Sally A Brown, Professor Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary
Every year, the lectionary opens Advent with a Gospel text replete with eschatological visions and warnings. In Year A, the year devoted to Matthew’s gospel, Advent 1 lands us squarely in the gospel’s fifth discourse, sometimes called “the Eschatological Discourse.” This includes all of Matthew chs 24 and 25. Preachers will profit from reading both chapters before narrowing their focus on Mt 24:36-44.
As we read today’s text, some listeners are likely to slump in their pews, bracing themselves for what seems an irrelevant exploration of outmoded ideas. Yet, others may sit up straight and lean in for the details. Much depends on how familiar they are with the endless series of (failed) attempts to predict the date of Christ’s return strewn across Christian history. The 2nd century bishop, Irenaeus, was the first to fail at this venture; the year 500 CE came and went, and Jesus did not return. But this has not deterred others from producing an endless series of treatises, books, and films, all attempting what Jesus himself declares impossible (Mt 24:36): to predict the day of the return of the Son of Man.
Why have such efforts been so persistent? First, doomsday prophets of every century since the birth of Christianity have been able to point, in their own day, to an array of disasters and portents that appear to align with those Jesus describes just prior to our reading (vv 4-31). Second, Jesus’ denial that the timing can be pinpointed (“no one knows, not even the Son of Man, but only the Father,” v 36) seems at odds with what Jesus has just said in v 33: “When you see all these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates” (NRSV). Where does this leave us? It leaves us alert, but not idle.
Jesus indicates what faithful waiting looks like through two analogies (vv 37-42) and five parables, only one of which (the parable of the householder and thief, vv43-44) is included in today’s reading. First, Jesus compares faithful waiting for the Son’s return to the faithfulness of Noah. Faithful waiting entails engaging, as Noah did, in activity expectantly aligned with divine promise (vv 36-39). Our lives may look like others’ lives (vv 40-41), but we go about our tasks knowing that our work is not of ultimate value, nor is it the measure of our worth. Instead, we live with an alertness rather like that of a householder prepared for the “expected unexpected”—the possibility of an attempted break-in (v 43); yet we wait, not with apprehension, but in hope of God’s remaking of all things.
Jesus will describe through four subsequent parables (24:45- 25:46) what faithful waiting looks like in this in-between time between the first Advent of the incarnate Son, which we are poised to celebrate, and the promised return of the Son to sift and gather the beloved children of God. We are not called to be Millerites, divested of every possession and perched in the trees awaiting the End.* This troubled world needs us, as Jesus will soon show his followers in the parable of the sheep and goats (Mt 25:31-40). There are thirsts to quench, prisoners to visit, strangers to welcome. This is what our waiting time is for. When we seek and serve these vulnerable ones, says Jesus, we will find that he is near to us—in fact, very near indeed. Such caring is a fitting celebration of both Advents: the promised one fulfilled in an infant’s cry in the pitch of a long-ago midnight, and the promised return of the Son when we least expect it. Amid the tumult, travail, and catastrophe that has always marked human experience, this is the promise that buoys us, in our own dark nights, with irrepressible hope.
* One can search “The Great Disappointment” to read of the Millerites in 19th c. America online.
Insights into Biblical Greek Grammar and Syntax 