Readings:
- Isaiah 2:1-5
Psalm 122:1-2, 3-4, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9 Response: “Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.” - Romans 13:11-14
- Matthew 24:37-44
Reflections on the Gospel Reading
At the beginning of Advent, Matthew’s Jesus warns us about the suddenness and unpredictability of the end of the world, the coming of the Son of Man. He uses three images to illustrate his point. The end will be like The Flood or a sudden and unexpected death or a thief in the night. The Lord will return when people are engaged in ordinary affairs, life as usual, without any signs or warnings. People will be dining, attending weddings, working at their regular jobs, or sleeping. Jesus’ advice is: “Stay awake! Be prepared!” What meaning does this have for followers of Jesus in the twenty-first century? How can we be prepared and stay awake?
The gospel reading for the first Sunday of Advent is always taken from the so-called eschatological discourse of Jesus. This is a group of sayings of Jesus about the last times. Each gospel writer handles the sayings in his own way. Some of the sayings seem to refer to the end of the world as Jesus’ disciples knew it – the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. Other sayings seem to refer to the end of history when the mysterious Son of Man [an Aramaic expression meaning “human being”] mentioned in Daniel’s prophecy will come on the clouds of heaven and usher in the reign of God. (See Daniel 7, esp. vv. Daniel 7.13-14.) The three references to “the Son of Man” in this Sunday’s passage make it clear that Matthew is referring to the latter event, namely, the end of the ages or the consummation of human history.
Three Images
The three metaphors in today’s gospel passage stress the suddenness of the definitive arrival of the Reign of God. It will come without any of the ordinary signs of a disaster or a world-changing event.
The first image relates to the past, the time before the great flood. Unlike the author of Genesis (Genesis 6.5, 11-13), Jesus does not stress the wickedness of the people of Noah’s time. (See Brueggemann et al. 1995, 8.) Instead he observes that ordinary people were going about the tasks of preparing and eating meals. They arranged and celebrated marriages thinking that future generations would go on living the same way. The flood caught them absolutely unprepared.
The second image relates to the future. Jesus describes two men and two women each involved in their ordinary gender related tasks. Men worked in the field, and women took grain to the mill. (Davies & Allison 1997, 382-383) There is no particular difference between the two, yet one of each pair dies suddenly for no apparent reason. There was no way to predict that the life of one would be taken rather than the life of the other. The emphasis is on suddenness and lack of warning.
The third image relates to the past again. Perhaps, Jesus was referring to a recent event where a thief dug through the mud wall of a house to steal something in the middle of the night. The logic is confusing, but the point is clear. Obviously, if the homeowner had known when the thief was planning to attack he would have taken measures to stop the theft. However, the point of the previous two stories was that we don’t know when the end will come. Thus, the emphasis shifts from suddenness to uncertainty.
At the end of this gospel passage Matthew’s Jesus returns to the present with the warning, “You also must be prepared.”
The Previous Context
Why did Matthew arrange various sayings of Jesus to put such a great stress on the suddenness and unpredictability of the definitive coming of the kingdom of God? What does it mean to stay awake and be prepared? To answer these questions we need to look at the situation of Matthew’s readers about the year 90 and at the context of this Sunday’s reading in Matthew’s Gospel, especially chapters 24 and 25.
There are many indications that Jesus expected the definitive Reign of God to come in his own lifetime or very soon after. In the verses immediately prior to today’s gospel reading Matthew copies almost word for word a saying of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel: “Truly [literally: Amen] I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” (Matthew 24.34-35 = Mark 13.30-31 NRSV)
Jesus uses a double mode of verification to support his assertion that some people who hear him will witness “all these things.” He places “Amen” before his statement to verify its truth. Then he uses hyperbole for further emphasis. Jesus’ hearers knew that God created the world and that it is good. (Genesis 1.1–2.3) Also, in the Hebrew Bible The Teacher declared, “the earth remains forever.” (Ecclesiastes 1.4. See Malina & Rohrbaugh 2003, 121.) The sense is: “Even if the impossible were to happen and God’s good creation were to disappear, my words would still be true.”
Some scholars do not think Jesus actually said this. (See Funk et al 1993, 113-114) However, there is no doubt that a generation later in the 50’s Paul anticipated that the return of the Lord would come very soon. (See, for example, 1 Thessalonians 4.13-5.11.) Then, another generation later, around the year 70, Mark put the saying in his Gospel, and still another generation later, around the year 90, Matthew copied it. How did Matthew square this saying of Jesus with the evident fact that several generations had passed, but God’s universal reign of justice and peace had not come?
Matthew did so by copying another saying of Jesus that immediately followed in Mark’s Gospel: “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Matthew 24.36 = Mark 13.32 NRSV) According to Matthew, following Mark, Jesus combined immediate expectation with uncertainty about the exact time. The three images in today’s gospel reading, which Matthew takes from Q, reinforce the second half of this dilemma. They emphasize the uncertainty of the time and the need to stay awake and be prepared at all times. W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison call this “the vigilance of eschatological agnosticism.” (Davies & Allison 1997, 378)
The Following Context
This still leaves the question about what it means to be prepared and to keep awake. Matthew follows up the three brief images in today’s gospel passage with three longer parables (the faithful and wicked slaves, the ten bridesmaids, and the talents) and concludes the eschatological discourse with his magnificent vision of the last judgment. (Matthew 25.31-46: “I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. Etc.”) The parable of the ten bridesmaids reinforces the message of readiness, but the other three stories illustrate how to be ready for the end.
