Sneaky Thief

1^st Sunday of Advent

Cycle A

Happy New Year!

Here we are again at the beginning of a new liturgical year, and, as always, it lands smack dab in the middle of the early Christmas rush. We’ve all been putting our gift lists together and decorating our homes and writing Christmas cards, and some of us actually woke up at ungodly hours to be the first to take advantage of the after Thanksgiving sales. We’re all getting into the Christmas spirit, we come here to the church decorated so beautifully for the season of advent, and the first thing we hear about in the readings is…the end of the world.

What a bummer! What is the Church trying to do, ruin it all for us? We’re preparing for the coming of Christ at Christmas, full of joy to the world and all that. Shouldn’t we be hearing about angels and mangers and wise men?

For the church, preparing for the coming of Christ at Christmas is exactly that. The true meaning of Christmas is not getting the “Christmas Spirit” by remembering something that happened long ago in Bethlehem. The true meaning of Christmas is the promise Jesus left us. The promise that he would not leave us alone, that he would come again in glory. That’s Joy to the World.

Early Christians didn’t celebrate Jesus’ birth. To them, the defining events of Jesus’ life were his death and resurrection. Only two of the gospels have any mention of Jesus’ birth, but they all have detailed accounts of his passion, death and resurrection. They took Jesus’ words to heart that some of them would not taste death before all these things came to pass. They thought Christ’s coming again was imminent. That’s where the glory was, not in a dirty manger surrounded by animals and shepherds. That’s where the promise was. In the coming.

The church teaches that there are three comings of Christ. The first is the actual incarnation in the person of Jesus of Nazareth 2000 years ago. The second is the final judgment, when Christ will come in all his glory to judge the living and the dead. The third is… today. That’s the coming that most affects us. We weren’t there 2000 years ago to witness the first coming, and we have no idea when he will come again in glory, nor can we control it. The only thing we can control is our acceptance of Jesus’ coming into our lives today.

If we take care of Christ’s third coming, the second coming will take care of itself. It is through the third coming that we are prepared for the second.

One will be taken; the other will be left behind. How many times have we and a friend been at an event, or heard a homily or listened to a talk, or read a book or an article, and one of us gets it and the other one doesn’t? Many times our understanding of these things is due to our openness to their message, or our level of commitment to it, or our level of knowledge about the subject. It’s the same with Jesus’ message. We are all here this morning celebrating together, hearing the same scriptures and saying the same prayers. Who will be taken and who will be left behind? Which of us will acknowledge Jesus’ coming into our lives this day and which of us won’t? And which of us will use that knowledge to change our lives in preparation?

Lew Wallace was one of the most accomplished men of the 19^th century. A general in the civil war on the union side, highly decorated, one of the judges in the conspiracy trial of the Lincoln assassins, the governor of the New Mexico territory and the ambassador to Turkey. He was also, like many people, completely indifferent to religion. One day in 1876, on a train to Indianapolis, he struck up a conversation with Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, the most accomplished and vocal atheist of his day. For two hours, Colonel Ingersoll regaled Wallace on the absolute certainty that there was no God, no heaven nor hell, and that all who thought there was were fools. He was very effective.

As Wallace puts it, “I sat spellbound, listening to a medley of argument, eloquence, wit, satire, audacity, irreverence, poetry, brilliant antithesis, and pungent excoriation of believers in God, Christ, and heaven, the like of which I had never heard. He surpassed himself, and that is saying a great deal.”

To a man completely indifferent to religion, such a strong argument could have convinced him that what Ingersoll was saying was indeed true. Wallace could have accepted the argument and gone on with his life as before, because it required nothing of him. Instead, Ingersoll put in Wallace’s heart a burning desire to learn more about his religion, to study what it really meant and to put down his findings in writing. Seven years later, he came out with what became the bestselling novel of the 19^th century, a book that has never gone out of print, was made into a play that ran on Broadway for 25 years, and that was made into three major motion pictures. As Wallace puts it, “I did as resolved, with results – first, the book, Ben Hur, and second, a conviction amounting to absolute belief in God and the divinity of Christ.”

Two men having a conversation. Jesus came into both their lives that day.

One was taken, the other left behind. Unexpectedly, on a train.

The Son of Man will come when you least expect him. When you don’t think he’ll show up. When you don’t want him to show up. When you think everything’s hunky dory and you don’t need him. When you don’t have time for him in your busy lives. He has a habit of just showing up, uninvited, at the weirdest times.

Many of us are like the master of the house in today’s gospel. If we knew when the thief would come we would not let him break into our house. Unfortunately, for many of us the thief is Jesus, and if we knew when he was going to enter the houses of our hearts we’d bar the door and refuse him entry. We know that if we allow him in we’ll be asked to change our lives, and we like things just the way they are. We like our orgies and promiscuity, our drunkenness and lust, our rivalries and jealousies. We like our swords just the way they are, thank you. God can keep his plowshares. That’s just a pipe dream anyway.

Ah, but thieves are wily, aren’t they? No matter how well you prepare, they seem to find a way in. You really can’t prevent it. In the opening prayer this morning we heard Father pray that we “run forth to meet Christ.” Jesus came to earth once. That’s a historical fact. He will come again whether you like it or not. That’s his promise. How you meet him is up to you.