Business as Usual

Advent 1 Year A

A Sermon based on Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:11-14; and Matthew 24:36-44

In the name of Jesus; amen.

The holiday business as usual has begun: the shopping, the baking, the decorating, the partying and it is heaped on top of the usual business as usual: taking care of the kids, paying bills, going to work, watching the news, not getting enough sleep, grocery shopping, cleaning the house, and all the other things that are the day to day of our lives.

And so here is Advent, perhaps the most counter-cultural time of the church year, because it reminds us that God coming into the world is not business as usual.

It wasn’t business as usual for Isaiah who proclaimed God’s coming into the world would bring on a time when the world would disarm by beating their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Tools of war would become the tools of prosperity and harvest.

It wasn’t business as usual to Paul who wrote to the church at Rome saying the coming of the Lord was meant to be a time of awaking to a new way of life that was honorable and concerned itself not with gratifying our fleshy desires, but with putting on the Lord Jesus Christ.

And it wasn’t business as usual for Matthew who believed that when Christ came it would interrupt our lives right in the middle of our everyday occurrences.

Advent becomes a time to prepare and plan, not for presents under the tree and figurines of babies in a manger, but preparation for Christ to come again, an annual reminder that it will happen though no one, not even Jesus knows when that day or hour will take place.

Advent is not just the four Sundays before Christmas when we anxiously await the time we can sing all those beloved Christmas carols while being bombarded during the rest of the week with Feliz Navidad, and Frosty the Snowman over the loudspeakers at malls and shopping centers.

Advent is the time when we remember that the hope of Christmas is tied into a hope for Christ to come again into a world filled with too many weapons and too much debauchery.

Advent is a time of focus on a day far more important to prepare for than Christmas morning.

We know that the baby was born and we know that the baby turned into a man who healed and loved the outcast, who preached a new message about God and who eventually hung on the cross to die for our sins. But to know that this child will come again to proclaim a new all encompassing peace; that this Son of God will reappear to judge between the nations… we might claim to understand the concept, but knowing it the same way we know about the birth of the baby and his death as a man is a whole other thing.

This Sunday begins a new cycle in our lectionary, those readings that we hear every Sunday. Today begins a cycle of gospel readings from Matthew, a writer concerned with the fulfillment of the law and the coming of the kingdom. Matthew wrote to a Jewish audience who would have understood the language of the law and proclaimed a message of the necessity of including non-Jews in God’s saving plan.

The Magi come from different nations and at the end of his gospel Jesus says that the disciples should go out and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

We will hear a great deal about the law this coming year and with it stories of those who follow and those who are left behind just like in this morning’s gospel.

Biblical literalists have a lot to say about this text today. Their interpretation of this Matthean text is their basis for the rapture when suddenly righteous people disappear up into heaven and the rest are left behind to deal with the apocalypse.

But the word we translate from the Greek, paralambanomai, into taken does not mean “to go up,” but “to go along with.”

Then two will be in the field; one will go along with and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will go along with and one will be left.
Christ will come again in the middle of our everyday business as usual and invite us to go along with him. The sorrow of this text, according to Matthew, is the idea that there will be some who will not take the opportunity to go along with Christ, but will remain, left behind in their business as usual.

This time and these texts we hear throughout Advent serve as a reminder that God comes when we least expect and not necessarily at the most convenient time. And when God comes there will be a call to come along with, to drop what we are doing and follow. It’s a reminder of true priority, not just to squeeze in time for God in our busy schedules but to expect God at all times and in everything we do.

May these weeks serve you in your preparation for Christ to come into your lives and may they strengthen you as you serve your call to follow him.

Amen.