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The Taking of Christ - Caravaggio. National Gallery of Ireland.
Isaiah 2:1-5
Romans 13:1-end
Matthew 24:36-44
Happy new year – Church year, that is – and welcome to a new cycle in our Sunday readings, as this year we shall be mostly reading Matthew’s Gospel.
Now, be honest. When you start a new book do you ever sneak a look at the last pages to see how it ends? Because that’s what we did today. We started our reading of Matthew not at the beginning, but in Chapter 24. By this point in the Gospel we are already in Holy Week, and Jesus has entered Jerusalem in triumph. In just two days it will be the Passover and Jesus will be betrayed and crucified. In the section we heard today he is on the Mount of Olives, teaching his disciples privately about “the end”.
The end of what, exactly? In reading the gospels attentively, we can see that this is answered on more than one level. Jesus speaks of coming catastrophe, and cosmic signs, both in the immediate and the long-term time scale.
There is the catastrophe that is almost upon them, Jesus’s betrayal and death, which he has foretold, but the disciples have not understood. Then, further off, there is the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in great violence, which Jesus has also foreseen. Indeed, he has lamented the fate of Jerusalem, “if only they had known the way of peace”. Jesus is in person the Word of the Lord from Isaiah, speaking from Jerusalem, calling on his people to “beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks”.
But woven through these two themes Jesus also teaches the disciples that all things are transient, that both our bodily life, and the universe as we know it, will come to an end, and all will be brought into the light of God’s eternity in which all things will be seen in their true nature and value.
For all these things, says Jesus, you must be watchful and ready, staying awake, because you do not know when they are going to happen.
It will be like the days of Noah, says Jesus. That’s a startling image: the sudden flood that swept away those who were unprepared and unaware, leaving only Noah and his family. Just so, two people can be going about their ordinary business, working in the fields or grinding meal, and the disaster will snatch away one and leave the other.
First Century Judea was a police state, and the image of being snatched away unexpectedly was one that people would have recognised. If the authorities didn’t like you, they could come for you at any time. Which is exactly what happened. In the Garden of Gethsemane, the Temple police came in the middle of the night, Jesus was taken, and the disciples left behind – the first and most immediate fulfillment of the image that Jesus uses.
But the Greek for “left behind” can also mean “forgiven”, which brings out another layer of meaning. Jesus is taken and killed, voluntarily subjecting himself to the catastrophe of human violence. But through his self-giving death the disciples are forgiven.
Today we might think that the death of Jesus, and the destruction of Jerusalem, are in the past, and the end of the universe may be uncounted billions of years in the future. Does that mean that catastrophe is distant from us, that we can relax? No, says Jesus. Be ready, stay awake. And the gospel writers made sure to transmit his urgent message to future generations.
Out of catastrophe, God brings new life and new creation. Through the resurrection, Jesus entered God’s eternity, which does not make him distant from us, but more immediately present. In him, past and future are not distant, for he is the beginning and the end, the first and the last, Alpha and Omega. He is our end as much as our beginning. But, are we aware, are we awake? Do we know him as he stands before us in the present moment?
He is present in the Eucharist, the sacrament of his body and blood. He is the head and the true life of the Church, his body in the world of which we are members. More than that, he fills the universe, for as Colossians says “all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
Christ the first and the last comes to us in the present moment, in his sacraments, in his Church, in the creation, and in all who are his brothers and sisters in need; how we respond to him gives meaning and value to the present moment. Meaning and value that will not be lost when all things are gathered up at the end.
This season of Advent calls us to watchfulness, a renewed attention to Christ and the coming of his kingdom, not at some distant horizon but in the present moment. Because it is here and now that we are called to respond to Christ. He fills the present moment with his transforming power. Our response opens us to forgiveness and new life, even in the midst of catastrophe, new life that will endure when time has passed into eternity.
Advent is then a good time to renew the habit of attention to Christ in repentance, in prayer, and in deeper study of the scriptures. We do this so that the habit deliberately formed in prayer can pervade our daily lives, every present moment, and all that we do.
The shopping centres around us might think that it is already Christmas. But the stillness and pregnant waiting of Advent are here for us, and demand our attention. The long dark nights and short days invite us to contemplation. Because these days and nights are not empty but filled with the fullness of Christ, who waits for us in the present moment, seeking our attention, our conversion, and our love.
Now is the time to awake out of sleep, says St Paul, now is the moment to lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armour of light. Because now is the present moment in which Christ waits for us in all his fullness.
