Advent I :: Isaiah 2: 1–5; Psalm 122; Romans
13: 11–14; Matthew 24: 36-44
This is a homily by Fr. Gene
Tucker, delivered at St. John's in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on Sunday, November
27, 2016.
“WHAT TIME IS IT?”
(Homily texts: Romans 13: 11-14 & Matthew 24: 36-44)
The season of Advent,
which begins today, urges us to ask ourselves this question: “What time is it?”
Traditionally, Advent
supplies us with three answers to this question:
- We look back to the time of Jesus’ birth, remembering God’s great gift of love as seen in His coming.
- We look forward to the time when the Lord will come back again, this time in power and great glory.
- We look at the time of our lives in this day and age, seeking God’s wisdom to know how to live faithfully in the wake of the Lord’s first coming, and in expectation of the Lord’s coming again.
These three times
deserve a closer look.
“What time is it?”
The Lord’s coming in His birth in Bethlehem changed world history forever. The
course of human history would have been radically different, it seems to me,
without Jesus Christ’s example of a perfect life, His wonderful teachings, and
the demonstration of God’s power over every evil and every enemy, even our
final enemy, which is death. Jesus’ disciples went out into the world, equipped
with this message, and the world was changed forever in direct relation to
their testimony.
“What time is
it?” We await the Lord’s return in the
fullness of time. That is to say, in God’s good time. But no one, the Lord
reminds us in today’s Gospel reading, knows the time nor the hour of His
return. But what we await is God’s undeniable demonstration of power over every
other power in the world. That is the essential bottom line of the meaning of
Jesus Christ’s eventual return, for this is the time when “Every knee shall bow
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” (Philippians 2: 11)
“What time is
it?” In between the Lord’s first coming
and His second coming, we find ourselves living in the wake of the importance
of His first coming, knowing that the things we do in our day and in our time
and in our lives is being done under the gaze of God the Father, who will ask
us to give an account of our faithfulness as we seek to be disciples of Jesus
Christ.
So, “What time is
it?” really? It is time to wake up, as St. Paul reminds us in our epistle
reading from Romans. It is time to see God’s great, big picture, God’s great,
big plan in the sending of Jesus Christ into the world, and in Jesus Christ’s
coming again. It is time to see that God has folded us into that great, big
picture, giving us a purpose and a high calling to be Jesus’ disciples in the
world we live in.
May we be faithful
followers, until the time that He comes again.
AMEN.
