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. 

This coming Sunday is the first Sunday in Advent. In an earlier text from today, we introduced the two-fold character of Advent. In this post we consider Matthew’s perspective of the End Time.  The post is on the longer side and deals more with the text in a larger context and less so about its use in Advent.

Eugene Boring (Matthew, 457-58) notes Matthew 24 is not an “eschatological discourse” that presents Matthew’s or Jesus’ doctrine of the end, but is part of chaps. 23-25, whose aim is pastoral care and encouragement. Although he has included the “little apocalypse” of Mark 13 into this larger framework, Matthew (affirms but) reduces the significance of apocalyptic per se, subordinating it to other, more directly pastoral concerns. Matthew’s focus is judgment and warnings on Christian discipleship oriented toward the ultimate victory of the reign of God represented in Christ.

Matthew focuses on this by a variety of pictures that are sometimes at odds and sometimes in agreement. No one picture can do justice to the transcendent reality to which it points. There are basically two types of pictures: 

1. In the first of these, the risen Christ is present with his church throughout its historical pilgrimage and mission. Matthew affirms the transcendent lordship of the living Christ. This is expressed in pictures of Christ’s continuing presence with his church through the ages, a major theme of Matthean theology (see 1:23; 28:20). In such a framework, there is no need or room for an ascension in which Christ departs, a period of Christ’s “absence,” and then a “return” of Christ, for the risen Christ never departs (cf. the last words of Matthew’s Gospel). 
2. In a second type of picture, the transcendence of the living Christ is pictured in a different way that had already become traditional in early Christianity—that of the departure of Christ at the resurrection/ascension and his return at the parousia. 

This coming Sunday is the first Sunday in Advent and the first Sunday of the new liturgical year, Cycle A, in which the Gospel of Matthew is the anchor text for the next 12 months. The readings are not very “Chrismassy” nor are they intended to be. Advent is a different season. Advent has a two-fold character: as a season to prepare our hearts for Christmas when Christ’s first coming is remembered with joy and as a season when that remembrance directs the mind and heart to await Christ’s second coming at the end of time. Advent is thus a period of devout and joyful expectation with an element of repentance as part of the preparation.

The readings for the First Sunday of Advent serve as a transition from the celebrations of Christ the King Sunday into the new year. The readings are replete with a strong theme of “staying awake” and being “prepared” for the days to come when the promises to Israel will be fulfilled.

This text is part of the fifth discourse in Matthew (24:1-25:46), which centers on the coming of the Son of Man – and that does not necessarily imply “end times” as in end-of-the-world. The theme for the 1st Sunday in Advent (for all three years) is preparedness – in the everyday of life as well as for the end of life. What is common to all times is the victory of the reign of God.