"Like a Thief."

Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44

December 1, 2019 + 1 Advent

I.

Like the book of Revelation, the season of Advent has to do with the end of this synthetic world humans invent and project out of their fearful egocentricity, and the dawning of God’s new world, which is really the true world, revealed in Jesus Christ. 

In his prophecy about the coming “day and hour,” the Lord Jesus likens himself to a thief.  I always thought that was remarkable.  He understands himself to be breaking into our homes when we least expect it.  He says he is coming to take our stuff, that is, to steal what we have and value.

Jesus comes to liberate the world, lifting it away from those who corrupted it and profit from its corruption.  His first example is about the time of Noah, when people were blithely and cluelessly going about their business, “eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage.”  In other words they were consuming.  First, they were gobbling up creation — food and water.  Secondly, they were objectifying, distributing, and consuming women.  The main agents in marriage being the husband who “took" a wife and the woman’s father, who “gave” her away, like livestock. 

Thus Jesus describes in a very few words a system of mindless utilization, reducing the creation and other people to objects to be dispensed according to the whims of powerful people.  It is the kind of society that disgusted the Creator so much that he enlists Noah to build a giant boat, so his family and the animals would survive the inevitable reckoning when the whole place got washed clean in the Flood.

Those participating in, perpetrating, and perpetuating that system self-servingly assumed that this was just the way the world is and that it would go on like this forever.  So when the clouds gather and the rain starts to pour, and that weirdo Noah and his family collect all these animals and shut themselves up in the ark, the rest of the people “knew nothing,” Jesus says.  They knew nothing.  Nothing but their own greed, lust, power, gluttony, and pride.

Then he talks again about people going about their business, in this case farmworkers and bread producers.  Some are arbitrarily “taken” and some are left.  We don’t know whether it is better to be taken or left, just that there is this division, this separation, like the sheep from the goats, or the wheat from the weeds, or the grain from the chaff in other parts of the gospels.  The criteria in those separations is whether our work is serving the whole community, or only ourselves.  Those whose work communicates God’s abundance and life to everyone are saved.  Those who are only in it for themselves, who do not serve people in need, only earn themselves a ticket to the fire.

This is why some experience the coming of the Lord as a burglar breaking and entering.  They have founded their identity on their possessions and hold onto them with all their might.  When they hear the good news of God’s Kingdom, it sounds like theft to them because they are only thinking about what they lose.  Jesus understands that when wealth gets redistributed from the poor to the rich, that’s just considered normal.  But when wealth gets redistributed from the rich to the poor, as in the Kingdom of God, that’s called “theft.”  

II.

Paul is writing about the same thing to the church in Rome.  He wants them to wake up and stay woke from their former sleepwalking existence.  The images of sleep, night, and darkness stand for ignorance.  In the night we can’t perceive what is there; we proceed out of fear.  Fear causes us to react by grabbing what we can when we can by whatever means necessary.  Fear places us firmly in the doomed company of the chaff, the weeds, and those who only suck up the gifts of God in creation for themselves and their people.  

The apostle characterizes their behavior as reveling and drunkenness — corrosive, wasteful luxuries that most poor and working people could not afford; debauchery and licentiousness — practices that often included the sexual abuse of weaker people;  and quarreling and jealousy — toxic modes of communication that express hatred and bring division into the community.  All of these are self-serving, self-centered, careless, ignorant practices; all of them degrade the quality of life for everyone.  In effect he says, “Do not imitate the excesses of those whom the world calls successful, who are really all about feeding their faces and gratifying every desire, urge, compulsion, and craving, at everyone else’s expense.”

The apostle suggests that these are the works of darkness, the behavior of those who do not know or see the truth of God’s love for the world revealed in Jesus Christ.  They do not see or care about the consequences of their own actions, either to themselves or to others.  They are all about what they can get and consume and enjoy now.  The cost is invisible and irrelevant to them.

