November 27, 2016 – Matthew 24:36-44
Matthew 24:36-44
Like a Thief
First Sunday of Advent – November 27, 2016
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
It’s getting to be Christmas.
And that can only mean one thing: many of us will be watching Home Alone sometime soon!
The holiday classic came out 26 years ago and yet many people just still have to get
their annual fix of this film.
In it, Kevin, an 8 year old troublemaker,
is accidentally left home alone during Christmas vacation when
his family leaves on a trip for Paris.
Peering down from his second storey window, Kevin overhears two cat burglars stating that
they plan on coming back to the house at 9:00 PM to rob the house,
thinking that it is now empty.
Kevin now knows what time the burglars will return!
So he gets busy, and spends the rest of the day setting up one booby trap after another to
foil the thieves – who do indeed return promptly at 9:00 PM that evening!
Jesus says: If the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming,
he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into.
Well, yeah. Even an 8 year old knows that!
We always get a Gospel story like this on the first Sunday of Advent,
the first Sunday of the new church year.
Matthew’s community expect Jesus to come again to complete what the earthly Jesus had begun.
See, in the New Testament, the idea is that history is divided into 2 stages.
The first stage is marked by sin, injustice, exploitation, sickness,
enmity between nature and humans, violence, and death.
The new age, though, will be characterized by the reign of God, forgiveness, mutual support,
health, justice, peace, harmony between nature and humans, and fullness of life.
The change from one age to another is effected by Jesus:
the reign of God breaks into the world through him.
We are now in the process of change, of transformation.
Matthew’s community believed that the full change would be fully accomplished with
the second coming of Jesus.
In the meantime, the community was simply to be faithful,
and to faithfully do those things Jesus had instructed them to do.
That is what Matthew means when he says that they are to be ready and to keep awake.
For Matthew, being ready and keeping awake means faithfully attending to the things that
Jesus would have you tend to in the time between his first and second coming.
Unlike Kevin, we do not know exactly when Jesus will return.
We do not know exactly when God’s reign of justice and peace will be fully effected.
We do not know exactly when human beings will finally beat their weapons into
farming implements so that all the hungry of the earth might be fed.
But in Jesus’s resurrection from the dead, we do have the assurance that it will happen.
That violence and death and injustice are not the last word.
We have the assurance that God’s love gets the last word.
We have the assurance that God’s forgiveness gets the last word.
We have the assurance that life gets the last word.
The thief in a sense has already come.
We must be vigilant, says Jesus – the thief is always lurking at the door.
Like Kevin, we must be watchful and prepare.
The thief threatens to take so much.
The thief takes concern for our neighbour.
The thief comes and takes concern for justice.
The thief comes and takes joy for living.
The thief comes and takes our concern for all people and narrows it down to just those in our
immediate circle.
The thief comes and takes away hope, takes away our concern for future generations,
takes away concern for our planet and shrinks it down to the size of our homes.
So, we wonder – how do we best prepare?
How do we live in the meantime?
Our story in the Gospel this morning is not particularly helpful.
The problem sometimes with the lectionary is that you only get a little piece of a larger pie.
And who wants a small piece of pie?
If you go home this afternoon and read on, this is what you hear Jesus say:
He tells yet another little story, of a slave who is left home alone when the Master goes away.
What does the slave do?
Does the slave slack off? And ill-treat the other slaves?
No: the slave simply goes about his regular life-giving duties,
serving the other slaves their regular meal at the regular time.
A good servant simply makes dinner and makes sure that his immediate neighbours are fed.
He doesn’t set up a telescope to spend all his time day and night watching for the master’s return.
He doesn’t take to the streets as street-corner preacher scaring the living daylights out of people
telling them that the master will return any time so they better shape up or else!
He just makes dinner at the regular time – like the beautiful people who faithfully make our
community meals.
They sign up, they make a meal, they feed the people.
That is how Jesus is telling us to be watchful and ready and vigilant.
This is what it means to be wakeful.
Nothing more – but also nothing less.
For if we continue to read on in Matthew’s Gospel we see that Jesus – like a sneaky thief,
but so much better! – has actually already returned! Ha!
Just a bit further on, in a vision of the day when Jesus finally returns and comes again,
Jesus commends the watchful ones who fed him, and clothed him, and visited him in
the time between his first and second coming!
Surprised, they say, “Jesus, when did we do this? We don’t remember doing this to you!”
And Jesus says, When you did it to the hungry, you did it to me.
When you did it to the poor, you did it to me.
When you did it to the imprisoned, you did it to me.
When I was a child, Gospel stories like this morning’s terrified me.
But we need to understand that God’s coming judgment is a good thing.
We desperately need an end to violence, and war, and abuse, and addiction, and exploitation.
We desperately need an end to sickness and injustice.
We need to be honest about these things when we see them in the world around us.
But we also need to be honest about these things in ourselves.
It is not so simple as the bad people needing to be done away with by a vengeful God.
It is about knowing that these things need to be done away with in ourselves too,
that we are all of us a mixture of good goat and bad goat.
We have to hear as good news that one day, one day, evil will have no place in the universe –
and evil will have no place within each of us.
That is very good news.
And so, like a good thief, Jesus will come and take these things away.
And, in fact, Jesus has already come.
Comes again this morning, and steals in amongst us: in this meal, in these people, in these words.
Comes to steal your apathy, comes to steal your unconcern for your neighbour,
comes to steal your narrow concern for only your own well-being.
Comes to steal your worry and anxiety over your future – worry and concern that turns you
inward and that makes you less the person God created you to be.
Comes to steal your lack of self-esteem.
So that you might be emboldened to stay ready for the great day.
So that you might be freed to feed Jesus in the hungry.
So that you might be freed to care for your neighbour in need.
So that you might be freed to share the hospitality you receive at this table.
And go about doing the business of being a disciple of Christ:
feeding the hungry, encouraging the weak, strengthening the downhearted,
working for justice and peace.
The Good Thief is coming, to steal back this world and every person in it for the love of God.
Coming to steal back your heart from its concerns and worries and anxieties.
Coming to steal back your life and the life of every person for grace and love and life.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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