First Sunday of Advent – November 30, 2025

Matthew 24:36-44

Today we enter again into this four-week season of Advent.

The church year begins with Advent as a time to return to waiting.
A time to prepare.
A time to get back in touch with our ancestors in the faith…
Who watched and hoped and anticipated with great joy the day when God would bring peace on all the earth!
When at last…the prophesy of old would be fulfilled.
For a child would be born!
A new kind of king who would reign over all…establishing peace through justice.
Ushering in a new day…resting on the Anointed One…
So that no more would oppressive empires rule over the people.
No more would distress cover the land.
No more would despair break backs.
But the dawn of the Light would rise for love…joy…peace and hope to rule in every heart!
Advent is the season that returns us to God’s promise as we await ancient echoes to come…
Come Lord Jesus! Dwell among us…be for us the Way!

Today is the first Sunday of Advent.

And the gospel of Matthew turns us almost to the end of the story.
To a day…shortly before the crucifixion…when Jesus sat among his disciples in the Temple.
Teaching them to guard themselves.
No matter what happened…Jesus did not want his followers to be led astray.
For the path of the Anointed was not streets paved in gold.
But the way of the cross.
A giving of Life for True Life to flourish.
Jesus might as well have recited the words of the Psalmist:
Put not your trust in princes…in mortals…in whom there is no help. For when their breath departs…they return to the earth…on that very day their plans perish (Psalm 146:3-4).

We cannot help but notice in the 24^th chapter of Matthew’s gospel the use of catastrophic images…

As disciples of the Way sought to read the times.
The verses of this part of the gospel are how we get ideas of an eventual
When some…the faithful…will be taken.
And others will be left behind.
(This is really an image of how nations conquered other nations…the conquering nation would take the best and the brightest…and leave the old and sick and less able behind).
Texts like Matthew 24 are one way we have gotten elaborate notions of what is called
Millennialism is a religious belief…that is dependent upon an understanding of a Second Coming of Jesus that includes a final tribulation…
Judgement…with a golden age before or after…
Depending on which religious flavor you like…
That will lead to a world yet to come.
This is how we get the idea of being left behind…
Torment for some…release for a handful…
The kind of Christianity that turns a lot of people away…
Because it is based on biblical ideas that fail to read the gospels in their total breadth and scope.

So…forget for now about the end of time.

What we have here in Matthew 24 is a picture of the world as it is…all too familiar to us.
A world of things we know and a world of things we do not know…
Which Jesus wants to make sure his followers understand.

There are things in the world…Jesus says…that are known and that can be anticipated.

Look at the fig tree…which Jesus points out to his followers in another portion of this lengthy lesson that Jesus was giving…
When his disciples were terrified and wanted to hold some certainty that would allow them to be prepared.
Fig trees remind us that winter gives way to spring.
Summer sunshine ripens the fruit on the branch which brings about the harvest of autumn….
The earth’s bountiful yield.
All of nature reminds us that there is a pattern and order and regularity in the world…
The very basis of science and technology…and it means that we have a measure of control…
Without which life would not be feasible.
The very world around us teaches that there are some things upon which we typically can rely.

At the same time…the words of Jesus also offer the other half of that lesson.

Concerning the things that are unknown.
Something the wise never take for granted.
Not so we live with a sense of dread about the other shoe always about to drop.
But so…we do not find ourselves feeling robbed by life…
Or worse yet…blaming such troubles on ourselves or God or others…
When…in fact…difficulties are a part of life.
Because life is both ordered and reliable AND it is hazardous and unpredictable.
However much we may feel in control…we always are vulnerable.
We know that we always are susceptible to the unexpected and the unplanned…
That suddenly throws our routine lives into turmoil and confusion.

Does all of this seem like good news?

But remember the setting of this gospel.

Written shortly after the Temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed forever…
Except for that still-standing Western Wall.
It is good news to hear from the Anointed…the One crucified…yet resurrected.
It is good news to hear that sometimes life will feel like the thief in the night…
The mysterious disappearance while harvesting the fields.
The random occurrence of one being struck by lightning while the next is left totally fine.
The truth is: life is both known and unknown.
The activity in our lives that we can control.
And the unexplainable action of other forces upon us.

So…in the season of Advent…our surest comfort is to remember the story of the God who lives among us.

Born a vulnerable baby.
So fixed on loving us that our own flesh and blood would become the instruments through which God chooses to work.
In all of life’s knowns…in all of life’s unknowns…let us trust fully in that!