[Advent 1: Hope] "Ours is only to watch and attend and love."

"But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Child, but only the Parent. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Child of Humanity.

For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Child of Humanity.

Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left.

Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day the Promised One is coming.

But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, the owner would have stayed awake and would not allowed the house to be broken into.

Therefore you also must be ready, for the Child of Humanity is coming at an unexpected hour.

Matthew 24:36-44 (NRSV, alt)

Advent is a season of expectant (one might say, pregnant) waiting. We prepare ourselves for the inbreaking of God Incarnate -- both recalling the baby born to Mary and anticipating the Second Coming of the Messiah.

But what does "being ready" in this context mean?

Anna Carter Florence reflected on this passage while sitting at an outdoor restaurant. She writes:

But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

If you could learn exactly when and how your life would end, would you want to know?

If you could learn exactly when and how the world would end, would you want to know?

If you could learn exactly who would be taken and who would be left, and why, would you want to know?

[...]

Some of us believe that knowledge—of the when, the how, the who, and the why—will give us power.

No, says Matthew. No. It will not give you power. It will give you heartbreak.

If you could be the one to decide when, and how, and who, and why—would you truly want to be? Would you really want to hold each stranger and loved one and be forced to choose?

I have a friend in Budapest, a Protestant clergyman. Since the fall of Communism, it is now possible for each Hungarian citizen to go to the government and request his or her "file," to read the reports and denunciations it contains. My friend refuses to retrieve his file. "What would I learn?" he says. "That a colleague, perhaps, denounced me? That a friend betrayed me? What would I do with that knowledge? Would it make a difference in how I live? No," he says emphatically; "I do not want that knowledge. I leave it to God." Of that day and hour, no one knows; only God. So keep watch. Keep awake. It seems to me that God has given us the greatest blessing. Ours is only to watch and attend and love. It is not to choose. In God's immense wisdom and compassion, God has spared us that most inscrutable and painful of tasks, and instead, given us a table by the river.

I am really tempted to just drop the mic here -- so I won't judge you if you stop reading now and choose to meditate just on that for the remainder of the week :)

But if and when you're ready, there is more of a blogpost below.

This Matthew text is a favorite of "Left Behind" Rapture enthusiasts, with its dramatic images of people engaged in everyday activities suddenly and without warning magically sundered, its apocalyptic echoes of the Flood at the time of Noah...

As Florence puts it, "Some of us believe that knowledge—of the when, the how, the who, and the why—will give us power." But, she asserts, "It will not give you power. It will give you heartbreak."

"Ours," she says, "is only to watch and attend and love."

Now, this passage doesn't actually speak about love, so this may seem like a non sequitur reading into the text.

But just a couple chapters earlier, Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, who had tried a trick question about the Resurrection, and in the very next lines after that story, we read:

When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked a question to test Jesus. "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"

Jesus said, " 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' ^{[Deuteronomy 6:4-5]} This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' ^{[Leviticus 19:18]} On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

Matthew 22:34-40 (NRSV, alt.)

So if two chapters later Jesus says that we must be always ready for the coming of the Promised One, and we're not sure what that entails, those Greatest Commandments seem a very good place to start.

William Loader says:

The alternative is to accept that we are sometimes unable to control knowledge and need to trust. The opening saying is a dramatic way of reminding us that the main thing to know about the future is God! One could even argue that that is all we need to know - and then trust and live in openness to the same God here and now.

The passage assumes more than this. It assumes there is 'that day' to come. The 'day of the Lord' has prophetic roots. It is also a way of saying the future is God's. It is God's day! Traditionally it was thought of as a particular point of time in the future when God would intervene in history. Associated with it were hopes of deliverance, vindication, and the obverse: judgement. Amos attacked those who looked to it for their consolation while not addressing their injustices in the present and warned that the day of the Lord would be far from good news for them.

Judgement is a major theme for Matthew and Matthew's tradition. Belief in a particular wind-up of history in this way is more difficult to sustain these days, but it stands firmly in the tradition and it asserts strongly: in the end, God, as in the beginning, God. It also asserts: in the end accountability and justice, a ground for hope; in the end peace among the nations.

The christology comes in strongly as the day is now also the day of Christ. For it is a Jesus-shaped God who is our hope. More than that, it is asserting: in the end: God and Jesus. Elsewhere Jesus spoke of the 'day' as one where he would share a meal again with his disciples. The context is hope and inclusion, a vision of a transformed world. This is a vision which we make our agenda and which feeds us in the eucharist, itself a symbol of the hope of reconciliation for all.

[...]

The watching is a dramatic way of speaking about God-connectedness. It is not very edifying if it is reduced to an exhortation not to misbehave in case you get 'caught with your pants down', as they say, when Jesus comes. It is about developing an awareness of what the God of the future is saying and doing in the present, to take a God perspective on the issues of the day and the future and to let that happen at all levels of our reality, from our personal lives to our international community, including our co-reality in creation. It is a stance nourished by the eucharistic vision of hope. It is taking the eucharistic table into the community, into the present, and letting it watch us and keep us awake to what is happening.

Culturally conditioned as we are, I think it's easy for us to just take Jesus' mention of "the day" as a generic apocalyptic invocation, entailing destruction and judgment but generally hazy and unclear. Loader reminds us that "the day of the Lord" was a long-standing idea in Judaism and so when Jesus talks about "that day," it isn't just a dark mystery but has some very distinct connotations.

