The Thief in the Night: Advent 1

Audio version here

Isaiah 2.1-5, Romans 13.11-14, Matthew 24.36-44

Today is the first Sunday of Advent, and for many people preparations for Christmas are already well underway. Some of you very organised people probably already have all your presents bought and wrapped, and maybe you’ve written letters of your own to Father Christmas, or dropped big hints to loved ones about what you would like to receive yourself. A study reported in the Independent newspaper a couple of years ago estimated that in the UK alone, 1.1 billion presents were bought during Advent  . It’s a frenzy of giving and receiving. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Christmas celebrates the gift of Jesus to us, after all, who was himself greeted with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

But our readings today on this Advent Sunday strike a very different and rather sombre note. There’s not much giving or receiving going on in these passages. In fact it’s quite the opposite. They are full of images of things, and people, being taken away, of thieves in the night.

But before we look at those passages in more detail, we probably need to think a bit about the idea that ties them all these readings  together, the idea of the “Day of the Lord” or the coming of the “Son of Man”.

If you’ve ever lived through tough times, or are living through them now, you’ll know what it feels like to want something to change - it almost doesn’t matter what – something to break the logjam of misery and fear. It’s the waiting – you don’t know how long for – which is the killer.

Most of the Bible comes out of hard times like that. The Old Testament was largely shaped during a time when the people of Israel were in exile in Babylon, and then oppressed  by a succession of powerful empires afterwards. The New Testament was written around the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, a time of great crisis and persection for Christians and Jews alike.  The people who first heard these words, and the people who wrote them, knew what it was like to endure suffering with no end in sight, to be afraid every day. But they were also people who believed in the love of God, who trusted that pain and fear wouldn’t have the last word.

They looked back to times when God had come to them in the past, freeing them from slavery in Egypt, for example, led by Moses. Inspired by that, they looked for a new Moses, a new leader, a Messiah – the word literally means an anointed one, because anointing was what you did when you made someone a king. Through this Messiah, also called the Son of Man in some places, God would break into history, overthrow opp
ression. That was the “Day of the Lord”. There were lots of different ideas about what it would be like, and who the Messiah would be, but they trusted that the God they worshipped wouldn’t leave them to suffer forever.

The first Christians believed  that Jesus was that Messiah, and that through his life, death and resurrection that great “in-breaking” of God had started to happen.
They looked forward to a time when God would bring this work to completion. That’s what they meant by the “Day of the Lord,” or the “coming of the Son of Man.”

So, back to those passages we heard today, and that observation that I started with that there seemed to be a lot of things being taken away rather than given in them.

There’s the Gospel reading, for example. Matthew describes the Day of the Lord in terms that echo the story of Noah, when people were suddenly swept away by the flood. It will be like that, he says. He describes this day as like the coming of a thief in the night. It’s an uncomfortable image of God – if you’ve ever been burgled you’ll  know how traumatic it feels. It’s not just the material things which are stolen, but your peace of mind, your sense of safety in the world. Of course, as Matthew points out, a householder who is awake will be ready, but that doesn’t alter the fact that the picture of God he paints is of someone who takes away, who doesn’t just give.

And it’s not just Matthew who uses this image. The description of God as a “thief in the night” is used in the first letter of Paul to the Thessalonians (1 Thess 5.2) in the second letter of Peter (2 Peter 3.10) and in the Book of Revelation too,(Rev 3.3 & 16.15) books written over many decades, so this was obviously an image that was in common circulation in the early church. Why would that be? Why would the first Christians have thought of God in such an apparently negative way?

Perhaps it’s because they already knew very well that following Jesus  involved challenge and loss as well as gain, threat as well as opportunity. Those who’d crucified Jesus had understood that. Pontius Pilate and the Jewish authorities had known that Jesus represented a threat to the status quo, and to the stability of the nation too. That’s why they killed him. But his friends and followers suffered losses too. Old patterns of life were disrupted. They might lose their security, their status in the world, their families, who sometimes rejected them. Some lost their lives. Following Jesus brought real risks, as it still does for many Christians today. You didn’t choose to do it lightly. For anyone, persecuted or not, though, being a Christian wasn’t – and still isn’t - a shortcut to health, wealth or happiness, and anyone who says it is, is lying. Those who follow the way of Jesus need to do so because they believe it is right, not because of any short-term reward they think it will bring them. Yes of course there is joy and peace and love to be found, but they come as the result of deeper change that can be costly.

In his letter to the Romans, Paul spells out some of the changes that the Romans might need to make if they chose to follow Christ. Rome was the hub of the Empire, its political and economic powerhouse. It was a place where social networking was vital, were built on schmoozing and boozing, like the networks of the powerful and would-be-powerful today. If you wanted to get on, you had to join in, and turn a blind eye to the ethical corners that were being cut. Like so many powerhouse cities today, it was a place of excess for those who could afford it, a dog-eat-dog world for everyone.  But in God’s kingdom that wouldn’t do; “lay aside the works of darkness” says Paul. That old way of life has to go, he says, the “revelling and drunkenness, licentiousness and debauchery, quarrelling and jealousy.”  Conduct yourself with integrity and honour. This isn’t a diatribe against alcohol or against enjoying ourselves; it was the world that excessive behaviour represented, a world of cliques and social climbing, a world where those who couldn’t keep up were elbowed aside.  In the new Christian communities, it wasn’t supposed to be like that, but there would be losses to face in living differently for many in the Roman church.
Christian faith wasn’t – isn’t - a bolt-on, the ultimate gift for the person who has everything. If you are going to “put on” Christ, to be clothed in him, there will be things you need to take off first.

In our Old Testament reading, Isaiah gives us the same message. When God breaks into our lives there will be losses as well as gains, things that must be given up. Swords will be beaten into ploughshares, spears into pruning hooks.

Swords and spears were costly in terms of metal and the time of the blacksmith who forged them, and you might never actually need them. Ploughshares and pruning hooks were a far better use of those scarce resources. But if we feel unsafe, if they are afraid of attack, it’s a weapons we reach for.  Giving up those precious weapons so they can be re-forged into ploughshares and pruning hooks takes real trust. It’s a real sacrifice. To do it, we need to give up the suspicion and fear which make us defensive, the tribalism which makes us divide people into us and them, friend and enemy.  If we could live like that, says Isaiah, we wouldn’t need swords and spears. But in reality it is very hard to be the first to disarm. It takes deep change in our hearts, our lives, our communities, our politics, our economic structures before people feel safe enough to lay aside their weapons and learn to live together. We won’t beat the kind of terrorism we saw the other day on London Bridge unless we start deep down though. It’s not just a matter of fighting back with bigger, better weapons than those who attack us.

Of course, the swords and spears we cling to may not be literal ones - I am hoping none of you have come to church armed to the teeth today. Our weapons of choice may be cutting words, but they can do just as much damage, if not more because they are subtle, killing the soul, not just the body. Whatever our swords and spears look like, the question is the same, though. Why do we find it so hard to give them up? What are we afraid of if we take down our defences, stop trying to fight our corner all the time? What is stopping us from re-forging those weapons into tools that bring life and growth instead?

In churches, Advent is a time of stripping away, making space for God to come to us again, day by day. But to make that space we need to let him take away what gets in the way of our relationship with him and one another, those things which we cling to to make us feel safe . Advent  confronts us with the need to disarm, lay down the weapons we cling to, the patterns of life and of thought which need to be changed in us if we are to join in God’s work of changing the world.

If we can let God do that, then we might find that the “thief in the night” we fear so much was actually the friend we needed the most all along.
Amen