November 30, 2025

My Friends, I speak to you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Earlier this year, a South African pastor claimed that he had seen a divine vision of Jesus. As a result, he prophesied that Jesus’ Second Coming would happen in September. Maybe you heard about it. His claim gained massive attention on social media. Some people –expecting to be taken to heaven in The Rapture –sold or even gave away their possessions, thinking they wouldn’t need them anymore.

After all the breathless speculation, the date came and went. And it turned out to be just another Tuesday. The end of times did not come. No one – at least no one I know of – was Raptured. Like the hundreds, if not thousands, of such predictions before, it turned out to be wrong.

I’m not here this morning to mock those who believed in this prophecy. Instead, I want to point out that peoples’ response to it –their willingness to believe and get rid of everything they owned – reveals a deep spiritual hunger in our society. A deep spiritual hunger embedded in our souls. Many of us long for the coming of the kingdom in all its fullness. We long for the end of time and the return of Jesus. We long for something to give us hope for something better.

And so this morning, I want us to think about what it means to wait for the coming of Jesus. What does it mean to wait for the coming of Jesus?

Today we begin the liturgical season of Advent. Advent refers to a “coming”. But which one? Given that the secular Christmas season started about six weeks ago, it’s understandable if you think Advent is a time of preparation for Christmas and the baby in the manger. And that is partly true. But almost everything about our Advent worship – from our prayers to our hymns to our contemplative silence – focuses on a different coming. Jesus’ final coming at the end of time.

Advent, it turns out, is the Church’s response to our all-too-human desire to fixate on the end of time.

In Matthew’s Gospel this morning, Jesus is answering the question we heard in our Gospel reading two weeks ago. “Tell us”, the disciples asked then, “what will be the sign of your coming and the end of the age?” The desire for Jesus’ return – and to know when it will happen – is as old as the Christian movement itself.

Jesus responds by telling them what they do and don’t know. Here’s what they don’t know – the time. You won’t know the year, the month, the day, or the hour, Jesus says. People who pore over biblical books like Daniel or Revelation, attempting to discern and crack a “code”, Jesus would say to us, are fooling themselves.

You won’t know, Jesus says, because there will be no sign at all. Life will go on as usual, with no obvious or mysterious signs of the approaching judgement. Jesus’ return will interrupt our daily activities of living. We’ll be at work in the fields, or in our offices, or in our factories or our homes. We’ll be eating and drinking, and planning our days, and then “boom”. Everything will change between one heartbeat and the next.

That’s challenging for us. As human beings, we crave certainty. We’re encouraged to spend our lives planning our futures. College students plan their careers. We plan our days and our weeks. We plan for our retirements. We want these plans – we need these plans – because we want to feel in control of what will happen next. Because that makes us feel safe.

And that’s the problem. We root our hope in the carefully constructed safety of planning that falls away the moment our own prophecies fail to come true. When life, the universe, and everything unfold in ways we could never have expected or dreamed of, then any hope we have that’s rooted in our ability to control the world around us is exposed as the thin vapor that it is. No wonder so many people crave the certainty of Jesus’ return next week. Hope in anything but God will ultimately disappoint us.

You’re not in control, Jesus tells the disciples. You don’t know when I will return. But then Jesus tells the disciples what they do know. And what they do know is what they’re supposed to be doing in the meantime – in this time of preparation and waiting for his return. Jesus’ command can be summed up in one word – “vigilance”. “Keep awake!” he says. “Live every day in anticipation of the end.”

Because we don’t know the day or the hour, we always have to be ready for Jesus’ return. And for the Christian community who wrote Matthew’s Gospel, vigilant waiting for the coming of Jesus means living according to his teachings. Living lives of humility, service, forgiveness, and love of enemies.

To put it another way, vigilant waiting for the coming of Jesus involves being the sort of church that is a light in the darkness.

Because in Matthew’s understanding of the Christian faith, the promise of a second coming doesn’t cause us to sell our possessions and close our doors and expect the Rapture any day now. The promise of a second coming doesn’t let us quit the job of being the church in the world. Instead, it calls us to be church in the world – to be that light – with even more urgency.

So, my friends, this Advent I encourage us to take up the spiritual practice of vigilance as we wait for the coming of Jesus. Pay careful attention to what acts of mercy, forgiveness, and peace God is calling us – calling you – to do. Not because we preach the Gospel of Ethical Conduct, but because these acts are a faithful response to God’s promise in Scripture to bring about a final reckoning. Because they are a foretaste of the divine justice and truth that will prevail in the end.

As we prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ – as we wait vigilantly – remember that when Jesus comes again does not matter. That he will come again is assured. So take comfort that in a world riddled by lies and cruelties – where the cries of the powerless often go unheard – the conviction that Christ will come again offers the best kind of hope there is. A true hope rooted in the promises of a God who will never abandon us.

Amen.