A sermon on Matthew 24: 36-44 by Nathan Nettleton

There is probably no subject in theology and faith that causes more wild speculation and controversy than the Coming Christ. Talk of the Second Coming or the return of Christ have inspired more lunatic behaviour and more bizarre preaching and writing than anything else. Which is interesting because the Bible actually never once uses the phrases “the second coming” or the “return of Christ”. It talks about the Christ who comes or who is coming, but it doesn’t make clear divisions into different comings.

Nevertheless, everyone of us has heard some of the bizarre predictions about what it is all going to mean; the great tribulation and raptures, and apocalypses, and the Antichrist and all of that. From time to time you see an ad in the paper saying that the world is going to end and Jesus is going to return on such and such a date. Some years ago a group of people sold everything they owned and built a makeshift grandstand to watch Jesus come walking in through the heads of Sydney Harbour, which must have been rather embarrassing for them when he didn’t show up. In more disturbing cases we get the likes of David Koresch and his followers creating their own apocalypse in Waco Texas.

Of course it is very easy for me to stand hear and poo poo such groups. But the fact is that the bible does talk about the approaching coming of Christ. It’s easy for me to laugh at other peoples predictions of what it all means, but if I’m honest about it, my laughter at people’s predictions of a particular date for the end of the world is always coloured by a little bit of nervousness. “What if they’re right? What if the world does end next Thursday?” What if it ended last month and none of us noticed?!

Seriously though, the question is important. Our gospel reading said that the coming of Christ will catch us off guard, coming when we don’t expect it. So it’s a fair bet that it won’t happen on the day that the ad in the paper says, but I’m left wondering if it might be the day before, or just before Christmas dinner is served. I don’t think the Russians are about to invade the Middle East like Hal Lindsay predicted – the Russians would be flat out invading Moscow now-a-days, but what is going to happen? And when? And How? I can’t give you the answers to all these questions, and my study on the subject convinces me that no one else can either. But I do have some ideas on what it’s about so I hope our time will be wasted completely.

The first question I reckon we need to be asking is who is the Christ who is coming? It might seem a bit obvious but think about it a bit. There are two rather different images of Christ. There is the Christ of mercy, Christ the humble servant, Christ who is not willing that any should perish, Christ who accepts sinners and brings healing and forgiveness. But on the other hand there is the image of Christ as the judge, with the tally sheets in hand, weighing up your deeds and rewarding the good and punishing the wicked; the Christ who crushes the oppressors and consigns the unjust to eternal damnation; the Christ who as in the days of Noah unleashes the wrath of God to sweep away an unrighteous generation.

Both of these are to some extent biblical pictures. It would have to be said though that if you did a straight weighing up of the texts the first picture would be the winner. The second one makes better movies and newspaper ads though so it usually gets more publicity.

The Coming Christ is the same person who was revealed to the world as Jesus of Nazareth. The personality, the welcoming, accepting tenderness are unchanged. The Coming Christ is the risen Christ. The one who accepts the doubts of Thomas and wins him over with humour and with love. He is the same one who met the heartbroken Mary in the garden and with a single word filled her with new hope and joyous bewilderment. He is the same one who met with the deeply ashamed Simon Peter who had denied him in his moment of crisis and deserted him when he was arrested, and accepted him as a brother and entrusted him with care of his flock. He is the same one who met with the two on the road to Emmaus as they gave up and headed home with decimated spirits after the crucifixion. Far from accuse them of deserting ship in lack of faith he befriends them and inspires them to such a renewed hope that they described their hearts as burning within them.

This is not a Christ seeking vengeance for each prayer time you missed. This is the Christ who comes to establish peace, to bring healing, to restore justice and freedom. Most of the biblical discussion of the divine righteousness and judgment has little to do with rewards and punishments. It is a righteousness that creates justice and puts people right. It is a redemptive, reconciling righteousness. The Christ who teaches us to love our enemies is obviously not a Christ of retaliation but a Christ who through suffering love breaks down hatred and enmity and in mercy restores the just and the unjust. It is this coming Christ who establishes the vision Isaiah gives us of all the nations streaming to the House of the Lord and learning his ways. They beat their missiles into water pumps and their battleships into fishing boats, and learn war no more.

Nevertheless the coming of Christ can catch people unprepared. Matthew has many parables about those who are ready and those who are not. Two of them are in the passage that was read to us. One says that it will be like the days of Noah when the flood caught people unprepared. Notice that it doesn’t say it caught out the desperately wicked. It says it caught out those who were eating and drinking and marrying and generally going about their inoffensive business. Just common garden variety folks like you and me. They were caught out only because they lived without any awareness of what God was doing. So it will be at the Coming of Christ says Matthew. Those who are not living their lives in preparation to receive the Christ at any moment will be caught out like the owner of a house that is burgled while the owner is asleep.

Christ is coming. Not only is Christ coming, but Christ is arriving. The old is passing away and the new creation is at hand. As the great prophet Bob said, “The times they are a changin’.” Through the Spirit of God, the Risen Christ is transforming the world and all that is in it. Some will be taken with it, some will be left behind. Matthew says that two apparently similar men will be doing the same job in the same field and one will be caught up in the new creation and one will be left desperately clinging to the old and unprepared to be caught up by the wind of God’s Spirit. Two women will grinding meal together, and though no-one could tell the difference, one will be caught up by the breath of God and be transformed into the likeness of the Risen Christ, the other will be left breathing the stale polluted air of the dying world, unwilling to be moved or changed.

How then shall we live? Christians have often seen their lives as shaped by the memories of the events of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Students of Theology like me have sometimes been the most guilty of looking so much to the memories of Jesus for our models of life, that we have often become the most staid of conservatives, unable to change or adapt or appreciate newness and freshness of life. But I don’t think that the Bible allows us to see our lives as shaped just by the memories of a past event. Our lives are overshadowed by a coming event. By an event that even now is breaking into our reality. Our lives are shaped by the living God, by the coming Christ. We live in expectation of the coming Christ breaking into time and establishing justice and peace and freedom. Certainly there is a continuity between the past life of Jesus and the life of the Coming Christ. But the Christ event was not completed with the crucifixion or even with the raising of Jesus from the dead. Christ is living and acting. Christ is coming to renew a poisoned creation, to heal the broken battered victims of our society, to fill the starving stomachs with good food, to beat swords into plowshares, and to bring light to the darkness of despair.

It is in that light that we are to live. Any of you who have become parents or who have observed others becoming parents will understand this. A coming event can completely transform your life. When you’re expecting a first baby you live differently to how you have before. You see things in a new light. You get things ready so that you won’t be caught unprepared when the time comes. You begin to reexamine some aspects of your lifestyle. You feel a shift in the balance of your responsibilities. A coming event begins to dominate your understanding of your life, begins to alter every plan and affect every aspect of the way you live your life. In light of this coming event nothing can ever be the same again.

As Christmas approaches, that coming event too changes many things. People’s lives begin to orient around parties and celebrations and preparations. At Christmas we remember the birth of the one who’s coming we now await. Christ is coming and our lives should be oriented to that fact. Our lives are to reflect the hope that we hold, the expectation of the new creation. In whatever time is left we are to be responding to the call of the Spirit as she calls us to break free from the old world and live lives that show the love and the peace and the justice of the new. Christ wants to find faith on the earth; expectant faith that shows itself in action. Faith that confronts hatred and wears it down with love; faith that confronts greed and overpowers it with love and simplicity; faith that confronts despair and breaks through it with love and hope. Faith that lives as though Christ has come. Love that lives because he is coming. Faith, hope and love that last forever.