Matthew 24:37 – 44
My mother was a chronically busy
person. It was hard for her to sit still. She had a bunch of things
she had to accomplish every day, and heaven help you if you
interrupted her efforts. My father's parents had the habit of
dropping in unannounced. They would open the front door and say, “Is
anybody home?” and walk right in. My sisters and I were always
happy to see them, but even at that age we could tell my mother did
not share our joy. She would keep puttering around, answer their
questions with single words, and after they had left, she would
usually tell us that even though she liked them, she wished they
would let her know when they were coming.
My mother's brother, my favorite
uncle, was just the opposite. He ran a farm and always had something
to do. But if you dropped in on him unannounced, he would usually
put everything aside, invite you into his kitchen and depending on
the time of day, offer you coffee or something with a little more
punch. And he would converse with you as though he didn't have
anything else on his mind. He was always ready for company.
Today Jesus makes it very clear that
we would be better off imitating my uncle than my mother. When Jesus
comes again, I am sure some of us will say, “wait a minute, Lord, I
just want to finish this project!” and we will be left behind.
Advent is a reminder, not just that
Jesus will come again and nobody knows when, but that most
life-changing events will come when we least expect them. I recently
met a young man paralyzed from the waste down, who woke up that way
one morning. He has a tumor on the spine, and it is likely that it
can be cured – but the damage is done and his life and livelihood
will be forever changed. So Jesus' discourse today, and indeed all
of Advent, reminds us that we need to be prepared.
So advent is about being prepared –
being prepared for God's intervention in our lives, which is really
what the whole mystery of the Incarnation is all about. That's what
Christmas is about – God inserting himself into humanity, God
pitching his tent among as as John the Gospel writer says. And God
is always intervening in our lives, sometimes for the good and
sometimes it seems not so good.
So how do we enter this state of
preparedness? I think Jesus may have given us a hint when he told us
that we had to become like little children if we wanted to enter the
kingdom of heaven. Having nineteen grandchildren and remembering my
six children, I know a thing or two about little children. They are
noisy, they interrupt you, they are messy – and the list could go
on and on. If they weren't so darn cute, we wouldn't have them. But
there are some things little children know that we adults forget.
First, they know how to forgive. Most
of us remember times when someone hurt us, and sometimes we have a
hard time letting go; but more importantly, there are times in the
past where we wish we could have a do-over; times when we did
something we aren't proud of, times when we harmed someone else with
our carelessness or maybe just plain maliciousness. And late at
night when our guard is down, we relive those moments; the moments we
wish hadn't happened. And that's what forgiveness is all about; it's
letting go; it's recognizing deep in our hearts that there is nothing
we can do to change the past. I know we all know that, but as long
as things in our past cause us to feel guilty or resentful or angry,
we haven't let go, we haven't learned to forgive.
Second, little children know how to
live in the present. They have no trouble dropping what they are
doing because something new or more exciting comes along. And we
adults have often lost that wonderful ability to be truly in the
present. We spend a lot of time making plans and lining up what we
are going to do tomorrow or next week. We fail to notice the wonders
God puts in our present. We just went through a spectacular fall.
Did you remember to go for a long walk and just soak in the beauty
that God put out there for you. Did you pass up an opportunity to
spend some time with a parent, a friend, a loved one because you had
something important to do? We don't want to spend all our time just
hanging out, but if you are like me you miss the opportunity to be
present to someone else, which is part of living in the present.
Third, little children trust. Jesus
said that if God cares about sparrows and the lilies in the field, we
can be pretty sure he cares about us, and since he loves us and since
he is love, we can trust that he is there with us, bring good out of
bad, bringing joy out of sadness – doing everything he can short of
taking away our free will to bring us home to him. And yet so many
of us, me especially, don't really trust God; we don't really want
to turn our lives over to him, to let him be in control.
So God is always in the present, never
in the past or the future. When we grow up, we spend a great deal of
time in the past and the future, and much less in the present.
Advent is a time to begin to reverse that way of being; it's a time
to learn to be like little children again and wait expectantly for
God. What will our Father do next? What gift will he give us? What
in fact is he giving us right now? Because he wants us to have joy
and it is there for the taking.
