1^st Sunday of Advent year A

            Homily for the First Sunday of Advent, Year A

As we begin a new Church Year, we begin a cycle of readings from the Gospel of St. Matthew.  This means that all year we will read through the Gospel of Matthew, though sometimes we will also read some of John’s Gospel.  Since there are three cycles in the Church’s readings – we read Matthew one year, Mark, the next and Luke the third.  John doesn’t have a year to himself and so some of that Gospel is interspersed in all three years.

So because we are beginning this new Church year, I would like to give you a preview of Matthew’s Gospel, like they do with movie previews, so that you can put things into a perspective – see the forest for the trees – and know what to look for over the year.

The Gospel of Matthew was thought for centuries to be the first written Gospel. It wasn’t. We have learned that Mark’s was first. How they determined this is an interesting story in itself, but we won’t go into it here.

Matthew’s Gospel has a strong Jewish flavor.  It was probably written for a community of Jewish Christians. Each Gospel has a unique style and a different theological insight. Each of the Gospels sees Jesus mission in a different way. Because it was written for Jews, Matthew’s Gospel has an infancy story which traces Jesus’ Jewish lineage.  Mark’s Gospel doesn’t. However, Matthew is not writing a biography which we might think he is doing today because he begins with lineage and a birth story. Matthew very much has a point of view and arranges material – both events and teachings – in a particular order that suits his theological purpose.  This does not mean that it is isn’t true. The themes and motifs that Matthew presents are true, and are illustrated by the his choices of things that happened or were said in Jesus’ life time.

There are things that I hope to point out to you throughout the year that may help to put all this into a theological perspective.  For example, Matthew loves to do things in threes. There are three divisions in the genealogy, three temptations, three seed parables, the denials of Jesus and so on.  In fact there are 38 things that are in threes. For Matthew it is a way of organizing and stressing the importance of things.

So what will we see in Matthew over all? Well, there are three things! Surprised? First, Matthew stresses that Jesus is the Messiah that was foretold by the Jewish prophets. Secondly, Matthew stresses that because of their sins, the Jewish nation will not have a part in the kingdom. Finally, he will stress that the Gospel will be announced and opened up to all nations and everyone, not just a small group, is called to salvation.

Because it is Advent and Advent is a time of preparation, it brings with it its own themes, and so we do not start off the year at the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew, but rather closer to the end.  Just as the end of the previous year talked about the end of the world, followed by Christ the King’s victory over the world, we begin the new year reminding us of the same thing. We jump today to Matthew’s description, not of the end of time per se, but the fact that we do not know when the end of time is going to be. We obviously want to be ready for the end of time, we want to live lives which will be looked upon favorably should that end of time come, and so, we live in the knowledge that there will be an end of time – a time when the Son of Man will be coming. However, not even the human Jesus knows when that will be.  It is up to the Father to decide. In any case it will keep at a time when we don’t expect it, just as many of our own personal deaths will come. Again, as I mentioned two weeks ago, people have taken this and abused it, frightening people into living good lives. The reference to Noah is meant to be a positive one.  Noah is saved because he was faithful to God in contrast to the people around him who had not morality or belief in God.

The main reason that this reading has been chosen by the Church is expressed in the lines “Keep awake, therefore…” In the Gospel of Matthew this becomes a central theme in three ways – there’s that three again! Past, present and future. First, the past: Jerusalem was not following the will of God and so it will be destroyed. The Apostles are told to leave it before this happened. Now since this had already happened when Luke wrote, it becomes a proof of Jesus as prophet as well, just as in Luke. Secondly, in the present, this passage is meant as sacramental – that Jesus comes again in the Eucharist at each Mass we celebrate, and we must keep ourselves sinless and receptive to this coming. Lastly, in the future, Jesus will come again in glory and we must continue in our faith and good works in preparation for that time because we have no idea when that will be.

It is understood in Catholic theology that what Jesus is really talking about in the end chapters of Matthew is the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.  And he talks about this because it represents the end of the Old Covenant that God had made. The new Temple is the Church, and it is not built with stones that can be destroyed but with ‘living stones’ – you and me. Matthew, then, is not so much concerned with the end of the world, but more the end of the Hebrew Testament world. And we need to watch, keep awake, keep our eyes open so that this new Temple of the Church can flourish, be faithful to God and be a home for the Spirit. We are not to let our house be broken into.

This is all made more clear in the second reading today from St. Paul who makes practical the theory. “Now” is “the moment for you to wake from sleep”, he says.  We are to lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. We are to live honorably and to ‘put on’ the Lord Jesus Christ.  What an interesting metaphor that is.  St. Paul likens Jesus to clothing that we can wear. We are to clothe ourselves with Jesus.

