Keep awake therefore, for you do not know

on what day your Lord is coming.

Matthew 24:42

First let me say this: Happy New Year! If you follow the church calendar closely - and, really, who doesn't nowadays - then you'll know that today, the first Sunday in Advent, is the first day in the Christian year.

And while that may be good news for some of us, it's very bad news for preachers. Every year, for reasons that remain mysterious to me anyway, the lectionary gives us apocalypse on this Sunday.

Here we are getting ready to celebrate Christ's birth, his first coming into the world, and we're given a text that is widely perceived to be about Christ's second coming and the end of the world.

As strange as that juxtaposition is, I read this passage with new appreciation this year. From the moment Robyn and I moved into our new home, we starting getting a steady stream of phone calls from home security firms wanting to know if they could come out and make our home safe from intruders.

Now, as many of you know, we are at the end of a cul-de-sac, so there's a sense in which we are vulnerable to an unwelcome visit from a thief in the night. But since the most valuable thing I own is a bicycle, I haven't been too quick to follow up on these offers.

But those calls did make me think about this text in a new way. What does it mean that Jesus should liken himself here to a thief in the night? And were he to visit us in the darkness, have we modern people somehow installed home security measures, personal security measures, to keep him out?

For me these questions are a new and welcome way to think about this text. Cause when I was a kid, attending Baptist Youth Fellowship, we used to sing a song based on this passage.

It was called "I Wish We'd All Been Ready." It was a song about making sure you were right with God so that, come the rapture, you didn't get left behind like the people in this passage. No one wanted to be like these poor unsaved souls who missed the boat to heaven and now had to face the terrifying prospect of the coming tribulation.

Nowadays that exact same idea has been popularized in the Left Behind series, the wildly popular books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. On the one hand, these apocolypic novels have served to enrich Mrrs. LaHaye and Jenkins enormously and, on the other, to scare the daylights out of a lot of unsuspecting readers as they paint a pretty bleak picture of the coming tribulation.

Now, if you've never heard of the Left Behind series, or if you're not familiar with what those words "rapture" and "tribulation" mean, then, first of all, good because they are scary concepts to think about.

Second, you're in good company. There's very little reason to believe that the idea of the rapture - the culmination of history when everyone who is saved simply disappears into heaven - would have had any meaning to Matthew. It's a modern idea that Jesus himself never mentioned.

So what exactly is going on in this passage? Well, as always, a little history and a little context might help.

From the moment Jesus took leave from his disciples, they began to long for his return to them. Paul's epistles - those pastoral letters to the very first churches in the world - were replete with references to the so-called Second Coming

The problem is that it didn't happen. Days passed; months passed; years passed; decades passed and no Jesus. Which proved to be very awkward for Matthew. He wrote his Gospel some 60 years after the death of Christ. But he wanted to provide a faithful account of Jesus' life. And so he had to note that Jesus himself said, essentially, I'll be right back. Just make sure you're ready to hit the trail again when I get here.

So, sixty years after the fact, maybe this is Matthew's solution: I'll be right back. But only God knows when, so stay alert.

Now, 2000 years later, it's even more awkward, isn't it? It's hard not to believe that Jesus and Paul and Matthew all got it wrong. There is no Second Coming. Never has been, never will be.

And if we insist on reading this passage literally, then fair enough.

But what if Jesus knew better than that? What if we're the ones who got it wrong, limiting the possibility of his return to a literal, finite understanding of what that means?

What if he did come back, and has come back, again and again and again - a second coming and a third, as many as are necessary, until the world is finally saved?

Maybe that's why he tells us to keep awake, to keep our eyes open, to wait and to watch always, cause his coming could happen anywhere, anytime.

There's a new movie out right now called August Rush. Robyn and I saw it recently, and I've got to be honest, neither one of us liked it very much. But it was founded on a wonderful premise.

A little boy is born and, due to an unfortunate set of circumstances, he's put up for adoption. But he's born with an extraordinary gift for music, and he believes this gift will serve, somehow, to reunite him with his parents.

His gift is such that he hears music everywhere - in the rush of wind through a field of ripe wheat, in the banging of pots and pans in the kitchen, in the percussive street noises of New York City.

He hears this music because he's gifted, yes, but also because he's listening for it. Because he doesn't think about the world, or experience it, through intellectual categories - this is noise, this is music.

No, he hears it because he's open to hearing it, because all sound has a musical quality to him. He understands intuitively that everything he can hear vibrates and sends waves through the air that pound on the tympanic membranes in his ears like fingers on a drum, or a flute.

For him then, a wheat field is not a patch of tall grass rustling in the breeze. It is, rather, an orchestra of woodwind instruments. The New York City streets are not a cacophony of dissonant noises; they are instead a symphony of sonic wonders waiting to be heard by anyone with ears to hear them.

So maybe it's like that, this business about the second coming. Maybe it's a question of seeing God's presence everywhere, just like August Rush heard music everywhere.

Maybe that's why Jesus implores us to stay awake and to watch. Because it could happen anywhere, anytime, and he doesn't want us to miss it, to be unprepared.

Will he come to you the day your unmarried daughter discovers that she's pregnant? And remind you that, you know, Mary was unwed, too, and everything turned out okay for her. Love this child , he whispers to you in that deep place in your heart that only you can hear. Love this child. Say yes to this gift!

Will he come to you in the hospital room after you've had open-heart surgery and you have no defenses left to keep him out? And maybe encourage you to do what you've known all your life that you had to do, to make things right with your estranged brother, maybe. Or apologize to your first spouse for your part in what went wrong. Make it right , he whispers to you in that deep pace in your open heart, a place that until now had always been closed. Make it right. Let this wound be healed. And you know he's talking about your heart.

Will he come to you on Christmas night, in the cry of tiny baby, or in the presence of Maria, the baby's mother, the teenager from Guatemala who's on her way to find shelter at ABCCM; the sweet, scared young woman who only wants a safe place to lie down with her little baby, a place where the INS can't find her and send her home where there's no work, no food, no future for here little Jesús?

Maybe that's why he comes like a thief in the night. Because the day-time you is too protected, too defensive, to hear his voice, to see him passing by on the street in the guise of an immigrant mother.

So he steals in when you're asleep, when your defenses are down. But he comes not to rob you but to bless you. Not to steal things from you, but to bestow treasures upon you, to give you gifts only he can give: Peace to calm a hand that's shaking. Joy to fill a soul that's aching. Hope to heal a heart that's breaking.

So stay awake! Keep watch!

Amen