The first parable instructs followers of Jesus to lead sober lives and provide for the basic needs of their fellow slaves. The second parable, instructs them to be trustworthy with their master’s property and not be lazy or useless persons. (See Malina & Rohrbaugh 2003, 125.) The third parable indicates that caring for the least members of the King’s family is the best preparation for the end. “The [last] judgment leaves no doubt as to what readiness and watchfulness entail.” (Brueggemann et al. 1995, 9)
Conclusion
Understanding the Reign of God is central to understanding Jesus. Jesus looked forward to the end of history when God would be revealed as God and when God would make justice and peace prevail. It would be a time of judgment, a time when the difference between right and wrong would be evident for all to see.
Concretely, for people living at the time of Jesus and Matthew, judgment and vindication included punishment of the wicked, but that is not essential to judgment. Ultimately, judgment is a vindication of God – a demonstration that God’s ways are and always have been just. The final judgment is also a vindication of those who, like Jesus, have trusted in God even at the cost of suffering and death.
There seems to be little doubt that Jesus thought the Reign of God would come very soon – during his own lifetime or in the lifetime of at least some of his listeners. He thought God was about to act and that people should get ready. The imminence of the reign of God gives meaning and vitality to the ministry of Jesus. Why then the delay?
As Reginald H. Fuller points out, Jesus did not regard the will of God as fixed and immutable. God could change his mind. Matthew’s Jesus says that God can cut short days of suffering for the sake of the elect, (Matthew 24.22) and Luke’s Jesus says that God can lengthen the days to give people time to repent. (Luke 13.6-9; Fuller 1984, 4)
The reign of God is God’s work, not ours. Nothing we can do can force God to act. The motive for caring for others is not that it will bring about the reign of God, but that caring for others is a covenant obligation. The final manifestation of God’s Reign will vindicate those who have been faithful to God’s covenant renewed in the blood of Christ. (Matthew 26.28)
Jesus’ intense awareness of the power of God’s reign breaking into his life caused him to experience it as very near in time. However, there remained an element of uncertainty. Subsequent generations of his followers, including Matthew, also experienced the power of God’s reign reaching back to them in time. They became aware that the uncertainty affected the time-line and stressed the inevitability of the coming of God’s Reign instead of its immediacy.
To the extent that the attractive power of the Reign of God continues to call to us from the future, we too must stay awake and be prepared. The essential thing is to be faithful to the covenant commandment to love one another and even our enemies while leaving our vindication to God’s good time.
Explanatory Note:
Q “Q” (from the German “Quelle” or “source”) stands for a lost written document made up almost entirely of sayings of Jesus which scholars have reconstructed from an analysis of passages in the Gospel of Matthew and Luke which are very similar to each other but generally not found in the Gospel of Mark. Examples would be the Sermon on the Mount or the Lord’s Prayer. These scholars hold that Matthew and Luke were written independently. However, each of the authors had access to written copies of Mark and Q.
In preparing these reflections, in addition to the biblical texts, I consulted the following works:
Brueggemann et al. 1995 – Walter Brueggemann, Charles B. Cousar, Beverly R. Gaventa, James D. Newsome, Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV, Year A. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), pp. 7-9.
Davies & Allison 1997 – W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, A Critical and Exigetical Commentary on the Gospel According To Saint Matthew, Vol. III [Chapters 19 – 28], The International Critical Commentary on the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, J. A. Emerton, C. E. B. Granfield, and G. N. Stanton, General Editors (London: T&T Clark, 1997), pp. 366-386.
Fuller 1984 – Reginald H. Fuller, Preaching the Lectionary. The Word of God for the Church Today (Collegeville [MN]: Liturgical Press, 1984), pp. 1-4.
Funk et al. 1993 – Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1993), pp. 250-252.
Harrington 1991 – Daniel J. Harrington, S.J., The Gospel of Matthew, Sacra Pagina Series Volume 1, A Michael Glazier Book (Collegeville [MN]: Liturgical Press, 1991), pp. 341-347.
Herzog 1994 – William R. Herzog II, Parables as Subversive Speach: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994), pp. 150-168.
Malina & Rohrbaugh 2003 – Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, Second Edition (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), pp. 120-122.
John P. Meier, Matthew , A Michael Glazier Book [1980] (Collegeville [MN]: Liturgical Press, 1990), pp. 288-292.
NRSV – New Revised Standard Version – Bruce M. Metzger and Roland E. Murphy, Editors, The New Oxford Annotated Bible containing the Old and New Testaments. New Revised Standard Version. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994)
Pilch 1995 – John J. Pilch, The Cultural World of Jesus, Sunday by Sunday, Cycle A. A Liturgical Press Book (Collegeville [MN]: Liturgical Press, 1995), pp. 1-3.
Senior 1998 – Donald Senior, Matthew, Abingdon New Testament Commentaries, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998), pp. 271-273.