KEEP
AWAKE!
Matthew
24:36-44
Keep
awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming!
Last Friday, a large trailer truck carrying two million Rands worth of
Creation wines down the Hemel en Aarde Valley road, crashed through the trees
on the bend above our house, and turned over.
It was a total wreck. Most of the
splendid bottles of wine were ruined.
There is a rumour going round that I had ordered the wine but gave the
driver the wrong instructions . So he took a short cut in order to bring the stuff to our
front door, which he nearly did. But
that is patently untrue. Nor did I go up
to the truck in the middle of Friday night to try and steal some undamaged crates. What is true is that even during the
Christmas season unexpected and often dangerous or unwelcome things
happen. Boomslangs arrive unannounced,
and fanatics take innocent people hostage.
Who knows what surprises, pleasant or otherwise, are around the corner. It's important to keep awake, as Jesus says,
even if some of us can't even watch the TV for more than five minutes without
dozing off.
But more serious things are at stake in this parable of Jesus at the end
of Matthew's gospel, for it is part of a sequence on the last judgment.
"Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be
left. Two women will be grinding meal
together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore for you do not know on
what day our Lord is coming." These
words are a warning that the day of judgment will arrive at an unexpected,
inconvenient time. So you had better be
prepared. Taken very literally, that is
the message of a series of thirteen novels by
Tim LaHaye
and Jerry B. Jenkins entitled Left Behind, some of
which were rated #1 best sellers in the New York Times a few years ago.
The novels are fictional accounts of
the end times, when Jesus returns and, in what is called the Rapture, takes all
true born again believers up into the clouds to be safely ensconced with
him in heaven. The rest are left behind. No some might mischievously think that they
would prefer to be left behind with all the other sinners rather than travel
with all born-again believers. But not
if you know about what comes next. For
now the world falls into total moral collapse until it erupts in the final
battle between the few good people left behind and the Anti-Christ who turns
out to be the General Secretary of the United Nations aided and abetted by the
Pope. The point of the novels is
obviously to evangelise people through fear so they too can escape with Jesus
from being left behind, and at the same time to send out a clear right-wing
militaristic political message. Such
interpretations of Jesus' Second Coming or Advent are nothing new, but they are
dangerous.
But, having said that, the Second Coming is part of Christian belief and
central in the NT. As the Creed puts it:
"He will come again to judge the living and the dead." It is also one of the mysteries of faith we
affirm at the Eucharist: "Christ will come again," and as we break
the bread, we do so, as we say, "until he comes." The early
Christians certainly believed that Jesus would return soon, that is why they
cried out "Maranatha! Come quickly Lord Jesus!" But what does this mean today after two thousand years of
keeping awake and waiting, only to be disappointed again and again? Even Paul had to deal with this problem, and
did so by reminding believers that God's time-table is not ours.
There are various ways in which the Second Coming has been
interpreted. For me the place to start
is with Jesus' prayer: "your will be done on earth as in
heaven." "Heaven," as we
know, does not refer to a place to which
we are taken up on "clouds", it refers to the reign or kingdom of God. Heaven is wherever God's justice,
righteousness, love, forgiveness and compassion are evident. Heaven is where God's will is done whether in
this life or the next. So when we pray
with Jesus "your will be done on earth" we are praying with him for
the coming of God's reign in all its fullness, we are praying with the prophets
for the birth of a new creation; we are expressing our faith in Jesus as the
one in whom God's reign, already revealed in the first coming, will be brought
to completion at the appropriate time in the second. In short, we do not
believe that Jesus gave his life for the world in vain.
Sometimes, maybe often, it is difficult to hold on to this belief for
the world does not seem to be getting better, but rather worse. The events of our day in Syria, Pakistan,
Iraq and even Australia, don't encourage us to believe that "all shall be
well" in the end. But that is the
Christian hope. To believe in the Second
Coming is to live expectantly in the hope that God's promise in Jesus will
ultimately triumph. It means living and
working for the coming of God's kingdom even though we do not know when that might be or how it will come about. That is why we have to "keep awake," watching and praying,
witnessing and serving, because all of this points towards the coming of God's
reign. In other words, faith in the
Second Advent is a way of living in hope, of erecting small sign-posts of the
kingdom that point ahead to its eventual coming. In fact, everything we do now that embodies
the love of Christ, everything that expresses God's justice, mercy and
compassion, is an anticipation of the Second Advent. Even though we do not know when the Lord will
come, we keep awake by doing his will.
And, now, if this brief meditation has induced slumber instead of waking
you up, let me remind you that there is
exactly only one week to go before Christmas!
So keep awake, not just to get everything ready, but by sharing the good
news of Christ's gift of love and peace on earth. That is how we live expectantly. For the rest, you can safely leave the Second
Advent in God's hands. It is one of
God's surprises, a genuine mystery of faith, something that will happen
unexpectedly. But you need not fear
being left behind if you keep awake and share in Jesus' ministry of healing and love, justice and peace today This is the message of
Christmas; it is also the message of God's coming kingdom.
John de Gruchy
Volmoed 18 December 2014
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