Sermon, 11/30/25, 1 Advent

Psalm 122; Isa. 2:1–5; Romans 13:11–14; Matt. 24:36–44

But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. (Matt. 24:36)

In the 1970’s Charles Dederich, the founder of Synanon, a self-help program for those suffering from drug and alcohol addiction, established a code of action which has entered subsequently into common usage.  Perhaps you yourself have heard it.  Perhaps you have used it yourself.  That code says: “Today is the first day of the remainder of your life.”  With that code, Dederich sought to encourage those in his program to live in the present, to focus on the day at hand.  And that is what you and I have before us, the day at hand.

We have arrived, you and I.  And where are we, you may ask?  A week ago, we concluded another liturgical year, having traveled biblically with Jesus from his birth through ministry, crucifixion and resurrection, ascension, terminating in the Feast of Christ the King.  Now we are poised to repeat that journey, for today we observe the First Sunday in Advent, Advent being a time when we have been taught to prepare our hearts and mind to celebrate the birth of Jesus, God’s Messiah.  But what we have before us is the day at hand.  And the question before the house is this: How do we think about and take advantage of the day at hand, the first day of the remainder of our individual lives.

I propose that on this First Sunday in Advent 2025, that we consider time, that elusive element and our place in it, and to do so, I have divided my meditation into three categories: the personal, the communal, and the biblical.

I. Personal Time
The year was 1961, now slightly more than 6 decades ago, a year which will remain forever imprinted in my memory.  By applying myself academically, I had managed almost to complete four years of undergraduate college in three, which left me with a full year of unplanned activity.  And thus it came to pass that my parents, in their wisdom, decided that it would be a good and joyful thing for us all (if we all were to dwell in harmony) that I expanded my horizons by spending some time out of the USA. 

They would not allow me—and nor did I desire—to mope around home, unengaged in productive activity.  So, plans were made to put me on a ship, the Groote Beer, of the Holland American Line, sailing from Hoboken, NJ. bound for Europe.  I was to take up residence as a student in Frankfurt, Germany, which was the hometown of a family friend.  My parents thought, if they did so under the guise of broadening my education, no one could accuse them of evicting me.   

But lo! The unexpected happened. The East German government, supported by the Russians, erected a wall, the infamous Berlin Wall, a fortified wall that encompassed not only West Berlin, but also a wall from north to south, separating East Germany from West Germany.  Fearing an outbreak of WW III, those same wise parents who just months prior were all too eager to set my steamer trunk outside the front door, had a change of heart.  They became timid and fearful, and so [decided] I should remain home, at home.

The problem was solved when my maternal grandmother, who was visiting at the time, taught her daughter and her son-in-law, a.k.a. my parents, a master course in theology and geo-political reality.  She said, in her simple way, “Let the boy go.  If war breaks out, it won’t matter whether Grandson is in America or Germany because Russian bombs will be aimed at St. Louis, at the McDonell-Douglas plant, just a few miles away from here, where they produce war equipment, [rather] than at Berlin which is under their control.  If that is to be the end of the time, what will matter is whether Grandson has lived a god-fearing life, a life of caring for the underprivileged, the neglected, those on the margins.  God does not have to let us know when he will come calling.”  (God was always masculine for that old lady!)

My grandmother, who had taught herself to read and write and count, had never had a course on Paul Tillich, Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann, or Joseph Fletcher, all theologians whom I would later encounter in Theological School in Harvard Square.  No theologian had taught her about the end of time, the “eschaton.”  That word, “eschaton,” not to mention the word “theology,” was not a part of her vocabulary, neither active nor passive.  The matriarch of the family knew simply her Bible in its most fundamental way.  She said: “We are all here on God’s time, borrowed time, and we need to make the most of it.”

II. Communal Time
Now, I fast forward to the year 1998, two decades and seven years ago.  That year may by now have passed into distant memory.  Nineteen-ninety-eight was the year that the soothsayers, the end-of-the-worlders, the doomsday prophets, had caused millions in these United States to cower in fear.  They proclaimed that in the year 1999, the earth would sink into chaos and deep darkness.  They had proclaimed this calamity because by their calculation 1999 was the end of the millennium.  Anxiety/fear/distress was palpable.  Time was coming to an end.  Time, as we knew it, was to be no more.

