Surprise!

First UMC Fort Dodge

December 2, 2007

Matthew 24: 36 But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. 37 For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. 38 For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, 39 and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be. 40 Then there will be two men in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. 41 Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one will be left. 42 Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming. 43 But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house to be broken into. 44 For this reason you also must be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will.

A thief in the night! Imagine, God is going to come to us as a thief in the night. In an eerie coincidence the news this week had a story about the football player for the Washington Redskins, Shawn Taylor, who was shot by a thief who broke into his house in the middle of the night. Shawn Taylor got out of bed to investigate noises and ended up being shot by the intruder and died later of his wound. The thief in the night is hardly a welcome visitor. Does God really mean that Jesus will bring terror to us by surprising us when we are least expecting him and least prepared to defend ourselves? Should we gear God’s arrival because we might get shot and die?

This is a very bizarre way to start Advent. We know full well that Jesus is coming on December 25 as a helpless, innocent, harmless baby. We’re ready for all the sweet gentleness of a new baby born lying in a manger and wrapped in swaddling cloths. And, bam, advent starts with an alarm siren, warning us to prepare for the violent end of the world. I just finished reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which is about the months and years after the end of the world as we know it and it is not a pretty sight. Today's Gospel dares to compare the incarnation, God in the flesh among us, God with us, to the break-in of a thief in the night who will usher in these end times. The Gospel this Sunday invites us to ponder the strange and the new coming into the world whose name is Jesus. We desperately need something new, and Advent says that we are about to get it but it may not be quite what we expected.

I was tempted to title this sermon, “A Son-in-law.” This is an old golf expression to refer to the drive that slices just off the fairway into the rough. Not perfect, but playable. This kind of shot is called a “son-in-law.” It’s called a “son-in-law” because it’s not too bad, just not what you expected. As Jimmy Carter once said, behind very successful man is a surprised mother-in-law. Well, God is the big “son-in-law” – not exactly what you expected, but playable. Or, as Forest Gump put it, “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know which will have a cherry inside.”

This passage often leads to a conversation about death. Jesus does seem to be talking about the end of our lives. Death, it seems, is also like a box of chocolates. Sometimes our own death or the death of someone we love comes as a thief in the night - when and how we least expect. We weren’t expecting to be robbed of someone we loved. Our normal security system didn’t keep us safe. Death is always harder when it is untimely, which it often is.

Our death is almost always untimely in some sense. No one knows exactly when they will die. Maybe we don’t even want to know. Would you really like to know the precise date and time your will die? If someone offered to tell you the exact date and time of your death, would you accept? Think about it for a while. If you knew exactly when you were going to die, couldn't you plan out your life a little better? I suspect many of us would rather not know when we will die because we find it depressing to think that we will die at all. I heard Tom Wolf interviewed on Sixty Minutes a few years ago. At 68, his age at the time, he said that we should consider how many days we have yet to live. It is a finite number and quite a bit smaller than we'd like it to be. The soberingly small number of days we have left should, Wolf suggested, cause us to live more intensely and deliberately. Wouldn't it be a great advantage to know exactly how many days we have left so we could use them efficiently and effectively to get the most out of life?

The gospel lesson this morning tells us to live this way even though we don't know when we will die. Think about the end times, Jesus tells us. Think especially about the fact that you do not know when these end times will come. If you want to be ready at the end, you better be ready now, Jesus says, because you don’t know when the end will come. I heard recently about a high school band instructor who tells his students that if you want to be on time, you have to be early. Jesus doesn't tell us when our lives will end; in fact, he assures us that no one can know with precision when the end will come. But Jesus does say that if you want to be ready to put on that long white robe, you had better be ready early. Jesus tells us to live each day as if it were your last. Arrange your lives as if Christ were to arrive tomorrow. It just could happen.

The hope is that you are already doing whatever it is that you would do if you knew Jesus was about to arrive. There is the story of a canonized saint who liked to play tennis. During a match his opponent posed the question, "If you knew that you were going to die today, what would you do?" With his racquet still in hand, the saint replied, "Serve!" Live every moment comfortable with it as the last thing you ever do. My wife Faith, who is deathly afraid to fly, gives herself a pep talk before each flight. She assures herself that she is doing something important so that if the plane crashes, it will be at a point in her life when things are going well so death. It somehow comforts her to think that she might die in the midst of a purposeful life. I, on the other hand, prefer not to die at all.

