The Unexpected Guest

Scripture: Matthew 24:36-44

I’m curious – how many of you here like it when someone just drops by your house unannounced?

OK – there are a few. But most - maybe not so much? Why don’t we like guests stopping by announced? We find it rude… house isn’t clean – that’s my big one. I confess, I don’t always keep the best house when I’m not expecting company.

They catch me unaware and unprepared. I feel this need to suddenly rush and pick up the clothes off the bathroom floor – toss those dishes that have been soaking in the sink into the dishwasher... things like that.

It’s uncomfortable when we have unexpected guests – so we try to make sure to let all our friends and acquaintances know – if you’re going to stop by – please call first. Let us know you’re on your way.



When it comes to Jesus’ return – we tend to act that way a lot as well, don’t we? We don’t like this whole not knowing what day or hour thing. How are we to prepare? The house might be a little messy when he arrives if he doesn’t give us a little warning beforehand. You might be watching TV in your pajamas in the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday – not expecting someone to ring your doorbell.

So there’s this temptation we have – this need and desire to try and see if we can figure out just when Jesus might possibly return. Whole churches and denominations have started over trying to predict Christ’s second coming – they say based on clues that you can find in the Bible.

The Millerites were a group led by a man named William Miller that tried to predict the second coming back in the 1800’s. Oddly, you would think such a failed prophetic statement would have caused people to stop following William Miller, but instead – they eventually became what we know today as the Seventh Day Adventists.

In more recent years, Hal Lindsey has attempted to pinpoint the date of Christ’s return. He truly believed the 1980’s were going to be the last decade before what he terms, “the rapture” and that Christians should not plan to be around by the year 2000.

Well – here we are. Apparently, Jesus hasn’t checked his voice mail messages to find out when he was expected for dinner.

And that whole rapture idea as well is very problematic. Rapture proponents believe that this passage, when it speaks of how one will be taken and one will be left, tells us that true Christians will "disappear" and be swept up into heaven – while all those non-Christians and marginal Christians will be left to deal with seven years of trial and tribulation. Thus, in most modern understandings – to be left is a bad thing. You don’t want to be "left behind" to suffer judgment.

But in Jesus’ day – to be the one left standing... that was a GOOD thing. When Jesus talks about Noah and the flood – being "swept or taken away" was to be taken in judgment. When people were taken – it was to be taken by the Romans to be killed or imprisoned. Very much like how people were taken or just "disappeared" in Nazi Germany.

The hope was to be the one left standing. The event here is not separate from the last judgment, but rather is part of that judgment.

So our focus should not be on worrying about being taken or on being left and figuring that’s just a warm up– but rather our focus should be on the urgent necessity of our readiness for Jesus’ return at any moment. Jesus tells us quite clearly – about that day and hour no one knows. Jesus himself had no idea when he would return and didn’t expect others to know or predict when he would return, either.

Not only that, but Jesus really doesn’t WANT us to know when he’s coming back. Why?

How many of you when you were in school did your homework weeks ahead of time? How many of you waited until the night before to do it?

That’s why Jesus doesn’t want us to know. If I knew Jesus was coming back in say 2145… eh. OK. Not in my lifetime, I’m not going to worry about it. I’m not going to prepare anything or be doing anything to get ready for God to be in my midst. It’s like when I’m not expecting someone at my home – I tend to let it go a little bit. I don’t worry about whether everything is put away and in order. I get lazy.

I don’t feel that sense of urgency like I do when I know I’ve got a group of people coming over that evening and my place is still a disaster and I spend the next hour trying to frantically get everything put away and cleaned up.

What Jesus does is in previous verses, he gives us some vague warnings about what to expect… which basically, Jesus tells us to watch out for life. That there will be persecution and there will be wars and rumors of wars...