Paul also thought that the end of time was going to be soon, and so Paul, throughout his writings asks people to do things which would make sense if the Jesus was coming tomorrow, but doesn’t make as much sense if he is not coming for a long time.  As time went on and Jesus did not come, the theology changed a little. But the words we have of Paul reflect that earlier theology, that people had to give up everything right now because the end was imminent. Still, his advice, though strong, is practical. We should not spend our days in partying and drunkenness, in sexual immorality or in gossip and quarreling.  We need to look at the larger picture and prepare ourselves for the long term when we go rejoicing to the house of the Lord, as the psalm says.

Finally, I want to talk about the beautiful image of light which Paul mentioned and the image as it is expressed by the prophet Isaiah. “Let us walk in the light of the Lord” says Isaiah. This introduces us to one of the dominant images of Advent – the difference between light and darkness. Each day now before December 21, the day gets darker and darker. At Christmas it will begin to get lighter and lighter each day. This fact was not lost on the people who put together the Church year and chose our readings for us. We are much in darkness now.  Before Jesus came, we were a people of darkness.  But with the coming of Jesus, the Incarnation, God becoming a person, we have been shown the light, and the kingdom of God.

John F. Kennedy is said to be very fond of a particular story. During his 1960 presidential campaign he often used it to close his speeches. It is the story of Colonel Davenport, Speaker of the Connecticut House of Representatives back in 1789. One day, while the House was in session, the sky of Hartford suddenly grew dark and gloomy. Some of the representatives looked out the windows and thought this was a sign that the end of the world had come. An uproar ensued with the representatives calling for immediate adjournment. But Davenport rose and said, “Gentlemen, the Day of Judgment is either approaching or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause for adjournment. If it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. Therefore, I wish that candles be brought.” Candles were brought and the session continued.

Today’s gospel speaks about the coming of the Lord at the end of the world and how to prepare for it. In our world today, there are two big mistakes people make with regard to the coming of the Lord. One is to prepare for it with paranoid anxiety. The other is to dismiss it with nonchalant abandon and do nothing about it. What does the gospel tell us about the end of the world and how to prepare for it?

The gospel uses two images to make the point that “you do not know on what day your Lord is coming” (Matthew 24:42b). One is the flood which overtook the unprepared people of Noah’s time. The other is the analogy of a thief in the night, who always comes unannounced. The Lord’s coming and the end of the world as we know it will occur suddenly and unexpectedly. It will come unannounced, springing a surprise on an unsuspecting world. Like a wise householder, therefore, we are urged to be watchful and ready.

What does it mean to be watchful and ready? It does not mean to go about listening to and getting excited over the end-of-time prophecies and visions that have multiplied in our day. Rather it is, as Colonel Davenport rightly says, to be more assiduous and faithful to our duties as responsible children of the world and of God. The early Christians used sleep as figurative language for the life of sinful indulgence. Paul says in 1Thessalonians 5:6-8

So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober; for those who sleep sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.

To be awake, therefore, is to live a life of faithful service to the Lord, following the Lord’s commands and abiding in his grace. In fact, our gospel story today is followed by the Parable of the Wise Servant who faithfully carries out his master’s instructions while his master is on a journey. His master returns unexpectedly and finds the servant still following the instructions he gave him. In the same way, there is no better way for us to ready ourselves for the unexpected coming of the Lord at the end of time than faithfully carrying out his commands in our daily lives.

Why is it futile for us to run about in search of a calendar for the end-times and the Lord’s coming? Because actually the great Day of the Lord can overtake us individually any day, any time. The day we die is the day we appear before God. Why should I be stockpiling for the Day of the Lord in two or three years time when I am not even sure of tomorrow? For everyone of us there is an individual Day of the Lord, the day we appear in personal judgment before God and there is the general Day of the Lord, the day of general judgment of all humankind. The Day of the Lord is as near to each of us as the day of our death, which could be any day.

As we begin today a new cycle of the church’s year of grace, let us resolve to shun the doomsday paranoia on the one hand and reckless complacency on the other. Let us resolve to be always awake in the spirit by living a life of faith and love in service to the Lord so that whenever he comes we shall be ready to follow him into the glory of eternity.

Let us rejoice then, and not panic over the readings today as so many have. We are the people of the light, we are the people who put on Jesus, and we are the people that he will come for, whenever that may be.  Let this sustain us, let this strengthen us, let this be the way we live our week this week.

By Rt.Rev.Prof. Kasomo Daniel

The Bishop of the Society of St. Peter and Paul (SSPP)