Two will be in the field. One will be taken and one left behind. Two will be cooking supper. One will be lifted up. The other will find herself suddenly alone. This reminds me of the bumper sticker. "In case of the rapture, this care will be driver-less." And indeed, Jesus says, this is exactly what will happen. It is no coincidence that Jesus refers to Noah. No one but Noah was prepared for the flood. Everyone else thought life would go on forever as it had in the past. And God destroyed everyone, even the animals that weren't lucky enough to get on the boat. It will be very bad for those who are left behind. God is not willing to tolerate human depravity indefinitely. Human evil will bring destruction upon nature and upon innocent bystanders as well as on the evildoers themselves. And then Jesus uses a very curious metaphor to warn us about the end times. They will come upon us as a thief in the night. God the destroyer! God the thief! Now there are some really new ideas.

Paul uses the same image when he warns the Thessalonians, "Don't let God jump you unawares like a thief in the night." Five times in the NT, the coming of God is compared to the intrusion of a thief. Twice in Revelation comes this warning: "I will come like a thief." You may be attracted to various images of God: God the shepherd, God the Father, God the mother hen who gathers her chicks. But God the thief? I don't think so.

Of course, we are not unfamiliar with the randomness of life nor with the unpredictability of the thief. None of those in the Twin Towers on 9/11 knew as they left for work that morning that a plane would crash into their building and extinguish their lives. My daughter came home early that day from school because the kids were sent home as soon as the enormity of the tragedy was clear. I met her at the door to the garage and she ran to give me a big hug. She and I both sensed the need to hold those whom we love. When the precariousness of life becomes very apparent we want to grab hold of those people who are precious to us, while we still can. Narrow escapes remind us how important it is to treat each moment, each encounter with those we love, as if it were our last. I know someone who was scheduled to be on the flight from Boston which crashed into one of the Twin Towers on that fateful day. A casual change of schedule at the last minute caused her to miss the flight. Why was she spared and someone on standby took her seat and perished? After the brush with death, life took on an intensity she had not previously experienced. Colors were deeper, sunsets more glorious, and landscapes more impressive. Everything in life took on an intensified immediacy that comes from the awareness of how precious and precarious life is. Some of those who narrowly escaped destruction on 9/11 through some random circumstance felt singled out and saved by God for some special purpose. But I think that God did not select those who died and those who would be saved. The message is not that only the righteous will prevail when the end comes. The message for us today is that we should all live with a sense of purpose and a sense of the specialness of each moment. No opportunity to love God and serve our neighbor should be passed by.

When I worked at Elder Affairs I learned that being old presented a wonderful opportunity to live life to the fullest. I also learned that being old could be precarious. Disease and disability threaten more seriously with each passing year. “Don’t be putting stuff off!” I would tell people. If you have something you want to do, better get started as soon as you can. This is the message Jesus offers us today: Get started today being the person God wants you to be.

I've never had my house robbed. But I've heard stories of people woken up by a thief rustling through their stuff; of people coming home to a house ransacked by robbers. Having your space violated is very disconcerting. This is what it will be like when God breaks back into our lives at the end of time. If we are not ready, we will be violated, just as those whose homes are violated by thieves. Jesus warns us that if we are not ready early, we will experience God as a thief who takes something precious. But if we live each moment as faithful disciples, we will experience God as a Savior who gives us something precious beyond measure.

I watched a TV show once on home security. “You see this lock?” the expert said, who just happened to be an expert thief. “And people think that in buying this expensive lock they can keep me out. But watch me. With just a couple of flicks of the wrist, a wire inserted here and twisted this way, the lock is open!” He went on to show how he could get a window open without breaking it, even though the window had been locked. He moved from there to show how to disarm an elaborate and expensive home security system. There was no way to keep this criminal genius out of your home. “Is there no security, no possibility of safety?” I wondered. Apparently not! We are inherently frail and vulnerable creatures who long for security, but rarely achieve it. The debate began as the twin towers collapsed whether we should build sky scrapers ever again. And if so, can we build them to withstand all threats? One construction engineer said that no building could be designed to be safe from all contingencies. “We accept some risk no matter what we do,” he explained.

This is Advent, the season of visions, and visitations, and the intrusions of Christ among us. Keep awake. Live as if each moment might be your last. Never pass up a chance to love your neighbor. Christ loves to come among us in ways we don’t expect, in times that we haven’t planned. Like a thief, a blessed thief in the night. What a pleasant surprise.

Lord, forgive us for our complacency before the grand mystery of your incarnation. Forgive us for our numbness in the face of your gracious intrusion among us. We have sat through so many church services, offered so many prayers, and participated in dozens of Advents. We have become complacent, contented, and dull.

Shake us, Lord Jesus, awake us, shock and surprise us. Open our eyes to this great miracle that is dawning upon us and make us ready to receive you when you intrude into our lives. Amen.

Offertory Prayer

O God, we hardly dare to believe that our gifts could make a difference to others. Receive them now and enlarge our understandings of how they could be used. We pray to you in faith.