew Tanis, Art Wing and Melissa Dulla played in a band at a restaraunt who was celebrating their second anniversary.  They call their band the “Embers,” because they trace their origins to the campfire at the Parish Retreat.  

As I watched them play, I saw the church at its best.  “God did this,” I thought. God brought these folks together to create joy and connection.  When Sarah Dulla joined Chris for a Lady Gaga duet, I thought my hear was going to burst out of my chest.

In that restaurant, I saw God.  I’m sure everyone there saw a “nice group of people” singing in front of them.  But I’m not sure they expected God to show up in that restaurant in Dorchester on a Sunday night in November.

I’m not sure how many were left, but this one was definitely taken.

We sing the hymn “Were you there when they crucified my Lord” every year while we say the Stations of the Cross.  Were you there when they crucified my Lord? When they nailed him to the tree? When they laid him in the tomb? Sometimes, it causes me to tremble.”

Just as the Coming of God into our lives is not bound by time to some point in the distant future, Christ crucified is not bound by time to some point in the distant past.

Was I there when they crucified my Lord?  Well, that depends whether I have spent time looking for Christ in the world around me.  But as Jackson Caesar sang this spiritual last night here at Saint Paul’s and asked me the question of whether or not I was there when the sun refused to shine I had to say “yes” I was there.  

Yes, I was there when immigrant parents died on the border.  Yes, I was there when young men of Color were shot dead in the street.  Yes, I was there when wars were raged on my behalf and when creation was stripped for my dependence on fossil fuel.  Yes, I was there. Yes, Lord, I am there now. And sometimes it causes me to tremble.

And I was there when God broke into the world at the hospital bed of a parishioner, in the conversation with a colleague over coffee, on retreat at a monastery.  Yes, Lord, I was there, too. And sometimes, it causes me to tremble.

I was there when you were born into the world again this morning, and I will be there when you are crucified in the world again tonight.

Don’t miss the ways God is crucified every day in this world by looking to the past for when it happened to Jesus on the cross.

Expect God to be Crucified today.

And please don’t miss the ways God’s love and truth and mercy is already breaking into your life today by looking and planning for the way God might break in sometime in the distant future.  

Expect to be surprised by God today.

The breaking in of God into our lives and hearts isn’t meant to be a surprise.  It is not a Pop quiz on our behavior. It is not a carrot meant to reward us or a consequence meant to punish us.

God wants to break in, all the time.  Is breaking in, every day. 

Now is the time.  It need not come as a surprise.  

AMEN.

© 2019  The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello