Matthew 24:36-44

This Sunday’s passage from Matthew is another text that seems out of place for the season. The culture around us is fresh from Thanksgiving and Black Friday and rushing headlong into Christmas, decking the halls and making merry. But instead of tidings of comfort and joy, the first gospel reading for Advent offers us a flood, a thief in the night, and warnings to be prepared. This year, it doesn’t seem so much as though these messages are coming from out in left field, and therefore, they’re more comforting.

The passage comes at the end of a long apocalyptic prediction by Jesus. Apocalyptic literature is crisis literature. It’s meant to bring comfort to distressed communities and it encourages faithfulness and courage during the struggle. The promise of God’s deliverance is normally linked to instructions to be watchful. Be alert. Pay attention. These apocalyptic passages always show up early in Advent. Of course, there is always something we can do, some action we can take, however small, to participate in God’s coming reign, but these passages remind us that there are some things we simply can’t make happen. Sometimes we have to wait. We may have to wait for a diagnosis, for the pain to stop, for a loved one to heal, or for a loved one to die. We may have to wait to find out whether we got the job, or whether we’ll lose the job. We may have to wait to figure out whether we’ve made the right decision. We may have to wait for justice, or to be loved. There really are some things we can do nothing about. That’s hard news for many of us who like to think we’re in control of our lives. We want to be proactive – which is good and right and faithful. But sometimes we must wait.

Advent re-tells the story of people who, like us, were waiting for the promises of God to be fulfilled and striving to live faithfully as they waited. Down through the ages, Christians have waited for the “Second Coming” of Christ, and that’s still language that many people use today. Presbyterians give a nod to this in our communion liturgy when we recite, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” Speaking for myself, I’m not waiting for a cataclysmic end time; I believe, instead, that the reign of God is realized among us; as Frederick Buechner wrote, “Insofar as here and there, and now and then, God’s kingly will is being done in various odd ways among us even at this moment, the kingdom has come already. Insofar as all the odd ways we do [God’s] will at this moment are at best half-baked and halfhearted, the kingdom is still a long way off – a hell of a long way off, to be more precise and theological.” So, when I proclaim, “Christ will come again,” I don’t mean at the end of the world as we know it but in the next instant, or in our next encounter, in our next opportunity to meet Christ in others and in other situations.

Either way, Christ’s work isn’t complete, is it? God’s promises are not all fulfilled. The world is not beating its swords into plowshares or its spears into pruning hooks (Isaiah 2:4). As much as we wish we could, or pretend that we can, we can’t make God’s reign come on our own. And so we wait. Advent offers us the reminder that waiting can be a spiritual practice, a holy practice, because Advent not only reminds us that there will always be times we have to wait; it asks us how we are waiting.

The lectionary cuts off the reading of Matthew 24 at verse 44 but the final half-dozen verses of the chapter provide an analogy about household servants. In verse 45 Jesus mentions that a commendable servant would be the one who gives the other servants their food at the proper time. In other words, the good servant is commended for making dinner! It doesn’t say he amassed property and goods so that he’d be secure, even if others were suffering. It doesn’t say he hunkered down into an armed compound or bunker. It says simply that what made him a good servant was that he made dinner for others and served it at the usual time. In other words, he carried out the ordinary service of his ordinary life. Might it be that being faithful servants in our everyday routines demonstrates holy watchfulness for Christ’s return? Is being an honest office manager, a careful school bus driver, an ethical attorney, a thoughtful homemaker really a sign that we are aware that God will indeed fulfill God’s promises? Yes, it is.

This kind of waiting – being faithful in our everyday routines, paying attention and listening, watching for God’s active presence here and now – is a spiritual practice, a holy waiting, because it means we recognize our own limitations and rely on God. The Serenity Prayer is a terrific Advent prayer: “God, grant us serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference.” There are things we cannot change or fix. For those things, we must wait; we wait for God. And here’s the thing: spiritual transformation doesn’t take place when we get what we want, when we want it. Spiritual transformation happens in the waiting room. Waiting is soul work.

As the Serenity Prayer reminds us, there are things we can change, and our faith asks us to join with God in changing those things. And so we wait for the kingdom by working for the values of the kingdom; being alert and paying attention to the voices on the margins, the voices we might not even want to hear. Joining in the work God is already doing in the world; working for God’s kingdom of justice and peace and kindness and generosity with a fierce hope that never dies.

And God does come. God comes with comfort through the kindness of a friend when we lose someone we love. God comes with healing through gentle touch. God comes with reassurance when we’re afraid. God comes with energizing spirit when we’re discouraged and life-giving love when we’re depressed. Sometimes God surprises us in coincidences that shift our thinking. Other times, God comes quietly – in the birth of the child of Bethlehem long ago and in the birth of love today, now, in the world, in your life and mine. The message of Advent is that God indeed comes into the world – to lonely exiles centuries ago, and to you and me.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Henri J. M. Nouwen, “A Spirituality of Waiting,” an article condensed from a tape available from Ave Maria Press, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, http://bgbc.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/A-Spirituality-of-Waiting-by-Henri-Houwen.pdf.
David Lose, http://www.davidlose.net/2014/11/matthew-24-32-51/.
Scott Hoezee, “Advent 1A,” November 21, 2016, http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/sermon-starters/advent-1a/?type=the_lectionary_gospel.
Pete Wilson, “The Spiritual Benefits of Waiting,” November 19, 2015, http://www.faithgateway.com/spiritual-benefits-waiting/#.WDcMhqIrJsM
John M. Buchanan, “The Work of Waiting,” November 29, 2009, http://fourthchurch.org/sermons/2009/112909.html.