Matthew 24:36-44
Do you remember what it felt like to go to bed knowing that tomorrow would bring something magical? Perhaps for you it was a Christmas Eve of your childhood, or a special birthday, or the eve of your wedding or a once-in-a-lifetime trip. That jittery, sparkling, jumping-out-of-your-skin anticipation of what is to come. My sister and I would always pile into one bed and giggle until our parents shushed us with warnings that Santa wouldn’t come while we were awake. We were so giddy our cheeks would ache, and when morning came it was all we could do not to trip over one another going down the stairs. As we grow up, those moments of joyful anticipation ebb and flow, change or fade away, but I’ve never met a person whose eyes didn’t sparkle while recalling the memory. Anticipated joy can be just as fun as the joyful event itself, when we allow ourselves the time and space to experience it.
Sometimes our anticipation might be tinged with something else, like the jitters of a student preparing for the first day of a new school or a performer gearing up to take the stage or an athlete approaching a new challenge. Perhaps its anxiety, or fear, or just the nerves that come with being brave. Even then, the anticipated event will come, and with it new possibilities and joys and higher heights to strive for. If you’ve ever met a runner at the end of a race well-run, or a kindergartener after making a whole classroom of new friends, you’ll know that the jitters have been transformed into something entirely different.
That giddy, jittery anticipation is the kind of readiness we are called to embrace during the season of Advent. Not readiness as defined by Southern Living or Pinterest or your Facebook feed. Not the kind of readiness that says we’re late if we don’t have all our decorations up by Black Friday and we better apologize if we won’t have our Christmas Cards mailed until after the New Year. The anticipation of Advent is not a doomsday clock, counting down all the things we ought to do and buy and be. Advent is the annual act of shaking off the dust we’ve let settle, lifting up our heads from where we’ve bowed them over our personal catalogue of successes and failures long enough to see the light shining in the darkness.
This is what Jesus is talking about in this weird and somewhat scary passage from the Gospel of Matthew. He is describing what it was like in the world when the people had chosen to cut themselves off from God and one another, when people were so asleep to the love of God that they treated one another like objects instead of image-bearers. Jesus says that back then, people had no idea what was about to happen. They were living their normal lives, eating and drinking and getting married and paying no mind to the man building the life-saving boat because some God told him to. Jesus says it will be like this for us when he comes back- we will be doing our daily work, going about our lives. There will be no countdown clock or giant Advent calendar to tell us the day or the hour, just the promise that Jesus will come again. We do not know exactly what it will look like, and we will not be given two weeks’ notice to get our affairs in order. This can be a scary thought, and as we humans so love to attempt to control what we fear, there are many systems of thought and entire religions based upon the premise that we can in fact predict the day and hour. Jesus, and many many theologians after him, have discouraged us from going down that path.
Instead, we are to keep awake. The kind of wakefulness that is clear-eyed and level-headed, not addled by distractions or fogged by sleeplessness or induced by caffeine. The kind of wakefulness only possible with good restful sleep, satisfying nourishment, and a meaningful purpose. The kind of wakefulness that can experience both the anxious jitters and the effervescent anticipation of a child with the mature confidence that joy will come in the morning. Advent is our chance to practice that wakefulness, that watchfulness, that anticipatory joy. It takes an effort, sometimes it even needs to be a whole family affair, to shake off the haze of adulthood and all the demands of holiday cheer that come with it. We have to make room, in our day and our week and our mind and our home, for the waiting and anticipating in an instant-gratification era. This is our chance to reclaim that childhood feeling of knowing you’re about to wake up to something magical. As your invitation to a holy and wondrous Advent, I’d like to offer you a prayer by the late David A. Redding.
David A. Redding, from If I Could Pray Again (1965)
O Lord,
Let Advent begin again
In us,
Not merely in commercials;
For that first Christmas was not
Simply for children,
But for the
Wise and the strong.
It was
Crowded around that cradle,
With kings kneeling.
Speak to us
Who seek an adult seat this year.
Help us to realize,
As we fill stockings,
Christmas is mainly
For the old folks —
Bent backs
And tired eyes
Need relief and light
A little more.
No wonder
It was grown-ups
Who were the first
To notice
Such a star.
Mother A Writes 