This coming Sunday is the first Sunday in Advent. In yesterday’s posts we considered more about the need for watchfulness, readiness, and being attentive to God’s call. In today’s post we will look into why this gospel is used for the First Sunday in Advent.

So far we have looked at this gospel in its Matthean context. But what about it use on the first Sunday of Advent, the first Sunday of the Liturgical Year?  If last Sunday (Christ the King Sunday) represents a culmination of things – when Christ reigns above all – then what are we to make of the First Sunday in Advent?  Do we go back to the beginning and again work our way through the year until Christ is again King?

Yes…in way. The beginning is not the birth of Jesus. The beginning is the advent (the coming) of Jesus as the fulfillment of the promise of God and thus the hopes and dreams of the Jewish people. This is the first Sunday of Advent, the Sunday of Expectation and Hope. The Old Testament Lectionary reading for this first Sunday of Advent is Isaiah 2:1-5.

This is what Isaiah, son of Amoz, saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. In days to come, The mountain of the LORD’S house shall be established as the highest mountain and raised above the hills. All nations shall stream toward it; many peoples shall come and say: “Come, let us climb the LORD’S mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, That he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.” For from Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and impose terms on many peoples. They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again. O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD!”Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

This coming Sunday is the first Sunday in Advent. In yesterday’s posts we looked at Matthew’s emphasis that the disciples will not know the day – no one knows – but that does not remove the need to stay awake – a key theme of Advent. Today, we consider more about the need for watchfulness, readiness, and being attentive to God’s call.

If the time is unknown… It will catch people unprepared. The analogy with the days of Noah suggests that judgment is to be a major feature (though it is not the whole picture) of the coming of the Son of man. But the main point is the unpreparedness of Noah’s contemporaries. Whereas Noah and his family were ready, everyone else carried on oblivious to the threat of judgment, and so, while Noah was saved, they were swept away. The implication is that it is possible to prepare for the parousia, not by calculating its date, but by a life of constant readiness and response to God’s warnings and introductions. There will apparently be only two categories, the prepared (and therefore saved) and the unprepared (and therefore lost).

Some are taken – some are not… This radical division is reinforced by two cameos of ordinary life suddenly disrupted. Both men are involved in the same work in the field, both women in the same grinding at the mill. It is not a difference in work or situation which causes the separation, but a difference in readiness. (Cf. 13:30 for the idea of a coexistence of the ‘saved’ and the ‘lost’ until the final judgment.) Taken is the same verb used e.g. in 1:20; 17:1; 18:16; 20:17; the word for “taken” (paralambanomai) doesn’t mean “to go up” or “to meet”, but “to go along with”. It is used in the Transfiguration story: “Jesus took with him Peter and James and John his brother.” It is used in the section on church discipline. If someone has sinned against you, you are to go to him and tell him his fault. If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you. 

This coming Sunday is the first Sunday in Advent. In yesterday’s posts we considered the pastoral concerns of the gospel; concerns that sometimes get lost amid all the attention to an “apocalyptic” fervor around the reading. In today’s post we’ll look at Matthew’s emphasis that the disciples will not know the day – no one knows – but that does not remove the need to stay awake – a key theme of Advent.

Our gospel combines several pictures in order to describe the arrival of the Son of Man (v. 37). The Noah parable (vv. 37–39) contrasts Noah and the other people of his generation. The flood came upon them suddenly and had dire consequences for many. The pictures of the two men in the field (v. 40) and the two women grinding meal (v. 41) emphasize the suddenness of the coming and the separation that it will bring. Since the exact hour of the coming is unknown, the only appropriate attitude is constant watchfulness (v. 42). This attitude is encouraged further by the story of the homeowner (v. 43). If a homeowner knows when a thief is coming, he exercises watchfulness at that time. But since the time of the Son of Man’s coming remains unknown, the watchfulness must be constant (v. 44).

This coming Sunday is the first Sunday in Advent. In the posts from yesterday we reviewed the context of the gospel as used in Advent and in the larger context of a unified gospel. In today’s post we pick up the idea that Matthew’s primary concern is pastoral so that the community continues in its discipleship even if the end is delayed.

John Meier (Matthew,291) notes that a good part of Ch. 24 in Matthew is spent in attempting to calm off-based eschatological (end-time) fervor and calculation.  Something that even in our day has become a cottage industry as folks pore over Daniel and Revelation attempting to “crack the code” about the end-time when/where. The three rapid-fire parables in our gospel reading attempt to establish a proper eschatological fervor (watchfulness). The three parables (the generation of Noah, the two pairs of workers, and the thief in the night) announce the major theme of the second part of the discourse: vigilance and preparedness for the coming [parousia] of the Son of Man.