Keep Awake
Elaine Poproski Download: Audio
Sermon Note:
At the 5:34 mark in the audio recording of the sermon, we watched a 3.5 minute clip of the movie, “A Thief in the Night.” You may want to pause the sermon at that point to watch the clip here.
Click here to read the sermon.
Scripture: Matthew 24:3 – 25:46
When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when this will be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” Read more…
Looking to Sunday
by Elaine Poproski
Have you ever seen those videos on-line of pre-school kids waiting for their siblings to return home from school? Often the pre-schoolers are so excited they can barely contain themselves, and take off at a run as soon as their brother or sister rounds the corner or steps off the bus. Without fail these videos are heartwarming and delightful – a glimpse of goodness in the world.
The picture of these pre-schoolers waiting is a great metaphor for Advent. Advent is that time of year when we’re reminded that the God who lived among us has promised to return. It’s an invitation to wait. It’s a time of anticipation. And it’s a time of hope.
On the first Sunday of Advent, which is this Sunday, we’re going to be reading from the gospel of Matthew, near the end of the gospel, in chapter 24. It’s a chapter that begins with the disciples asking Jesus when the world as it is will end. Jesus doesn’t answer the question until verse 36, at which point, his answer is simply, “no one knows, not even me.”
Lots of people are enamoured by the idea that we might be able to predict the end of the world – that we might be able to predict Jesus’ return. But the truth is that the Bible doesn’t give us any answers about that. People have looked tirelessly for clues and hidden messages, but Jesus was really straightforward. He said, “About that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son [which is him], but only the Father.”
What Jesus did say was that one day he will return and the world as it is will be fixed – freed from the influence of sin and death. But for now, we live in what Fleming Rutledge calls the “Time Between – between the first coming of Christ and the second coming, between darkness and dawn, between the kingdoms of this world and the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. It is not the time of fulfillment; it is the time of waiting”[i]
We wait, but we don’t wait passively. We wait and we watch. We watch for the coming of our God into our world, not just as some future event, but as something true even now. And because we know our God is faithful, we watch with hope, confident that regardless of how long it takes, Jesus will return, and God’s kingdom will come in full.
As you prepare for Sunday, perhaps consider how you might carve out time over the coming weeks to reflect on what it means to wait with intentionality and expectation. What does it mean to keep watch even when we have no idea when the watching will end? How do you experience this Time Between in which we live?
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[i] Fleming Rutledge. Advent: the Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans, 2018), 268.