Jesus said to his disciples: “Stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come. Be sure of this: If the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into. So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.” (Matthew 24.42-44)
As all moviegoers know, a popular genre or type of entertainment at the theater is the horror movie. Its primary purpose is to present dark subjects–gruesome and grotesque–in an effort to elicit fear in the viewer. Some of the horror movies over the years have become legendary, garnering a cult following, such as “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” or Hitchhock’s “Psycho.”
Almost always embedded in the horror movie is a contest between good and evil, the suspense played out over the course of the movie, leaving us uncertain if good will triumph in the end or if evil will prevail. For much of the movie, darkness seems to have the upper hand, our natural instincts begging for somebody or something to end the terror, triumphing over the evil playing out before our eyes.
Although horror movies are relatively new, cinema only coming to the fore in the early 20th century, the truth is the “horror genre” is about as ancient as humankind, the contest of good against evil as old as Adam and Eve. If we are to understand the selection from scripture that is given to us on this First Sunday of Advent, then there is no better place to start than in seeing a parallel between it and our horror movies.
The particular passage that we hear today comes from the Gospel of Matthew–he will be our guide throughout the new liturgical year–in a part of his text that has come to be known as the “apocalyptic” section. If we’ve seen the 1979 movie “Apocalypse Now,” starring Martin Sheen, we already have a clue as to the meaning of apocalyptic, the movie presenting the horror and inhumanity of war, the forces of good against evil once again playing out before our eyes.
In these two chapters–24 and 25–of Matthew’s gospel, near the tailend of his text (the final chapters 26-28 will detail the death and resurrection of the Lord), he has Rabbi Jesus reflect on the darkness and destruction that he envisions when the end of the world comes. Matthew lifts heavily from his predecessor Mark, who has a pronounced apocalyptic theme in his gospel, which explains in part why we find it here.
Of course, Mark did not invent the genre either, this type of literature already found in the Hebrew scriptures that preceded Mark’s writing by centuries, the Book of Daniel the most well-known example, although non-canonical books such as the Books of Enoch also carry the same thematic. Scholars generally posit the origin of the literature in the post-exilic experience of the Jews, a time of pessimism about the present accompanied with a prediction of end times.
When examining the circumstances of those times, it is easy enough to see how apocalyptic literature might evolve, the Jewish people suffering under Greek domination and then under Roman occupation, their way of life and their lives constantly at risk. As they look around, they see nothing but evil and suffering, destruction and desolation.
Holding fast to the promise that the Lord God had made to them that they would be his chosen people, they attempt to explain the present reign of evil as temporary, a future time coming when the Most High God will avenge their suffering and will destroy their evil perpetrators. When he comes, the just will be vindicated and the wicked will be sentenced.
So, although pessimistic in its portrayal of present times, apocalyptic literature is hopeful, at least in the sense that it sees good as being more powerful than evil in the end. Obviously, then, there is a yearning for the end times, however calamitous and catastrophic, because justice finally will be done with evildoers punished and good people rewarded, the scales of justice weighing at long last in favor of the oppressed.
The Jews, for their part, saw these end times coming with the Messiah, a promised hero who would establish a kingdom of righteousness, vanquishing enemies and restoring Jerusalem to its favored position. Hence, they waited in expectation for “the day of the Lord,” a day of deliverance for the Jews and a day of doom for their enemies as judgment was delivered upon the earth.
Inheritors of this mindset, early Christians easily reinterpreted it in reference to the return of the Lord Jesus, countering the argument made by Jews that he was not the Messiah because evil had not been destroyed as the Messiah was destined to do. For Christian believers, while the first coming may not have vanquished evil, the second return would accomplish that feat, the Risen Lord reclaiming the world once and for all.
This, then, is the background for Matthew’s “apocalyptic” chapters near the close of his gospel, chapters in which Rabbi Jesus alludes to “the day your Lord will come,” signaling the end of human history as we know it, a day when the just will arise from their graves and the evil will be vanquished to everlasting flames.
However, as we hear, Rabbi Jesus offers no prediction on when the day will come, only that it will. In the “in between” times, his followers are to remain vigilant and alert. “Stay awake,” he tells them, for you do not know on which day your Lord will come. Be sure of this, if the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into. So too, you also must be prepared for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.”
Of course, it is interesting to find this apocalyptic text that promises a dark doomsday at the start of Advent, oddly juxtaposed with Christmas, a joyous celebration right around the corner, only weeks away. Apparently, it is an effort on the part of liturgists to connect the two comings of the Lord Jesus, the first at Christmas, the other at his second coming at the end of the time, in this way providing a sense of continuity, rather than discontinuity, however tenuous the connection.
While the circumstances behind these chapters are informative, providing contour and context for a better understanding, we are left to decide what exactly we are to take from them, considering two millennia have passed and there has been no second coming of the Lord, the “day of the Lord” continually pushed further into the future by the facts of history.
Many scholars deal with the discordant facts by directing our attention to our immediate deaths, seeing our personal “end” as the day of judgment, generally referred to as a particular judgment in contrast to the general judgment that awaits the Second Coming. And, truth be told, it works, all things considered. A day and a time indeed come for each of us when this world ends for us and the record of our lives will be our only defense before the seat of justice.
And Rabbi Jesus’ words surely are applicable to that personal “end time” as well, reminding us to stay awake and to be prepared, since death knocks on our door at a time of its own choosing, many of us, if not most, caught unawares. Better for us, then, to live each day as if it were the last, our time spent in service to God and to others, demonstrating a preparedness on our part, unperturbed by death, the thief of night, because we have remained awake.
The problem for many of us is that the text before us today only tells us to be prepared, but does not tell us how to be prepared. That answer, fortunately, is provided by Rabbi Jesus at the end of these apocalyptic chapters when he concludes his discourse on the day of the Lord by telling the parable of the separation of the sheep from the goats.
In that parable we find the answer on how we are to make ourselves ready because the judgment of the Most High God is rendered clearly and forthrightly on the bases of concrete criteria. We do well to jump ahead, then, to Chapter 25 where we find the instruction guide for getting ourselves prepared for the day of reckoning.
“Come, you who are blessed by my Father,” the Son of Man says in the parable, “inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.”
To be sure that we are clear, not confusing or substituting other measures for these, Rabbi Jesus proceeds with the parable, showing that those condemned did none of these things. “Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire. For I was hungry and you gave me no food. I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.”
So, in fact, we are not left without an answer as to how we are to prepare for the day of the Lord. Matthew tightly binds together these two chapters, here at the start of the apocalyptic discourse having Rabbi Jesus tell us to be prepared, then at the end having Rabbi Jesus tell us how we are to prepare ourselves, the means and measures crystal clear.
In this way, Matthew also alleviates any anxiety we might have about when the day of the Lord will come. For those who have prepared themselves by way of these corporal works of mercy, there is neither worry nor weariness. Continually living our days by this code, we do not fret about that future day because we have spent today and everyday preparing ourselves for it.
We may understand now why the saintly Pope John XXIII once said, “Any day is a good day to be born and any day is a good day to die.” He understood, as we should, that so long as we live the days in between in the way prescribed by the words and deeds of Rabbi Jesus, any day is as good as the next day. Only those who are unprepared have cause to fret about or to be afraid of when the day of the Lord will come.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 