Hope Will Not Fail
Welcome to Advent! It feels like I’ve been teasing it for a few weeks now—not that it should really be a surprise when Advent comes. It tends to happen at the same time each year. We generally think of Advent as a time of preparation, the season to decorate and clean, to shop and to prepare for guests. We may even think about it as the season in which we prepare for the season of Christmas, the time when we remember that God is present in the world, and that we are not forgotten. While it is certainly true that Advent is a time of preparation, we too-often think of it simply as a path to something else, as a transitional time. That’s if we’re lucky. For many, Advent is simply pre-Christmas, an extension of the Christmas season that we forget, only begins on December 25. I’m not going to pretend that Anna and I didn’t spend part of this week helping my parents set up their Christmas tree or bring bins full of decorations down from their attic. That’s part of preparation. But it’s easy to forget, amid all the shopping malls and secular Christmas-themed events, that Advent is its own thing—a distinct season with a particular call placed on our lives and in the midst of our community. This distinction, the thing that makes Advent special, makes it powerful, and that demands our attention and consideration, is that it is all about the apocalypse.
When I say the word apocalypse, I don’t want us to think about zombies (at least not the literal kind), and I especially don’t want us to think about the rapture. I know that may be difficult, since ideas about the rapture continue to permeate our society. And it may be especially difficult since our gospel text this morning includes a couple of the few supporting verses for rapture theology. But since the rapture is not a part of United Methodist doctrine, and is a modern invention that does far more harm than good, we’re not really going to justify it with a response today. Maybe that can be a study for another time. Even without the rapture, though, this idea that “one will be taken, and one will be left” still has apocalyptic significance. This is because the word apocalypse doesn’t refer strictly to our science fiction understanding of the end of the world, or the end of society. Literally, it means an unveiling or an uncovering. It’s about envisioning something, either by having the divine reveal something or by revealing something in community. It’s why the final book of the Bible is interchangeably referred to as Revelation and The Apocalypse of John of Patmos. Apocalypse is a vision, it’s an awareness, it’s seeing what is happening in the present time and looking beyond at what’s coming down the line. I took two classes in seminary on the book of Revelation and apocalypse in the Christian and Jewish traditions (because I just couldn’t get enough). The professor in one of these classes referred to apocalypse as standing on the edge and looking out at what might be. Advent is this edge, and this text invites us to look out.
When reading texts, one of the things I like to do is look at what the text isn’t saying. We see in this gospel passage that Jesus is referring back to the story of Noah and the flood, when most of the world is said to have ignored the warnings of Noah and just gone about their lives. The people who ignored Noah are ridiculed, seen as imprudent and as having rejected God by rejecting God’s prophet. In using this story as an illustration, Jesus is adding emphasis to his message of paying attention, of staying awake to the moment. That’s something that the text says, or at least that it implies. When Jesus gets to the part of the story about one being taken and one being left behind, after referring to himself in the third person for the second time, the details quickly run dry. We don’t know how one will be taken, who’s doing the taking, whether being taken is actually a good thing, or if either of the two workers saw it coming. We don’t know anything, really. We could assume based on the Noah reference that those taken are the safe ones, the worthy ones. But this passage also comes just a chapter before Matthew has Jesus talk about separating the sheep from the goats and the righteous from the unrighteous, so this could just be more sorting—and the categories are unclear. Are those who are taken the ones on the ark? Are they the ones swept away by the flood? We don’t know. We also don’t know whether those left behind noticed when the others were taken. There’s no indication that they did, no sign that they were alarmed or concerned. Jesus doesn’t tell us that they sent out search parties or that they alerted anyone. Jesus doesn’t even tell us if they glanced over and raised an eyebrow.
We don’t know if those taken were dragged off kicking and screaming. We don’t know if the ones taking them were in plain clothes or uniforms. We don’t know if their papers were checked, if their families were notified, or if they were sent to their country of origin or a place they had never been. All we know is that one day they were in the field or working in the food processing plant, and suddenly they were gone. Did the others know? Did they care? Did they keep their heads down for fear that they would be taken, too? Perhaps they were fired, put out of work for not grinding enough meal. Perhaps they were found to be queer in the wrong place, and sent off for conversion therapy. Perhaps they were taken to the hospital, or to prison. We know as much as their partner in the field or at the mill. We know as much as their neighbors, who may or may have noticed their absence. Christ’s command in this moment to stay awake is a call to apocalypse, a plea to see one another, to know one another, and to care for one another. It’s a call to an apocalypse of the community, to become aware of the struggles and needs of those who live and work right next door. It’s a reminder that the New Heaven and the New Earth don’t come to be with spears and swords and great armies commanded by the Son of Man, but through connection, through community, and through resistance to structures that seek to tear communities apart.
Our theme for throughout Advent comes from a song by David Bjorlin called “Hope Will Not Fail.” It has four verses that take us through each week of Advent: Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. I’ll spare you my singing voice, but the first verse goes “Hope will not fail/No, hope will not fail/Though anguish and apathy seem to prevail/No, hope will not fail/Hope, hope will prevail.” Even in the face of anguish and apathy, even when we occupy ourselves with our own lives, our own busyness, our own preoccupations. Even so, hope will not fail. If we wake to the moment. If we unveil the world as it is now and see the plight and the beauty in our neighbors throughout all of Creation. If we step towards the edge and dare to behold the world that might be. Hope will prevail, when we overcome our apathy, when we come to know our neighbors, to concern ourselves with their wellbeing, to see when they’re not here. We begin this Advent, as we have each year before, with Hope. Hope that does not place us in a dream land where we can ignore all the problems of the world. Hope that does not allow us to keep to our own lives, to disconnect ourselves from the concerns of others, and get lost in the constant flood of everything Christmas. Hope born not out of violence or clamouring for power, but to unwed, unsettled, unlikely parents, and laid in a manger. The hope that is God entering the world in the form of the tired, the sick, the marginalized, the imprisoned, the refugee, the unhoused, and the overworked. The hope that arises when we awaken ourselves to the moment, to one another, and to the Christchild, and the promise that all things are being made new. This is the hope that will not fail. This, siblings in Christ, is the hope that will prevail. Amen.