The Rev. Charles Youngson

1 Advent, Year A November 27, 2022

Matthew 24:36-44

“Back to the Future”

A couple of Saturdays ago, I had my son Charlie drive us to Lowes so that he could get in some more driving practice and I could get a few things for the house. We pulled into a parking place right next to a DeLorean, the stainless steel sportscar from the 80’s made famous by the movie Back to the Future. The owner was getting into the car, so I had to ask him about it, mainly how he’s kept it running all these years.

If the season of Advent had a subtitle, it would be “back to the future.” That’s because Advent is the season to prepare for something that has already happened—the birth of Christ. And it’s the season to prepare for something that has yet to happen—the coming of Christ at the end of time. Christians live between these two arrivals, these two advents. We live between the time of Christ’s first coming at Christmas and his coming again to reconcile all things. And Jesus instructs us on how to live between the times. He tells us to “Keep awake.”

At some point most of us have had to stay awake when we really wanted to go to sleep. Maybe you had to work late into the night for your job or stay up to soothe a crying infant.  Maybe as a student you pulled an all-nighter to study for an exam or finish a paper by the next morning.

I certainly pulled a few of those in college. And it was usually around this time of year as the semester ended for Christmas break. The all-nighter that most readily comes to mind involved a music history class where I had both a final exam and a term paper due on the same day. And of course, I had barely started working on either. Desperate times call for desperate measures. So about 10:00 that night I took a No Doze caffeine pill. “Safe as coffee,” the box said. Well, it certainly kept me awake. The problem was I had so much nervous energy I couldn’t focus on the task at hand. I did finally get the paper finished and a bit of studying done. I crawled into bed around 5:00 but was still too wired to get any quality sleep.  The exam and the paper turned out okay, due mostly to the kindness of the professor rather than the quality of the work.   

Staying awake all night is not a pleasant experience.  After that, I got much better at working ahead. And once college was done, I swore off all-nighters altogether. I actually managed to do four years of youth ministry as a lay person then as a priest without ever doing a lock-in. Those poor, deprived kids! I sent them off to college without proper all-nighter training!

I’m pretty sure that when Jesus and later the apostle Paul urged the people to “keep awake,” they didn’t have in mind cramming for a final exam. For one thing, Jesus makes it clear that no one, not even he, knows when the day of judgment is coming. The Day of the Lord will be more like a pop quiz than a final exam. How do you prepare for a pop quiz? You have to study a little bit each day.

As my all-nighter experience taught me, it’s not enough to simply stay awake physically. What is most needed is mental focus. And that seems to be what is truly lacking in our time. As we come out of the pandemic into this new normal, we seem even more distracted than before. Our minds are certainly full, but we are anything but mindful. Most of us don’t have trouble staying awake. If anything, we have trouble falling asleep. Instead, we struggle to be unhurried, calm, and focused on the things that really matter. And our media-saturated, consumer culture aims to keep us that way.

When we are not fully present to ourselves, to others, and to God, we are like houses where no one lives. It’s hard to insure a house that is left unoccupied because all kinds of bad things can happen. Burglars can break in and steal. Vermin of various sorts show up. The house itself begins to deteriorate.

When we go through life spiritually absent, we are like the vacant house down the street. We are vulnerable to break-ins of all sorts. When we are tired, stressed, or angry, that can become just the open window the bad guy needs to break in.  That break-in often takes the form of an illness of body, mind, heart, or spirit.

But when the light is on and somebody’s home, the bad guy tends to go somewhere else. When we are calm and centered, alert and present to this moment, then we are like a warm, well-lit home on a cold, stormy night. We become a place of refuge for those in need. And if it’s one thing our distracted world needs, it’s more people to shelter those battered by the storms of modern life.

When Jesus says “Keep awake” to people of our time, he’s actually inviting us to be present here and now, present to what this moment is teaching us. There are a lot of words for this state. Some call it “consciousness” or “mindfulness.” In sports terminology, they call it “flow.” The athlete’s hours of tedious practices and drills make possible those moments of flow during the competition. 

When you think about it, the purpose of prayer and other spiritual disciplines is to bring us into a state of openness to the presence of God.  When we are open to God’s presence, we find the ability to act in ways that are loving toward ourselves and others. Essentially, it’s about laying aside our pride and self-seeking so that God can be revealed through us. 

There’s an old saying, “When the student is ready the teacher will appear.” What this means is that the problem is not a lack of good teachers, but a lack of minds ready to learn. We don’t know when Jesus is coming to us for the last time. But then again, maybe we don’t need to know.  The reality is our teacher is always ready to come to us and teach us what we need to know for this moment.  Yes, there are plenty of Christians who comb through the Bible looking for a verse here or there to tell them how it’s all going to go down. But the life of faith is about learning to live without certainty, without having all the answers. We don’t know when Jesus is coming. We can’t cram for this final exam. So, we must be present now. We must be conscious of God’s presence within us and around us. When we are ready, the master will appear and lead us into all truth.

And so, even though the Gospel reading this morning is about the future, its implications are for the present. In Advent we go back to the future by remaining centered in the present. For the present moment is all we really have. And yet our great hope is that there is more to the present moment than the circumstance we find ourselves in. There is more to the present moment than whatever problem we are currently dealing with, whether that is a big problem like a serious illness, or a smaller problem, like getting the toaster fixed. Christians are people of hope and Advent is the season of hope. 

While there is definitely a sense of urgency to the task of keeping awake, we need not be afraid. For the Christ who will come again to be our judge is the same Christ who is our friend and brother.  His judgment is not like the judgment we experience daily from people in the world. His judgment is more like the friend who gives us insight into ourselves that we never saw before. It is like the kind teacher who shows us where we went wrong so that we can learn from our mistakes. Admittedly, the Bible paints the last judgment in more alarming images: a thief in the night, a person snatched away while working at the mill. These images are meant to help us to focus on the urgency of the acting now and not putting off the things that are most important. 

It’s human nature to put off what is difficult.  It’s human nature to wait until the last minute to finish that paper or study for that exam. But when it comes to living the life God intends for us, we can’t cram for the exam at the last minute. We can’t pull an all-nighter to get the final paper done.  The Christian life has to be lived one day at a time, sometimes one moment at a time. For every moment is full of opportunities to experience God’s love and share that love with others. Every moment is pregnant with meaning and pregnant with possibility. So let us not put off becoming the people God is calling us to be. Let us not miss the present moment because we are rehearsing some moment in the future or rehashing some moment from the past.  Let us live fully now by preparing for Christ to come.