Paul is reminding them that when they turned to Jesus and began to trust in him, the orientation of their lives shifted, they did a 180 away from the darkness of night, and began to face and await the sunrise.  In effect, it occurred to them to join Noah’s family and get on the ark, which is the Church.  By living in the light of God’s love together they prepared themselves to perceive and welcome the coming of the Light.  “The night is far gone; the day is near,” he says.

He understands, as John does in Revelation, that this is not an easy, comfortable, painless, or convenient choice to make.  The darkness still rages outside.  The coming of the Light is burning away all that is false and evil like the waters of the Flood purified the planet.  Our continued participation in the orgy of self-gratification going on all around us only welds us more firmly to the imploding social order, ensuring that we will go down with the chaff, the weeds, and the goats.

The criterion is always whether we are givers who contribute generously and join in the flow, emptying ourselves in overflowing love in imitation of the God revealed in Jesus, or whether we will be takers, little knots of congestion and blockage, collecting and hoarding, keeping and saving the good gifts of God’s creation for ourselves alone.

III.

Finally, the prophet Isaiah offers a stunning vision of the world to come, the true world of God, the future which is always breaking into our present.  He uses the image of God’s Temple, “the mountain of the Lord’s house.”  We know the true and final Temple of the living God to be, not a stone building on a physical mountain in Jerusalem, but Jesus Christ himself worshiped in spirit and in truth.  The raising up of this “mountain” above all others means that he will be recognized as the Center and Source of Wisdom and Truth.  The whole world will come to him, and seek to be taught his ways and “walk in his paths.”

What are his ways?  How do we walk in his paths?  The one thing Isaiah lifts up as the primary example is the famous statement about beating metal weapons into farm implements, banning and refusing to teach war.  Agriculture feeds people.  It brings life and joy.  It strengthens bodies and communities.  War, on the other hand, is good for… “absolutely nothing.”  (“Say it again!”)

War becomes obsolete when instead of having to fight to settle differences, Jesus Christ will “judge between the nations.”  And notice that it is the actions of “nations,” not individuals, that get judged.

In chapter 25, we will see Jesus as the King who judges the nations.  And we see that nations will rise and fall based on one set of criteria.  It is not how much of the planet’s wealth they managed to extract for themselves.  It is not how widespread their culture — like if everybody listens to their music and watches their movies.  It is certainly not because a nation has the most advanced, expensive, widely deployed, and lethal weapons.  It isn’t even because a nation has the right religious rituals, scriptures, and institutions.  That’s not a consideration for Isaiah.  

The only standard by which nations are judged is whether they gave aid and comfort to those in need.  Did they organize themselves to ensure that all are provided for?  Did they give food to the hungry?  

That is what is going on in the swords-to-plows image.  In God’s Kingdom, nations take the godless ideology and practice of militarism and melt it down in the fire of God’s justice and remake it into tools to feed the hungry.  They relentlessly hammer at their own hatred until it is unrecognizable, and reshaped into love.  They immolate their own dependence on violence, until what emerges is the goodness and blessing of God’s shalom, or peace. 

That is how a nation gets to participate in the future.  If not — that is, if they sink their wealth into preparing for war while allowing people to go without food, clean water, healthcare, and shelter; and fail to welcome the stranger and visit prisoners — then they get consigned to the fires of judgment.  They condemn themselves with the condemnation they delivered on the needy.

IV.

Isaiah’s final invitation is, “Come, O house of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord!”  The season of Advent is about our walking in the Light of the One who is to come.  For he illuminates our path and shows us what is true.  We are destined for God’s Kingdom when we resonate in advance according to the life and teachings of Jesus.  That is, when we start to live now, today, according to the values and practices he shows us.

We walk in the Light of the Lord Jesus when we learn to renounce our fear, our self-centeredness, and our craving, and devote ourselves to embodying his generosity and compassion in our own lives.  Starting here and now, with the mission of the Church, we need to become a nation which sees that everyone is fed, healed, housed, free, forgiven, and loved.

Even if it means being like thieves in the night.  For what seems like theft in the darkness of a dying world, is actually justice in the Light of the Lord.

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