TOPIC: SOMETHING NEW
TEXTS: IS 2:1-5; PS 122; ROM 13:11-14; MATT 24:36-44
DATE: DECEMBER 2, 2007
OCCASION: HOPE
SEASON: FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT A
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INTRODUCTION TO THE GOSPEL LESSON
On this first Sunday of Advent, we begin with our gospel lesson from the gospel for this year, Matthew. We don’t start from the beginning, but toward the end of his gospel. Here Matthew sounds an alarm, a warning of God’s judgment.
As Jesus often did, he draws on a familiar image from the Hebrew scriptures to illustrate his message, in this case the story of Noah and the flood that resulted from God’s judgment. Referring to “the days of Noah,” his focus isn’t on the wickedness of the people as it is in the Genesis story, but on the lack of concern with impending judgment. The problem addressed in Matthew isn’t immorality but lethargy, self-absorption, and indifference to God’s near presence in judgment.
The crux of the matter is how we’re living our lives. Those who are living their lives with their eyes on what God wants and not what they want, have no worry. Even though we know not when the Lord is coming, if we stay alert and live as if the Lord is already present (which he always is), Christ’s warning isn’t a threat, but a call; not an alarm, but an opportunity; not a cause for panic, but a reason for hope. For those whose aim it is to live faithfully, it’s understood that the incarnation, God’s presence among us, is the assurance that God is always doing something new and different to redeem his creation.
Let’s listen for a word from God in the reading and proclaiming of the Good News from Matthew 24.
36“But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37 For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 38 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, 39 and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. 41 Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left.
42 Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” 43 But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”
I. It’s not easy to sustain the initial excitement of getting a new job.
A. A young college graduate was talking about the letdown of his new job.
1. “Everywhere I turn they’re telling me,
a. ‘Kid, this is the way we do it,’
b. ‘Kid, here’s our system. Fit in the way we do things and you’ll be just fine.’
2. I don’t want to just fit in to the way they do things.
3. I want to make my own contribution.”
B. Recalling our own idealistic beginnings, most of us would respond, “Get used to it, kid. This is the way the world works.”
1. When you’re new and just starting out,
a. you actually think that you can make an impact on the world,
b. that you can make a difference,
c. and that your world will be better than the world you inherited from your parents.
2. But then you grow up.
a. You learn to settle in, settle down, and accommodate.
b. You go along to get along.
c. You learn how to work the system only to wake up one day at middle age and realize that the system is working you.
d. You set out to solve the world’s problems and then one day you’re part of the problem.
C. In the little book of Ecclesiastes, the author, known to us as the Teacher, says, “There’s nothing new under the sun.”
1. In Ecclesiastes, it’s all old news.
2. Everything’s happened before.
a. People are born, they grow up, they go to work, and then they die.
b. The sun rises and sets, and the next day it does it all over again.
c. The wind blows through the trees and the streams run out to the sea, but the wind never blows itself out and the streams never fill up the sea.
d. On and on—nothing new.
3. Then, out of a sense of desperation the wise teacher asks, “Is there anything of which we may say, ‘Look, this is new?’”
D. Life becomes a grinding wheel, without end or beginning, just one thing after another.
1. We proceed along our usual ruts, applying the same techniques that once worked for us.
2. Life gets boring, depressing, and we start looking for something new.
3. We need something new.
4. So, we begin to look in things and places that bring excitement, but we discover that it’s only temporary excitement.
5. We need something new beyond our resources, something greater than our devising.
6. The Teacher asks, “Can anything new happen under the sun?”
II. Advent is the church’s four-week answer to that question.
A. The answer comes in the form of a strange paradox — the Incarnation — God in the flesh.
1. A royal king born in a cow stable.
2. The answer to the world’s greatest problems coming from one of the smallest, least significant towns.
B. God did something in Jesus that had never been done before.
1. The letter to the Hebrews describes Jesus as “the exact imprint of God’s very being” (1:3).
2. God has done in Jesus what God wants to do in each of us—
a. to be enfleshed in our lives,
b. so that we become the exact imprint of God’s very being.
3. This is what God has intended from the beginning.
C. Yet, in our estrangement, this is new and strange to us.
1. But it’s that new thing that we need in life.
2. It’s different from all of the other new things that quickly become old and routine,
a. because Jesus actually makes us new,
b. new creatures who do make a difference in the world.
3. We make a difference because now it’s God who has entered into our lives, who acts through us so that we don’t simply conform to the way things always have been.
4. Now God is doing something new through you.
III. God has come to us in Jesus, and continues to come to us.
A. Jesus tells us that we need to stay awake and keep watch for God’s presence in our lives,
1. because we never know when and how God will be present to us.
2. God is always doing something new, something unexpected.
B. Whether God’s presence is alarming or is something to celebrate depends upon how we respond to God’s claim upon our lives.
1. The sad thing is those who are indifferent to God’s presence and God’s expectations of them.
2. Those are the ones who will feel the consequences of God’s judgment.
a. According to the image of the “days of Noah,” that judgment is unexpected, quick and decisive.
b. So Jesus appeals to us all to be ready at all times by living as in the constant shadow of God’s presence.
c. Otherwise, our indifference will catch us ill-prepared for a face-to-face accounting to God for how we have lived our lives.
C. In Romans 12, Paul urges the Christian believer to experience the new life offered in Christ by breaking free from conformity: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and the perfect will of God.”
1. He says this in the context of offering our bodies as our spiritual worship to God—we give our total selves to God: body, mind, and spirit.
2. Allowing God to do a new thing in our lives is our response, an act of worship, for the new thing that God has done for us all in Jesus Christ.
D. Then, in today’s lesson from Romans 13, he reminds us that we already know what God has done in making Jesus Christ Lord, and that the time is now for us to wake up and put on the Lord Jesus Christ—not after awhile, not tomorrow, but now!
1. It’s not easy living faithfully to our calling to follow Christ in a world that’s constantly luring us to another way of living.
2. We have to lay aside the ways of darkness and put on Jesus Christ, our armor of light, who will protect us in the spiritual battles for our souls.
3. One thing Paul is trying to make clear here: It’s not our responsibility to change the world.
a. We don’t live in a Christlike manner so that God may better the world through us.
b. Instead, it’s because Jesus Christ is Lord, it’s because he encompasses us in our everyday existence, that we are freed and empowered to turn from the practices that conform to the world and to live in the light of God’s standards.
c. Our Christian existence is a consequence, not a cause, of God’s redemption of the world.
4. So wake up, fellow believers, and become aware that God is doing something new in you,
a. because at some unexpected moment God will make all things new.
b. I want to be a part of that, don’t you?