December
1st, 2013 “The Thief in the Night” Rev.
Heather Jepsen
Isaiah
2:1-5 and Matthew 24:36-44
Today is the first Sunday of
Advent. The Advent season is all about
waiting. It is a season of anticipation,
a season of preparation, and a season of hope.
So, what are we waiting for exactly?
I know you feel like Advent is about waiting and preparing for
Christmas, but technically it’s not. And
perhaps you feel like Advent is about waiting for the baby Jesus, but technically
it’s not that either. In fact, what Advent
is really about is waiting for the second coming of Christ.
You were probably wondering why I
wasn’t preaching on John the Baptist and the Baby Jesus but instead was reading
about the unexpected coming of the Son of Man.
There are four Sundays in Advent, and the first one always has a scary apocalyptic
reading like this. Next week we’ll do
John the Baptist and after that it’s fun all the way, but today is the hard
stuff. Today is that ever confusing,
ever frightening, and yet ever hopeful second coming.
You see, we technically can’t be
preparing for the baby in a manger; that already happened. Instead, we are preparing for the return of
Christ. So, when’s it going to be, you
wonder. Well, I wish I had an answer for
you, or a place to tell you to look for answers, but unfortunately I’ve got
nothing. While there may be no shortage
of people in the world that will tell you that they know when the end is coming;
unfortunately all of these people, down to the very last one of them, are wrong. We can’t read the signs of the end times
anymore than we can truly understand our own beginnings. No one knows when the end is coming. Jesus himself says that neither the angels in
heaven, or even he himself knows. So
that’s that.
What Jesus does tell us, is that whenever
it comes; this day will take us by surprise.
We will be busy going about our daily tasks, and suddenly it will
happen. And so, we are told to keep
awake, to keep watch; for we cannot know the day or hour when the Son of Man
will return.
So Advent is a time for us to wake
up. It is the season of the church year
when we pinch ourselves. With our daily
routines, in the church and in our lives we get lulled into sleep. Every day we get up, go to work, come home,
go to bed, much the same. And every
Sunday we come to church, sing a song, confess our sins, read the scripture,
hear a sermon, sing another song, put money in a plate, eat lunch with friends and
go home. It’s the same every time. And before long we start to fall asleep. Whether we literally fall asleep during the
sermon, or simply mentally fall asleep, at some point in the year we stop
listening. We stop hearing the
gospel. We stop being surprised and
challenged by God’s message, because we have heard it all before.
So, this morning, Jesus is shouting in
our ear to Wake Up! He is coming like a
thief in the night, and we better be ready to greet him. How strange is it, that Jesus compares
himself with a thief? One who would sneak
into our homes while we are asleep and take things from us. What would it mean to be awake, to greet such
a thief? What sort of things will Jesus
come to steal from us?
This is what I was wondering on this
week, as I am often wondering on something from the Bible. And at first, I thought Jesus might literally
come like a thief and take our material things.
If it is the second coming, I’m probably not going to be able to keep my
hands on my things. Jesus will come like
a thief and I will lose my flat screen TV, I will lose my harp, and I will lose
my shelves and shelves of books. Jesus
will come like a thief, bearing the end of all things, and my small bank
account will be gone. Like the farmer
who builds bigger barns and dies the next day, I can’t take these things with
me. Like a thief in the night, the
return of Christ, will mean an end to my material possessions.
That is probably accurate, but then I
got to thinking about the whole world.
Maybe Jesus is coming like a thief who will take away the whole power
system of our world. Like we spoke about
last Sunday; Jesus is a ruler, a king, who brings about a new form of
leadership and power. Jesus is a
non-King who is flattening out our power structures. Like a thief he will sneak in and turn our
whole world system, from economics, to government, to social organization onto
its head.
This is the picture of the future that
Isaiah gives us. In those days, all the
nations shall turn from whatever has been distracting them, and stream to the
mount of the Lord. The word of the Lord,
and not of the governments of man, will be shouted out in Zion
and Jerusalem
This vision of the future is one of
hope, and not fear. But I have to tell
you, that when I think of meeting Christ, there is a part of me that is always
afraid. I can think of one more thing
that the thief in the night might take from me, and it’s the scariest of all,
and what I hold onto the tightest, and that is my personal understanding of the
faith. As your leader, it’s my job to
have the answers. Not all the answers,
but at least some of the answers about our faith. It is my job to study about our faith, to
think about our faith, to come to conclusions about our faith, and to teach you
about our faith. And while I am
confident in the things I say, I am always aware that I could be wrong.
Let me explain. When I read the gospels, I keep my eye on the
disciples. Those guys were standing
right next to Jesus a lot of the time. And
those guys were able to hear the things he said first hand. And those guys were right there to see the
look on his face when he was talking, and read his body language which is 90%
of our communication. So, if anybody
understood Jesus’ message, it should have been those guys. And yet, those guys got it wrong, a lot. The gospels are full of stories of the
disciples being confused or misunderstanding or simply getting it wrong. So logically, if those guys were right there,
and they got it wrong. How can I, 2,000
years later, expect to get it right? I
can’t.
So, when I think of the second coming,
of the thief in the night, I imagine that Jesus will steal from me all of my
misunderstanding. I expect to be
corrected, I expect to be humbled, and I expect to be wrong about some things
if not everything, simply because I am human.
And, so to me, this is scary. I
know that whether I see the second coming, or whether I simply die, this day is
in my future; the day of reckoning and humbling. Where I admit that I have been wrong, and
worse that I have accidentally taught others something that was wrong. This thief in the night comes to steal the
easy answers of my faith, and of that I am afraid.
And so this Advent, we prepare not for
Christmas, not for a baby, but for the thief.
While we are busy with our material world, we are called to keep awake
and remember that none of these things last forever. And while we are caught up in the politics
and economics of man, we are called to wake up and remember that the thief
promises to bring a new world order. And
finally, while we rest in our knowledge of our faith, we are called to keep
awake and keep in mind that the thief may yet take even that from us, and
correct where we have been wrong.
During this season where we are
tempted to be lulled to sleep, I encourage you to pinch yourself and wake
up. We aren’t waiting for Christmas; we
are waiting for Christ, and all the change that comes with him. And so we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus.” Amen.
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