November 30th ~ Are You Awake? / 1st Sunday of Advent

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Isaiah 2:1-5

Psalm 122

Romans 13:11-14

Matthew 24:36-44

Sermon by Pastor Joel

Are you awake out there? If you were listening to this gospel just now, it seems as if we had all better be awake. And I guess I could go that route – and talk about how this is Advent, the time to prepare for the coming of Jesus and that we all should be ready. And maybe we will talk about how we choose to spend our attention next week when we are knee deep in Christmas lists, and decorations, and the obligations of the season.

But last night, as a church community, we fed people who find themselves unhoused as the winter approaches. We woke up as a community, saw the need and for one evening filled it. And unlike what the gospel seems to be saying, we didn’t ask questions or pass judgment, we turned no one away. We opened the door and let everyone in need inside – just as the gospel instructs us.

But that gospel for today is a doozy. Because it seems to be saying that God is going to shut the door on roughly half of us. It seems to be saying we shouldn’t wake up and serve those in need or be kind because we are called to do so, but because we are afraid of what might happen if we don’t.

If we read it literally, we are being told to smarten up, to do as God wants, lest the day come when Jesus arrives, and we get left behind. On that day, Matthew writes, there will be two in the field: one will be taken, the other left. Two women will be grinding meal: one wins God’s lottery, the other loses out. Best be ready: none of us wants to be the one left behind. In other words, we’d better not rest, we’d better not fail, we’d better never be weak, because Jesus is coming to town someday, and he is going to pick and choose the best of the bunch and cut loose everyone else.

That’s fair, right? Sounds like a good deal? I mean we ALL know that some of us are just better. Some of us are more faithful. Some of us just belong more. We deserve a bigger prize. We deserve a better seat at God’s table. We deserve to be rewarded more than those OTHER people.

Does that really sit right with you? I hope not. Instead, do you, like me, have a visceral reaction to this interpretation – a deep sense of unfairness? It is a cruel notion. One day, some of us might be looking away or messing up, and God’s judgment on us will be sealed forever. Imagine if someone were sitting here in church for the first time, hearing this gospel, and heard the minister preach as if the animals in the story of Noah’s Ark were truly to be humans some random day – divided up by worthiness, friend set apart from friend, parent from child. What kind of God would they think we believed in? Not a generous one. Not an accepting one. Not a forgiving one. And certainly not a very Lutheran or grace-centred one.

And yet this notion in the gospel is seductive. This passage in Matthew, or a version of it, has been interpreted this way throughout different times in history, and by different groups. We see it shaping our public discourse – who belongs, who doesn’t? Who’s deserving, who isn’t?

This may be humanity’s greatest weakness. We so easily succumb to categorizing people or jockeying for our place. We strive not to be a community but to set ourselves above one another.

I would not belong to any church that read this gospel literally. I reject it. This is a message contradicted over and over again by Jesus – who tells us to forgive just as God does, who seeks out the lost sheep, who welcomes the wayward child.

So why do we read it at all? Why say these words in public in 2025? Maybe we should not. But on the other hand, sometimes how we learn from the gospel is through our reaction to it. When we stop and say, whoa, I don’t agree with that, that can’t be reconciled with my faith, we are learning something about ourselves. Pondering this message this week forced me to think about the times when I have divided people up, when I have pushed too hard to be the one who gets in, when I have wanted to be right at the expense of everything else. Those times have brought clarity to my understanding of Jesus, and my notion of what is divine: how Jesus would want us to interpret this message.

If we take another look, we might see that we are both of those workers in the field, we are both women at work in the kitchen, we are both the homeowner and the thief in the night. We are constantly rooting for the better angels of our natures even when the devil inside us wins. And when the gospel reminds us to be awake for this future day when we might see Jesus, the true lesson is to be awake to what makes us good, and what makes us flawed, and to know that Jesus sees the best part of us, and sets aside the worst. In this way, we might be lucky enough to see Jesus at work in the world, as clearly as if Jesus walked in human form among us.

Advent is one of the times in our church year when we are given a practice of meditation and reflection. It is always wrong to interpret the gospel against the life of another, to decide what the gospel is saying about them, about whether they are living the right way.

The gospel is about each one of us figuring out for ourselves our lives and our relationship with God. It is about understanding what that means for how we engage with other people – not what those people should be doing for us. The gospel is something that comes from God and works inside out. In the moments when we manage to get this right, that is when humanity can be great, when we naturally come into community in a grace-centered way.

In those times, we don’t need to be only looking for that day when we meet Jesus face-to-face. That day will come to all of us as surely as the next snow fall. Jesus is also here today, right now. Through us, when we are true to that best part of who we are and whose we are--when we do that which is pleasing to God, Jesus has already arrived.

Amen