Matthew 24:36-44

We have arrived at one of my favorite times of the year – advent. For the next four weeks we will prepare, both as a corporate body and individually, or the coming of Christ as a baby in a manger. In ways I appreciate the seasons of preparation, both advent before Christmas and Lent before Easter, more then the actual event itself because the preparation is what adds meaning to the event and makes it exciting. Nothing that we celebrate is void of meaning, in fact it is just the opposite, our holidays are so drenched in meaning that we need periods of time to let the truth of what we are anticipating and celebrating set in.
When we look at h passage in Matthew, we are supposed to get excited. We are supposed to be reminded that there is something worth celebrating coming – a time when we will be judged as children of the King. But all too often we fall into one of two traps, both of which this passage warns us about.
In verse 36 we are told that No one knows about that day or hour not even the angels in Heaven, nor the son, but only the father. Yet, we become like greedy children on Christmas day. We become so pre-occupied with what we are going to get that we forget the true reason for celebrating. We get so wrapped up n our own ideas about what Heaven is going to offer us personally, whether it is continued relationship with loved ones, an absence of pain, or something else that we loose sight of the fact that the day of Christ’s return isn’t about us – it’s about Christ ruling over Heaven and Earth fully. IT is the total presence of the triune God in tangible glory. We are excited not that Christ is coming back for us or because everyone will be judged. No, we are excited because the Kingdom of God will be truly present. It’s about God, not about us.
Like the little kid only concerned with what he gets out of Christmas, when we think about what Heaven offers us we get a skewed picture. We focus so much on the day that we forget to prepare ourselves. If Christ doesn’t know the day, which we are told, then we can most certainly not make the day come quicker by trying to guess when it will be. God did not place us on this earth so that we can guess about when he’ll return. No, we were placed on this earth for a season of preparation. We were also not placed on earth to get so caught up in the speculation of what Heaven will be like that we forget to live. Look at verse 39: Noah knew nothing of what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. This is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Noah didn’t know what the flood would look like and he didn’t know what the earth would look like after the flood, let alone what life would be like after the flood. God just called him to be faithful in his preparations. Like Noah we don’t know what life will be like in Heaven or what Christ’s return will look like, we are just to be faithful in our preparations. Christ is making a place for us in Heaven, and we are to be making his love known here on earth, preparing our hearts as well as others for his return by being the body of Christ.
So trap number one is being so distracted by what we think we are going to get out of Heaven that we fail to be the body and prepare. Trap two is described in verses 42-44: Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. 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. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him. We let the length of preparation time distract us from the fact there will be a celebration. Parties never come easily. I can think of my birthday parties when I was younger, and how much time my parents would spend making sure the day was perfect. The invitations, the piñatas, and of course the cake. It took a lot of time and effort and that was just for my birthday. Think about the magnitude of the celebration when Christ returns, but because we don’t have a date to mark on a calendar we think we’ll always have tomorrow. This is where the season of preparation is different from advent. We know exactly what day Christmas will come and we have four weeks to get excited. Here we don’t know the day, instead we have to trust God’s word to be true – that he will come to reign fully. This trust needs to be built upon each day so we get more and more excited with each passing day. We should never let the unspecified length of preparation prevent us from getting excited.
So here in-lie the two common traps, but how are we to avoid them? We have grown up being told to have a Heavenly focus and be excited for the coming of Christ to rescue us. Rarely have we grown up being told how we prepare for Christ’s celebration. When we are working for Christ we displace our own selfish interest in Heaven and can still be excited that Christ’s kingdom will fully be present someday, even if the date is unknown. Ecclesiastes 11 verses 4-5 says Whoever watches the wind will not plant; whoever looks at the clouds will not reap. As you do not know the path of the wind or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of Go, the Maker of all things. We are never to be so focused on the coming of Christ that we do not live our lives for him presently. Christ life should model for us a life of preparation, which involves action. Christ’s coming in a cradle can never be separated from his death on the cross and resurrection. Todd Agnew, a Christian artist has a song that says Living he loved me, dying he saved me, buried he carried my sins far away, rising he justified freely forever. One day he’s coming, a Glorious Day. Christ’s life however was a complete from beginning to end, always pointing towards love, therefore so should ours. He did not live so burdened by death (or in our case so distracted by Heaven) that he forgot to love others.
I fear that we will live with such a passionate yearning for the future that we will avoid interacting with the pain of today. One of my favorite Christmas songs has a verse that says: “So I’m told and so the story goes, the people here knew they were less then golden. Harlots, Gamblers and robbers, drinkers and jokers, also searchers like you and me. Searching for love, love, love.” This is what people are searching for, someone, anyone, to genuinely love them. And this love, is not seen in programs or in presents, its marked by letting our lives interact with one another’s. We all know pain and we all know it in different ways. When we are hurting is when are most susceptible to change and it is also the time when we need people to surround us. Where is the body of Christ reaching out to the broken people, the ones that the song speaks of? Because if don’t communicate the Christ’s love to them then someone else will be there to communicate something else. Or no one will be there and people will turn to other means of numbing the pain. We need to start interacting and forming relationships with people, because it is only though relationships that we can begin to show people their mark of identity, that they are God’s beloved. According to Henri Nouwen, a Christian theologian, it is only because we are God’s beloved that we can tell other people that they are God’s beloved, too. Do not try to compare your pain to another’s because that is what makes them unique, but be brave enough to be intimate with their own brokenness and yours. Know where you were hurt and how you were healed, or are being healed. Hope is offered through intimacy. Christ’s interactions with the broken were always unique and intimate, therefore as we prepare for him to come again this is how we should be interacting with the world as well. We need to stand beside people and help them grow strong through their pain, seeing and experiencing the blessing in the brokenness.
Preparing for Christ means living like Christ – a life marked by love. Here’s the thing, when Christ comes again his kingdom will be seen in its full glory, but Christ’s present kingdom can be seen in us. We need to be so defined by love that other people want what we have. We need to be speaking truth into peoples lives, not necessarily with words, but with our actions. We are to shout the gospel with our lives and not always our lips alone. We need to according to another song by Chris Rice, You got to love Like Crazy the way that he loved you and me. Cause if this world is ever going to change we need to love like crazy. What the world needs now is for love to spread as fast as the rumors do. To make it we need to take this thing from another whole point of view. We could start by keeping our vows and not breaking promises. Bring hope to the women at the well and the doubting Thomas As we love we are loving God, loving people, and following Christ. These are the marks of a life of preparation according to Shane Claiborne, the author of a book about living radically for Christ. This may mean moving past just doing nice acts to really loving people, to get involved with their lives beyond giving them charity, to get to know them. We need to move past our unimaginative apathy that says to give money to this or that cause is to love like Jesus. How are we supposed to get excited about the Kingdom of God and what that fully means when we are still so wrapped up in money? It’s not about money, because money will not be a defining mark of his kingdom, its about love. Are you getting the picture? Preparation isn’t simple and there isn’t a pattern for it, because there isn’t a pattern for loving people. We each have our own unique way of loving people and each person we love has a unique way of understanding and receiving love. According to Shane Claiborne “the love of Jesus is heart wrenching, and is both the most difficult and most beautiful thing is the world.”
So our period of preparation is always one of loving others. It is not always going to be easy, but it is what we are called too. And as we prepare others for the coming of Christ by loving them, we are also preparing ourselves by making us more like Christ. Never be so distracted by our own selfish interests in Heaven or the lack of a date that he is going to return that you forget to love the people of this world – the broken and the hurting, the Christian and non-Christian alike - like crazy, because that is how God loves them.