2022.11.27 | Perpetual Presence
Perpetual Presence
Matthew 24:32-44
Preached by
Rev. Dr. Marvin Lance Wiser
Eden United Church of Christ
Hayward, CA
27 November 2022
Advent 1: Hope
Good morning, Church. Our reading this morning is taken from a larger corpus of Mt 23-25 on judgment, and comprises two out of seven parables that Jesus uses to communicate the coming age. They are found in chapters 24 and 25 of Matthew and are: The Fig, The Days of Noah, The Thief, The Slaves, The Bridesmaids, The Talents, and The Last Judgment.
Knowing Jesus, who customarily responded to deep questions with parables, this litany of seven parables should give us pause, and make us ask ourselves, what sort of question elicited this response?
So, with that curiosity, let us backtrack to the beginning of the chapter, which falls outside of our lectionary reading: “As Jesus came out of the temple and was going away, his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple. Then he asked them, “You see all these, do you not? Truly I tell you, not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”
Jesus’ initial answer is told in the apocalyptic fashion dealing with Jerusalem, known as the “Little Apocalypse,” in the succeeding verses, 4-35. In the latter part of the chapter, Jesus deals with what many term as the second coming. Many of you might remember the 1990s and double naught’s series Left Behind that terrorized many, overlaying special effects onto this Little Apocalypse and the book of Revelation. In 2000, former Growing Pains star Kirk Cameron starred in the series’ film. While the series focused on God’s raining down of judgment and fiery tribulation, we are concerned with an advent of a very different sort, not dispensationalist and sensationalist, but both realized and coming.
The term in verse 3 that Matthew places in the apostles mouths for “coming,” is παρουσία. Παρουσία denotes presence, the opposite of απαρουσία or “absence.” Outside of biblical literature, however, the term’s usage also takes on a specialized meaning often associated with military and imperial parades, the arrival of a royal official, king, emperor, or even a god, which beckons us to recall Jesus’ own triumphal entry to Jerusalem in Mt 21.
Here, however, perhaps ironically, Jesus is leaving the temple and going away, when the disciples ask for a sign for his coming. What really were the disciples awaiting? An enthronement of a just King, the Son of Man, as opposed to Gaius Octavius better known as Caesar Augustus, who declared himself Son of God?
Jesus declares that this would not happen until the temple had ruined away. This must have at the time seemed impossible given the grandeur of the Herodian architecture, but it would happen nonetheless. Mere decades after Jesus’ crucifixion in the year 70 CE the Romans under Emperor Vespasian, in response to the Jewish bar Kokhba revolts, would destroy the temple, leaving only the Western Wall, still standing today.
Josephus details a prophecy that around the time when Jerusalem and the Second Temple was sacked by the Romans, a man from Judea, the Messiah, would become governor “of the habitable earth.” So, this anticipation of regal advent of the disciples and Paul’s thinking, had certainly made the rounds in ancient Judea. The anticipation of the messiah or the παρουσία was immediate and imminent. But the advent of a just worldly king was akin to waiting for Godot.
Returning to Jesus’s comments to the disciples, he may then be saying here in a subtle way in Matthew’s account, actually written after the Roman destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, I’m not going to be enthroned--at least not in the way that you think I am. Recall the humble procession on the donkey.
Examining further this παρουσία that we translate as “coming” or “advent,” the ordinal number “second” is never found in the New Testament, as in the “second coming,” but supplied in later theological discourse.
A second eschatological coming has been read into this passage from the early christian document the Didache and second century bishop Irenaeus from modern-day Turkey. But another reading is possible. John Chrysostom of the 4th cent., also from modern-day Turkey, reads Mt 24-25 in light of the historical destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE. His contemporary Augustine actually merges the two, interpreting the end of an age with the fall of Jerusalem.
Early Christians in the Roman empire had to deal with the presence of God in Christ leaving or going away, just as Jews did with the kavod or glory of God leaving the temple during the Babylonian exile, and temples, houses of God, being destroyed.
Matthew tells us that unlike imperial fanfare, The Son of Man’s παρουσία or coming is not heralded amid a peaceful kingdom, but amid great strife and turmoil, as with great instability in empires past, this was a clear of a sign as the budding of the trees that summer is but around the corner. Even with this immediacy, not even the Son of Man knows of his own παρουσία, but from verse 34, Matthew clearly thought that this advent would happen within his own lifetime, as he wrote “this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.” This favors a more realized eschatology, in lieu of what Hollywood so often portrays.
Even so, we find ourselves today just as those in the days of Noah. We go about our business as usual, failing to heed warnings from our prophets and diviners of God’s grand creation today. Our earth’s global temperature has risen 1º celsius since 1880, and is on track to rise more by the next generation. Our global ice sheets are now losing 427 billion tons of metric ice per year. Our sea levels have risen 4 inches just since 1993, and are projected to rise another 12 inches by 2050. No one listened to Noah, they went along with their merry lives maintaining the status quo, and violence increased in the land.
So, the takeaway for us is how are we to be ready for advent? How would we recognize Christ’s παρουσία today, and not get caught under water when it happens?
Our passage this morning exhorts us to be ready, to wait actively, not passively. The only certainty about παρουσία or advent is that the coming will happen at an hour when we do not expect it, as with a thief in the night. Therefore, we are to keep awake, watchful, participate in an active vigilance, as with the bridesmaids, for the advent of Christ.
More than 2,000 years later this imminent expectation of Mt 24:34 has yet to be realized. . . or has it? What if Christ’s παρουσία is both/and already realized and always coming? Here and not yet. Perhaps we have been graced with perpetual presence, failing to notice Christ before us, Christ behind us. As St. Patrick is attributed with writing,
“Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.”
For Christ, at the end of this large section, on the Last Judgment, in Matthew 25 states that, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”
The hope of advent then, Church, is that we recognize Christ’s perpetual presence. This is our work with the Newcomer Navigation Center my friends, Christ is always arriving. There may not be a trumpeting of his presence as with a king as we think it, sometimes the arrival is via donkey, on foot, or the trunk of a car.
United Methodist Minister, Rev. Dr. Susan Henry-Crowe puts it,
“The reality of Advent isn’t that we are waiting for the birth of the Christ child. The Christ child is here and waiting for us to come. He is crying out to us from the border. He is calling to us from the voices of the poor. He is shouting out to us from prison. He is waiting for us to live out our faith. He is waiting for us to seek justice. He is waiting for us to pursue peace. Let us go, for he is waiting.” And let the church say it together, Amen.
Blessing:
Stay woke, Church, for Christ implores us, “Pay attention, I will be with you always, to the end of eternity.” May we always be ready to recognize Christ’s perpetual presence. Let us go, for Christ is coming, Let us go, for Christ is waiting. Amen.