The second coming of the second coming

Matthew 24:36-44

36 “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37 For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For as in the days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, 39 and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so, too, will be the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Then two will be in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. 41 Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken, and one will be left. 42 Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. 43 But understand this: 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. 44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

Romans 13:11-14

11 Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is already the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; 12 the night is far gone; the day is near. Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; 13 let us walk decently as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in illicit sex and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. 14 Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

The end is like the beginning.  This is true of the Christian story, and it’s also true of the church year.  Today we begin a new year with Advent, putting ourselves in the position of Israel awaiting its messiah, walking in darkness waiting for the light to shine, anticipating once more, as if for the first time, the Good News that Christ has come.  But really, this first Sunday of Advent is perhaps like an ending, for traditionally the church focuses on the expectation that Christ will come again.  

The second coming of Christ is part of the story we’re not so comfortable talking about.  For one thing, despite Jesus’ explicit statement that the day and the hour are unknown (even by him!), there are still those who act as if figuring this out is an essential task, to know what God has told us cannot be known.  Thus far all their predictions have been disappointed, and I hope that God will make sure, when history finally does end, it won’t occur at the moment any of these folks calculated.  To talk about the second coming risks association with the weirdo fringes of Christian culture.  

But then, if you do read the passages which describe when Jesus returns, you find that they’re quite unsettling.  Jesus compares that eventual day to the time of Noah, when people were going about their business, eating and drinking, getting married, then the floods came to sweep them all away.  They weren’t paying attention; they weren’t prepared.   A day is coming, Jesus tells us, when the unsuspecting will again be swept away.  Two women will be in the field, one will be taken, one will remain.  Two women will be grinding meal, one will be taken, one will remain.  It’s worth noting that, contrary to the way it’s usually interpreted, the picture is here is of the “good folks” remaining and the “bad folks” being taken, just as only Noah and his family made it through the flood.  Those who fixate on the rapture tend to have it exactly backwards.  

But then, what is this all about, really?  Where are these people taken?  Is this what judgment looks like?  But what about all the other passages which seem to depict Christ’s return differently, like when Paul says that he’ll descend from heaven and the righteous will go to meet him the sky?   There are those, of course, who go to considerable effort trying to sort out this stuff, making a kind of flow chart of the end-times.  To be honest, I’ve never been interested in this territory, again probably because it’s inhabited by sketchy characters, but even more so because, just as we’re not meant to figure our the day and time, Jesus’ doesn’t intend for us to walk away with a rigid understanding of how this stuff will happen.  His goal is more to inspire, to evoke, even to trouble than to explain.  

The whole point is to tell us to “keep awake”, to “be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”  If you knew what time the thief were coming to rob your house, you wouldn’t be caught off guard, you’d be ready.  But, of course, you don’t know such a thing - expect in Home Alone - just as you don’t know when Christ will return, so you must remain vigilant, alert.  

Christ’s return represents the end of history - certainly the end of history as we know it, at least - and with it the reminder than there’s a limited number of earthly days.  As with a human life, so with human life itself.  And exactly because our days are finite, exactly because judgment is coming, what we do with our days matters.  We should not put off until tomorrow what should be done today.  We should not tell ourselves that we have time when we cannot truly know if we do.  Jesus’ teaching invests life with urgency, an impetus to do what needs to be done.  Tomorrow is not the day of salvation.  Today is.  

This realization is meant to be sobering, of course, and perhaps even a bit fearful - at least for those who don’t have their affairs in order.   It does demand that we take stock of ourselves and take necessary action, that we get shaken out of our complacency.  That sort of thing is uncomfortable, the kind of work that is easy to put off until tomorrow, to assume that it’ll be easier then, only to find yourself putting it off again.  Jesus isn’t not above using a bit of dread to motivate us, it seems.  

But the theme for today is hope, after all, and strange as it may seem, we really are meant to hope in this day, to pray “come Lord Jesus”.  Every Sunday we confess our faith in the creed: “Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead”.  Every Sunday we proclaim the mystery of faith: Chris is died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.”  Every Sunday we pray the Lord’s prayer: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven”.  This is essential content for Christian hope.  

It’s strange to say, but we are to hope for the end of history.  In the first place, this names the reality that history doesn’t go on forever, that the universe doesn’t just burn out, but that history belongs to God.  Existence has purpose, meaning, direction, even if it is not easily discerned.  But even more than that, God promises that the end of history equals the time when nations will not make war any longer, but will refashion their weapons as farming tools, when the kingdom comes, and all things will be made new.  This is a vision that more or less all people would agree that it would be lovely if that would come to pass, this kind of hope is the very substance of Christian faith.  

But the question must be asked: What do we hope for?  What do you hope for?   Does it look anything like this?  Or do you find it hard to hope in anything at all?  

In the little passage from Romans, Paul wrote that, because the time is near, “make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”  Just prior he specifically mentioned illicit sex and drunkenness, so we might read Paul’s concern as narrowly moralistic, but this little statement opens up on a much bigger question: What do you desire?  What does your heart long for?  What are the appetites which actually drive you?  

What we want, what we desire, much more than we think or feel, determines the direction of our lives, reveals the truth of who we really are.  

The danger, of course, is that we find ourselves desiring the wrong things.  This happens, not so much because we make conscious choices, but because we unconsciously absorb all sorts of desires.  Our desires are disordered both because we participate in culture and simply because its the human condition.  And the problem is much worse in our consumeristic age when all manner of advertising conspires to create in us desires which induce yet more consumption.  These forces work upon us without us really being aware.  In the language of Scripture we’re in the darkness, we’re asleep, without even knowing it.  

Advent offers us a season to wake up, to remember some things we’ve forgotten, to ponder anew the familiar and discover, like a child, that there’s so much more than we realized, to learn a hope beyond our preoccupations, beyond what are eyes can see, beyond even what we can imagine - a hope that encompasses all creation.  

The challenge with hope - especially hope at this scale - is that the distance between where we currently find ourselves and the future we are to imagine seems impossible to bridge.  How can we hope for something so vast when more modest hopes go unrealized?  How do we persist in hope when this vision doesn’t appear any closer to realization?  

The Advent season also teaches us patience; it places us in a posture of expectant waiting, even when the day doesn’t seem to be drawing nearer.  My boys keep asking me how many days until Christmas.  They’re ready for the day to come, but it still feels too far away.   The Christian life happens in this space, holding together both the urgency that the days are short, but also the patience that the days never seem to end, in the confidence that, however many days God has left for us, it is enough.  We are to live in this tension, in a state of readiness for a day that, in all likelihood, lies beyond the horizon of our earthly lives.  We are to live all our days as if Christ has come and Christ will come again.