This week’s events in North and South Korea have no doubt heightened our sense of alarm and wariness when it comes to "wars and rumors of wars." Yet are wars and rumors of wars anything new? They weren’t for Jesus’ followers. By the time the Gospel of Matthew was written, its hearers would have already survived the tumultuous Jewish Rebellion in Jerusalem as well as the destruction and desecration of their temple. Christians were already being handed over to be persecuted and put to death. These were the realities of the Christians who first read Matthew’s gospel. War was an integral part of belonging to the Roman Empire.

Jesus earlier in this passage calls all these things "birth pangs" – it's just the beginning. Any woman who has ever given birth and been in labor understands this concept. Birth pangs start out as just a twinge. Then suddenly, you get this horrible contraction that lasts for a short while… and then subsides. You wait a while... and then suddenly, another contraction.

This can go on for hours upon hours – and you don’t know when they’re going to stop being "pangs" and turn into the actual birth. Finally, as you get nearer and nearer the end – your contractions are only a few moments apart and you have this one final horrendous pain – before you give birth to new life. A wondrous new life that makes you quickly forget the pain of the past several hours.

So as we make our way through these birth pangs of life – we’re never sure exactly when that final moment of “new birth” for our world is going to come. So Jesus tells us we must be vigilant – and we must be prepared. Don’t be like one who thinks no one is coming to visit just because they haven’t called ahead of time or scheduled it. Jesus says always be faithful and prepared. Keep watch – expect the unexpected guest at any moment.

As we wait and prepare, we are to do as Paul tells us in our Romans text for today: we are to “lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead – put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.”

In other words – whatever traumas may befall us, we are to be urgent in loving our neighbor and caring for our world. We are to urgently be living faithfully as Christ commanded us to live. The urgent call is for us to see Christ in our midst in every person we meet.

For those of you who were at one of our last U-Nite services – our Wednesday night worship with our youth – you’ll remember the skit that Pr. Meg did – where there were all these people who came to her house asking for help – and she kept turning them away saying she didn’t have time because she was “preparing” for Jesus to arrive. Then Jesus called her up and said he wasn’t coming for dinner after all, since he’d been there four times – and she kept turning him away.

Christ comes unexpectedly indeed – he comes at inconvenient times in our lives in the form of the poor, the needy, the hurting, the angry – and yes... at times even the person we think of as our enemy.

In the midst of the world’s turmoil, we are called to stay vigilant. To stay faithful. To continue caring for our neighbor – to do what seems crazy and foolish – to reach out in love… even to those who may not love us.

To be Christ to others no matter how we’re persecuted, despised and ridiculed – no matter how preoccupied we tend to be.

Our call is not to just sit back and say, “OK Jesus, come back any time and make this all better for us,” while we sit and try to match up today’s headlines with biblical prophecy.

Our call is not to think that God’s going to swoop in and conveniently remove us from our task as faithful witnesses while we sit back and watch others suffer through times of tribulation – but rather, our job is to be right in the midst of that tribulation, calling people back to God by living honorably, by being the people God desires us to be as his witnesses in the world. To tell people – God loves them. God offers forgiveness and love to all people through a man who came DOWN to us and walked with us. That God’s greatest desire is to have all people turn to Him.

Not just in the future – but God’s desire for this is in the here and now. As we enter Advent and prepare for Christmas – we are reminded what it means to have God in our midst – in the here and now. We are reminded of God coming DOWN to earth to be with us in the flesh – not us seeking to escape our world and its problems.

Rather than a God who is going to zap us up into heaven to be bystanders as the world struggles – God comes down from heaven, enters into our struggles with us, and walks alongside us. It may not seem as sensationalistic as what all the books about the "end times" may like to make it – but then, when Jesus came the first time – it defied sensationalism and expectation as well. God coming to us as a humble child, a carpenter, a homeless man that wandered through the a tiny back-water province of the Roman Empire – and somehow still managed to change the world.

We are reminded that we see Christ at times we don’t expect to – and are expected to BE Christ at times we don’t expect it.