And those connotations are not just festive "Christmas cheer." Loader reminds us that, "Amos attacked those who looked to it for their consolation while not addressing their injustices in the present and warned that the day of the Lord would be far from good news for them." And although Loader doesn't say it explicitly, I would remind us that Amos would be raging against many of us -- we in our material comfort built on the suffering of so many.

Mary's Magnificat proclaims that God "has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts, has brought down the powerful from their thrones [...] and sent the rich away empty." (from Luke 1:51-53, NRSV). Eugene Peterson's The Message makes this much more dramatic -- "bluffing braggarts," "tyrants," and "the callous rich" -- but I think such language makes it easy for us to distance ourselves from those Monstrous Evil Others, to avoid any indictment that might be directed at us.

Christ's coming is Good News, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be "good news" for all of us. God is turning the world and its usual way of doing things upside-down and inside-out, and that's going to disrupt and unsettle us.

I like Loader's idea of "developing an awareness of what the God of the future is saying and doing in the present, to take a God perspective on the issues of the day and the future and to let that happen at all levels of our reality, from our personal lives to our international community, including our co-reality in creation."

Some of this will be comforting and some of it will be distressing, but it is the attentiveness we are called to.

Rev. Bost commented on a Hardest Question post:

I think part of the difficulty with the idea of waiting, notwithstanding our general preoccupation with instant gratification, is that is seems so passive. I wonder if our waiting for Messiah is more akin to a parent sitting vigil by the bedside of a child who has only spoken softly recently or has not appeared to have spoken in a very long time. The parent sits there, not passively, but actively, ready to hang on the first word or sign of life. The parent knows that any movement will be enough to sustain them for the next 24 hours.

The image that comes to mind is that of Robert Louis Stevenson who, as a child, was very ill. One night young Robert was staring out his window, when his caregiver came in to check on him. When asked what he was doing, Stevenson said he was watching the man punch holes in the darkness. Of course, what he was seeing was the person in charge of manually lighting the street lamps.

Advent for me is, at least, a revolution of light. We dare not forget that the act of lighting a light in the midst of darkness is a profound gesture of hope. If nothing else, the light helps light up the hidden places of our lives, even if sometimes the nature of our "hidden places" is to attempt to overcome the light. Advent is then, also, an exercise in truth-telling.

How does our live manifest and bear witness to the crucified and risen Christ? Before rushing to the second noel, perhaps we would do well to better appropriate the first. I'm not sure I'm prepared for Jesus 2.0.

Remember the "eucharistic hope" that Loader mentioned? This is the kind of bedside vigil that Bost describes. This is the hope of people who are desperately yearning for a change in Business As Usual, who trust that God can make all things new and who cry out, "How long, O God, how long must we wait?" -- and who are always, achingly, listening for a whisper from the Spirit, searching the horizon for a hint of dawning light, skin prickling for a healing touch.

One of the great Advent hymns, Johannes Olearius' "Comfort, Comfort O My People," [#101 in The New Century Hymnal; YouTube link] draws on Isaiah 40:1-8:

"Comfort, comfort O my people, tell of peace," thus says our God;
Comfort those whose hearts are shrouded, mourning under sorrow's load.
Speak unto Jerusalem of the peace that waits for them;
Tell them that their sins I cover, and their warfare now is over.

This is our Advent hope.

I also really like Bost's suggestion that "Advent is an exercise in truth-telling." We speak truth to power about the present darkness and injustice, and we also proclaim truth about the One who will remake this world with justice and mercy.

Looking through the hymnal this evening, I was reminded that we haven't yet encountered John the Baptist:

And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
      for you will go before the Promised One to prepare her ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to God's people
      by the forgiveness of their sins.
By the tender mercy of our God,
      the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
      to guide our feet into the way of peace."

Luke 1:76-79 (NRSV, alt.)

I think it is probably Pastor Tiffany's fault that I always hear this as directed at me, at us.

Bost mentions Advent as a "revolution of light." How can we punch holes in the darkness, make a way where there seems to be no way, build the hoped-for realm of shalom?

John Bowring's hymn "Watcher, Tell Us of the Night" [#103 in The New Century Hymnal; YouTube link] opens: "Watcher, tell us of the night, what its signs of promise are." Can we be deeply attentive to all of Creation around us as Florence suggests? Can we seek the signs of promise in the night?

For whatever it may mean that Matthew's Jesus tells us that some will be taken and some will be left, Danielle Shroyer points out:

The entire Book of Revelation describes Jesus coming to live with us forever, here on Earth. "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them" (Revelation 21:3).

So how do we build a home for Jesus among us?

I leave you with James Boyce's suggestion:

It will help to observe Matthew's own way of doing this. In the lessons that follow it is as if Matthew imagines in a series of parables unique to his gospel what this watchfulness would look like: a servant who takes faithful care of the master's household (24:45-51); ten maidens, five of whom keep their lamps trimmed (25:1-13); stewards who care responsibly for what is entrusted to them (25:14-30); or ones who "not-knowing" still go about unconsciously caring for those in need (25:31-46).

***

I think a number of these commentators are helpful in framing Advent hope -- as attentiveness and as action that organically grows out of that attentiveness to God and to the world.

What about you, Beloved?

Do you think I or others over-state or under-state the case at times? Have we elided important issues? Are the there other things this text brought up for you? Is any of this helpful to you in your own Advent journey?

You're invited to continue the conversation in the comments. (As always, you're welcome to comment anonymously/pseudonymously if you prefer.)