READINGS

Matthew 24:37-44
Gen 4:8
Gen 27,27
Conceivably Ruth and Orpah - Ruth 1

HOMILY

The first Sunday Advent gives us the distant noise concerning what's coming in.

As each Sunday comes by, our vision is gradually focused smaller and smaller until we begin to sense exactly what it is as is happening in such a tiny scene as the birth in a manger in Bethlehem.

In our first reading and in our Psalm, we get the notion of what is coming to Jerusalem. It is a notion of a positive fulfillment and that sounds tremendously visible and evident.

This day, in which Jerusalem was built, will be fulfilled in all its Glory, which people will pour in to this holy place, this Temple.

It sounds as though a huge crowd of people coming to a particular place, the Temple in Jerusalem, and the Psalm is the same.

The people were beginning a march to something known, something visible, something obvious and part of our Advent journey will be to be disabused of that and have our eyes drained on a different sort of coming in.

Today we get the passage from Matthew from the apocalyptic speech.

Remember that after Jesus has finished teaching in the Temple, he comes out and the disciples point out how beautiful they all are and Jesus says something like "you know that all will be thrown down".

Then Jesus privately gives them the apocalyptic discourse:

The signs of the end of the age foretelling persecutions, including their own;
All the things that are to happen (many of which did happen during the next 40 or so years after Jesus's death leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem);
The coming of the son of man, which appears to refer to what happened at the crucifixion;
The lesson of the fig tree, which harks back to what Jesus had himself done to the fig tree on his way into Jerusalem at the beginning of this week.

This week, Jesus changes tone slightly, because before things had been mysterious and difficult to understand, now curiously the temperature goes down a bit.

As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 

For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. 

That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

Remember the picture: Earth was full of violence and God said there was too much violence and he intended to wipe it all out and decided to save Noah.

What was going on at that time seemed normal to everybody: eating, drinking, marrying and giving in marriage... that was what seemed normal.

However, even in the midst of something that seemed completely normal, something utterly abnormal happened.

Noah going into the ark the flood coming, everybody mocking for taking precautions about that and then them all being swept away.

Notice that it's in the midst of all these normal things that the question of what our discernment of what's really going on looks like.

He says then:

Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left.

Well that could reference a number of fields in the Hebrew scriptures, where there were two people.

The first obviously being the one into which Cain lured Abel before killing him.

Although, in this case, it's not sure that the one who was taken was taken in the way that we normally assume it, because it was Cain who was the one who was left and the one who was taken is the pre-figuring of the founding of the Kingdom.

There's also famously two people who smelt like a field: the two sons of Isaac, Jacob at Esau.

When Jacob's mum put the goat skin on him and made venison for his father, blind Isaac thought that he could smell the field of both his sons and he knew Esau was on the field, so one was taken and became the father of Israel and the other was left.

Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.

I have no idea to whom that's referring; I've searched up all the references to a grinding wheel in the Hebrew scriptures to no avail.

Maybe it's entirely fanciful to think of the two daughters who were separated after the deaths of their husbands: one Ruth, going with an army back to Israel; the other going back to her household, a moabite household.

To be honest I think that more than particular references, I think that the whole point is this is not obvious.

You need to be on the inside of something; if you discern something from the outside, it is going to look odd.

What is it going to look like to be in a position to discriminate in the good sense, to discern what's going on wherever there are two people, wherever normal seeming things are in fact riven through by the hints of Glory or ruin.

Therefore keep awake, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.

The coming of the son of man is the central message of this passage: to keep awake already, be γρηγορέω (grēgoreó), stay vigilant.

I think that that's the difficult key that we're being asked to do in Advent, which is staying awake sufficiently to be able to discriminate, to discern what is going on in the midst of our world so that when normal seeming things are in fact shot through with Heavenly decision, making processes and in the midst of them the Lord is coming.

And it's coming as a surprise.

We do not know it, so no complacency is possible as we get in the Romans reading.

Notice this "keep awake therefore for you do not know on what day your lord is coming".

I think it's very important that the word your is the rather surprising.

Actually, because the next line is about somebody who's clearly not their Lord but understand this:

If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into.

That's the image of somebody who is prepared for something negative to happen, who thinks it may happen and has to keep awake continually, because of the threat of being broken into is always there.

If he knows what time it's going to happen of course there's no risk that he would have let it happen; everything would have been perfectly guarded.

The chances are that most people are not aware of the risk the whole time and so things are not perfectly guarded.

But Jesus has said just before: "you do not know on what day your Lord is coming", which suggests that it's not the negative thing that he's concerned about, but rather the people who, because we think of the Lord as on our side, think of him as our Lord and say "Lord Lord".

Because of that, we assume that it's going to be coming in a way that will be easy for us to pick up and we will be able to detect it.

People assume that it will be obvious from our point of view, because we know what's right and what's wrong with the suggestion that actually that's the most dangerous position to be in; because, if we think we know, then we're going to be greatly deceived.

We have to really become aware of the possibility that the knowing, the coming is happening in our midst in ways we don't know and which do not flatter our sense of belong, our sense of what is good and bad, our sense of what is right and wrong.

Therefore, you also must be ready for the Son of Man coming at an unexpected hour.

It's not only the hour that's unexpected, but actually the whole direction of the coming it's likely to uproot our world.

If we think that, we're on the right side of this, then the chances are we are going to be the equivalent of sleepy.

We're not going to be sufficiently alive to what the "coming in" actually produces in amidst what the shake-up in our society is about.

We'll think of it to something happening for us with us as the good guys, which is the terrible risk rather than constantly being awake and aware of how easy it is for us to get caught up in the wrong picture of what's coming in.

It's after this that Jesus teaches the three famous parables:

The Parable of the Bridesmaids
The Parables of the talents
The Parable of the Judgment of the Nations

These are Matthew's teaching of discernment, precisely so that we can learn to be embedded in discriminating against what is coming in, when it's coming in, how to pick up what's going on.

So the beginning of Advent is this: we're being asked to enter into discernment about all the things that are going on where we are and the relation to all of them.

How much of it seems normal, how much of it seems scandalous and full of huge turbulence and uprisings?

The strange mixture of normal things going on while there are huge upheavals simultaneously makes it very difficult for us to be, as it were, planted in both and yet still alive for the one who is coming in; still prepared for all the Glory that is going to come in such small form.

Is going to be so strange for us to learn and is going to take us into the Kingdom.