First Sunday of Advent
November 30, 2025

Sermon

Camille Cook Howe
Pastor

Psalm 122
Matthew 24:36–44    

How many Advent sermons have you heard in your life about urgency — keeping alert, staying vigilant, and having your eyes wide open? I know I have both heard and preached quite a few! It is just a natural sermon to preach when you read a scripture text like the one from Matthew’s Gospel. Two men are in the field, one gets taken, one left behind. Two women are grinding mill, and one gets taken, one left behind. Who is going to be next? You had better keep awake in case your number is called! There is probably no better advertisement for coffee and energy drinks than this passage. Christian caffeine so no one is caught sleeping on the job. I can already imagine the branding possibilities!

This teaching about staying awake from Matthew’s Gospel kicks off our Advent season in a way that sets the stage. Before we get to “preparing the way” with John the Baptist, before we hear Mary singing her servant song, before we learn of stars in the sky leading wise men to the manger — before any of that we hear about the future return of Jesus Christ. In this peculiar way we begin Advent not by starting at the beginning with the little baby Jesus but by hearing about the ultimate ending. We hear first about the end times, when Jesus, who lived and died and then was raised from the dead, will return to earth once more. Approaching Advent in this way is like the way some authors write their stories by telling you in chapter one the ending, then the rest of the chapters are spent explaining how that ending came to be.

We begin Advent at the end, as Jesus talks with his disciples about his return to earth. These teachings have confused and confounded readers for generations. Some believed that Jesus was suggesting he would return before their lives were over. Therefore, they needed to be ready at any moment. When his return did not take place in the way they expected, many pivoted to trying to predict the return of Jesus so they could ready themselves. In 2025, at the beginning of Advent, Christians once again have to figure out how to deal with this teaching.

Scholar Douglas Hare suggests that the lessons about the end times and return of Jesus could have been intended to be used less as guides for predicting the timing of Jesus’ return and more for ethical instructions for how to exist in the world as a Christian. Jesus is talking to the disciples about how to live once he is no longer with them on earth. One day Jesus will return, but in the meantime, they will need to carry on living their lives of faith. We tend to hear these messages as anxiety producing rather than encouraging or even just practical teachings. I wonder if that is how Jesus intended listeners to respond. Was the goal for discipleship to be a sleepless and stressed-out state? Or was there a different message Jesus was hoping to convey to his closest friends? What did he mean when he said, “Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming”?

In my household, we are living in a state of constant hypervigilance, and this is not a commentary on our spiritual status but rather on the season of middle childhood when nightmares are vivid and real and almost a daily battle to fight. The idea of “a thief in the night” coming that Jesus talks about is something that keeps us awake. Robbers, along with snakes, spiders, and cockroaches are high on the list of what is keeping us alert this Advent. There is a genuine fear of letting our guard down, and so “keep awake” is what our eight-year-old would like us to do at all hours!

This cannot be what Jesus meant when he used this metaphor, nor could it be what he meant when he talked about the spiritual state of the disciples. I do not believe Jesus expected or intended the type of high anxiety, perpetually cautious, constantly looking over your shoulder type of discipleship. It certainly does not come through in his teachings about considering the lilies of the field and birds of the air or in the more than 100 times Jesus tells the disciples not to be afraid. He does teach about faithfulness and fruitfulness, but not in a suspicious and fearful way.

Douglas Hare makes this point when he writes, “Did Matthew firmly believe that Jesus would return before the last of his contemporaries had died? We cannot answer that question. What we do know is that Matthew regarded the ‘delay’ as a time of grace.”

That phrase is a powerful reframe on all of the eschatological fear mongering that has gone on for generations in Christian circles. The time since Jesus went to heaven and every day since has been a time of grace? What if we really believed that and lived like that were true? As Advent begins, we could read the text and assume we should be waiting with extreme anticipation, ready at any moment to prove our worth as Christians, or we could hear in these words a promise that, in the fullness of time, we will meet Jesus, and until then our days are grace-filled gifts from God. One sounds like a posture of fear, and one sounds like a posture of gratitude. It is hard to reconcile living in a posture of fear when we consider the many lessons from Christ about how to live.

Wendell Berry captures a posture of gratitude over fear in his poem, “The Peace of the Wild Things”:

When despair for the world grows in me
…
I come into the peace of the wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
…
I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world and am free.
(Wendell Berry, “The Peace of the Wild Things,” The Peace of Wild Things and Other Poems)

I think Jesus wanted us to rest in the grace of the world. I think Jesus wanted us to rest in the grace of God’s love. I think Jesus wanted us to rest in the knowledge that when we meet God, it will be joyful. There is so much to fear in the world: you have a list that keeps you up at night, and I have a list that keeps me up at night. But the return of Jesus should not be something that keeps us up but helps us to sleep. We can and should rest in the comfort of knowing God will return, God will redeem, God will save. We can and should rest in the comfort of God’s forgiveness, God’s mercy, and God’s grace.

Now I do not believe Jesus taught a Pollyanna gospel where everything is sunshine and bliss. That would also be difficult to reconcile with his teachings. I do believe that Jesus taught about creating lives of meaning, about doing good in the world, about loving other people in selfless ways, about telling stories of good news, about standing alongside those in need, about keeping focus on eternal things.

Eugene Peterson has a book about ministry in the church titled A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. It is a line he borrowed from Fredrick Nietzsche who wrote, “The essential thing ‘in heaven and earth’ is … that there should be long obedience in the same direction; thereby has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.” A long obedience in the same direction is a posture you can reconcile with the teachings of Jesus. Jesus called for followers to embody a certain way of living in the world, not for the exact moment when he would return but to create lives worth living.

What does “long obedience in the same direction” look like? Worship, prayer, service, generosity, forgiveness, compassion, and love — then rinse and repeat. It is not a momentary thing; it is a directional thing, the way in which we live out our days. And in case you were wondering, this is type of life is neither easy nor culturally the norm. You must opt into this type of life. Long obedience in the same direction takes discipline, commitment, faith, and sacrifice. Eugene Boring, in his Matthew commentary, writes “that human life inescapably ‘serves’ something that gives it meaning. The choice is not whether we shall serve, but whom or what we shall serve.”

We serve God not because we are afraid, not because we are trying to prove our worth. We serve God because we know these are grace-filled days, and so we follow in the Way of Jesus, trusting that one day we will meet face-to-face.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church