Anxious that the world as we knew it was coming to an end, hundreds of thousands in these United States stockpiled bottles of water and canned goods, bought self-contained heating units, purchased and stored weapons, and put new bolts on doors to defend their homes against those who, like the virgins in the tale had not purchased oil for their lamps, were not bright enough to have prepared for the imminent end of the world. 

Air traffic would come to a halt, because our computers would malfunction, and airplanes would fall from the sky, assuming they had not already crashed into each other.  The stock market would crash.  Indeed, according to biblical fundamentalists and literalists, the earth would be shrouded in a darkness deeper than the darkness that overcame the world on the day of Christ’s crucifixion! 

It did not matter that mathematically the millennium would not end until the close of the year 2000, not 1999 as the doomsday hawkers declared.  However, our media, wanting to sell TV time and get their names in print, stoked those fears.  No one asked me, but I knew that had they taken four years of Latin from Ms. Temple, my high school Latin teacher, they would have known the truth.  Nineteen-ninety-nine came and went.  And 2000 mimicked 1999.  In NYC’s Time Square on New Year’s Eve, the ball fell as in previous years.  On the next day, the sun rose and set, and we were able to hide behind that smile of mild embarrassment.  And we were reminded of that which my grandmother knew: we are here on God’s time.

III. Biblical Time
Purveyors of fear, whether commercial or religious, attempt (as recently as three months ago was the case) to scare people into their flock.  The TV media reported the story of an individual who sold all that she had and gave the proceeds to an organization because the end of time, the rapture, was imminent.  Unfortunately, the anticipated rapture never occurred.  She discovered herself homeless and with no financial means to support herself.

As followers of Christ, we have an obligation to enlighten individuals like her and ourselves, as well.  This being the First Sunday in Advent we have opportunity to reflect on the significance of time and our responsibility in our time to those who share this planet.  Remember the caution given us by Christ?  “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

The proponents of what I term “Chicken Little theology” seize upon every occasion to distort what Jesus taught, as though our system of numbering the years somehow forces the hand of God.  The question remains though: what do we do with our time in the meantime?  How ought we to live?

Who really wants to engage in a serious conversation about the second coming of Christ?  But that is precisely what the Season of Advent prompts us to do.  Nevertheless, who wants to open him- or herself up to ridicule brought on because we cannot provide the kind of scientific data which would confirm our belief?  Since we cannot provide concrete evidence with our claim, we need something more ‘relevant’ if we expect to attract people to our churches. So, what is this “end of the ages” thing proclaimed by Jesus?

What did Jesus say as he “changed the world”?  Whenever he healed the sick and blind, whenever he taught as recorded in the Sermon on the Mount, whenever he performed miracles, he announced the kingdom of God was at hand.  According to Jesus, even as we breathe, in actual time and place, the kingdom of God was and is in-coming all around us and ending all of the kingdoms of our own making.

As I listen today to Matthew’s gospel, I am reminded that we live in time and place not of our making, and that time and place confront us with both trial and temptation, but also that time and place provide us with great opportunity to serve the common good.  Yet, as I listen to Matthew’s gospel, I hear a word of caution.  When our discipleship, our faith is filtered primarily through the lens of “end-time,” on getting into God’s kingdom, we overlook over and over again the phrases used by Jesus of Nazareth: “thy kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven.”  “And give us today our daily bread.”

Even while surrounded by distracting and often overwhelming noises, what we read, what we hear in the gospels is not frightening or bad news.  Rather, what we hear is actually the Good News.  Paul wrote to the Thessalonians about the end-time, saying: “Comfort one another with these words.”  The good news is we do not have to pretend to be in charge, because that is God’s job.  The challenge is getting ourselves enough out of God’s way, in order to allow God’s will to shine through us.

Taking refuge in our own self-devised, self-declared “safe space” as we anticipate our arrival in a realm that passes all understanding, is not what is expected of you and me as followers of that man from Nazareth.  What the world, your world, my world, our world, needs so desperately are those who live out the Good News of Christ.  Jesus, whom we serve and adore as God’s Messiah, implores us to be active, to be busy, to be concerned about this world and our fellow denizens.  Even now, on this First Sunday of Advent, the new age of Christ is with us, not “in the sweet by and by.”  Each day is the first day of the remainder of our life.  And we have a kingdom of God to build, and our hands are so very much needed in the building.  Amen.