First Sunday of Advent – November 27, 2022

Matthew 24:36-44

What we might think of as “the rapture” in our Gospel reading is really a collection of war images:

When Babylon was capturing Judea…this is what was really happening:

Those who were fit and skilled and young enough to work were taken away into captivity.
They took the best and the brightest.
Those who were old…ill…
Or who posed no threat to the state were left behind.

So it was that two men working side by side were separated by enemy soldiers.

So…Jesus was telling his followers that his advent would be like a war.

Like the onslaught of a powerful army.
It is important for me to say that what Jesus predicted here literally took place.

The Jewish Diaspora (the dispersion of the Jewish people beyond Israel) was a trauma from which that nation never recovered.

And which today involves the entire world.
It was a wound that will not heal.
Which continues to bleed into our present day.
The middle east muddle: Israel…Iraq…Iran…Saudi Arabia…Libya…Syria…The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)…Dubai has replaced Casablanca as the black-market capital of the world.
A day does not go by that one of those places is in the world news.

Christ’s Advent was not limited to his physical incarnation though.

Christ’s advent really is the detonation…the explosion…of his spiritual work in the world.
This work is varied and all-encompassing and ongoing.
And so…we find contradictions like the Prince of Peace announcing a coming war.

We must get rid of the idea that spirituality is passive.

Spirituality is a dynamic energy that changes…breaks up…alters and transforms the world.
Without a single act of violence.
Note our first reading: He shall judge between the nations…and shall arbitrate for many peoples…they shall beat their swords into plowshares…and their spears into pruning hooks…nation shall not lift up sword against nation…neither shall they learn war anymore.

Spiritual energy will often provoke violence from the opposing side:

As in the case of Gandhi’s campaign to free India from Britain.
Spiritual action forces hidden realities (the elephant in the room) out into the open.
And much evil is exposed.
Along with signs of grace…mercy and redemption.

So…the Advent…Christ’s detonation of spiritual energy…is compared to war.

Jesus was saying that his Advent would have that kind of powerful impact on the entire world.

Every time Jesus spoke of his Advent…he was speaking to two different kinds of listeners.

On the one hand: some people wanted to know what was going to happen in the course of history.
With Israel and Rome.
With the prayed for return of the kingdom of David.
Their military hero and warrior king.
This had been the arena of prophecy recorded in Old Testament scripture.

But there was also a second kind of listener:

In other words:

What is the worth of God…if God cannot be personally known?

This person has learned that nothing in life is important unless one is somehow important to God.
“If I am not loved by God…then there is nothing worth living for.”

This new awareness brings the realization that we cannot love unless we are loved.

That is…what enables a Christ disciple to become selfless is that a hole or ache in the center of his being has been filled with love…

Christ spoke to many people who were on the fringes of orthodoxy but were not friends of the Temple…

Jesus is saying that the world at large will go on eating and drinking and living in its customary rut.

When the Advent comes…who will know its meaning?
Who will be aware of the spiritual riches suddenly flooding creation?
It will happen to one and not to the other.
Identical citizens…having the same jobs…the same duties…the same general look about them…
Will come to a different experience.

One will be taken…in a spiritual sense…

God’s “Advent”…Jesus is saying…has signs and symptoms that appear in advance.

So…for those of us who are hungry and thirsty for God…