December 1, 2013 | 4:00 p.m.

Why Advent?

Adam H. Fronczek
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Matthew 24:36–44

Tonight I’m going to talk about the importance of having faith during ordinary times—times when nothing is going on that seems worth talking about. It may strike you, though, that the passage you heard read tonight sounds anything but ordinary. So I want to start out by acknowledging the parts of this passage that may seem scary or strange to many of you, talk about them a little, and then I’m going to move on and talk about why I think this passage is actually about ordinary times.

The passage probably suggested to some of you the idea of the rapture—the name some Christians have given to the time when Jesus comes back, the world ends, and some people go to heaven while others go to hell. This is an idea that has always been intriguing to a certain segment of the population. Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series continues to sell well today; a generation ago it was Hal Lindsay’s The Late Great Planet Earth. There are always going to be people who are interested in speculating about what happens to us when we die or how the world will finally come to an end. The problem is that no one really knows the answer to these questions. Until we do die or the world comes to an end, it’s just speculation. That is why, throughout the ages, most Christian theologians have argued that, even when these passages appear in the Bible, they are there not to make us anxious about the future but to get us to pay more attention to the present—to remind us to think about the importance of each day we are given, rather than letting the days just go on by.

If you’re not so sure about what I just said, I’d be happy to talk to you about it after the service or at another time, but for now, let’s look at the passage and see what it suggests about the present.

Notice who Jesus speaks to and about in this passage. He refers to people who are eating and drinking, getting married, working in the field, or grinding meal in a mill. None of these people are doing anything out of the ordinary, and that’s why I think this passage is about the way we live on ordinary days. The Bible doesn’t often talk about ordinary things, but this passage does, and that’s what I want to talk about today, because if we’re honest, much of life can be ordinary. There’s nothing wrong with ordinary times, but there are a lot of ordinary times in life, and so how we live in the midst of those times should be taken seriously.

I think most about ordinary times when I’m watching TV. Imagine your favorite show—comedy, drama, it doesn’t matter. Notice there’s always something happening to people on TV. Somebody’s always in trouble or trying to get out of it. Somebody’s always calling unexpectedly or stopping by the apartment. Even on Seinfeld, the show that was explicitly a show about nothing, something was always happening to the characters. TV shows always depict times when something is going on, because if TV depicted the ordinary ways most of us spend our time, nobody would watch. Of the many differences between TV and real life, this is one of the most important ones: in real life, there’s not always something going on. There are plenty of days that basically consist of “Well, I got up, ate some Cheerios, went to work, attended some meetings and answered some emails; I went to the gym, stopped on the way home to pick up some more Cheerios, then I read a chapter of a book or watched a show in order to be entertained by someone else who actually had something going on . . . and then I went to bed to wake up and do it all again.”

There’s nothing wrong with having ordinary days; in fact, knowing we have them is a healthy realization. Many of us make bad decisions or just depress ourselves wondering why every day isn’t exciting. The fact is, we’re all bound to have ordinary days.

I’d like to share with you one way of explaining why ordinary days aren’t so bad—from a biblical perspective. I heard it once from a theologian named Craig Barnes. Jesus’ ministry is said to have lasted for three years. If you combine the four Gospels that tell the story of Jesus’ life and take every instance that is described and assign it one day, you come up with less than one year of material. Using that observation, you could argue convincingly that roughly two days out of every three in the ministry of Jesus Christ nothing happened that his friends thought was worth writing down! Even Jesus had ordinary days.

That may sound funny to you—it does to me. The reason it sounds funny is not that Jesus couldn’t have had ordinary days—I’m sure he did have some days that were ordinary. What I think is less likely is that Jesus allowed ordinary days to be unimportant. My hunch is that in the midst of ordinary things like eating, going to work, and interacting with his friends and family, Jesus remembered, better than most of us typically do, to appreciate the ordinary things as the gifts of God that they really are. He knew how to make ordinary times important.

A good example of the legacy of this kind of Christian thinking is found in an ancient practice called the daily Examen, which is attributed to Ignatius of Loyola. The daily Examen is a Christian exercise that encourages people to think more meaningfully about ordinary days. In a variety of ways, people who practice the daily Examen think intentionally about the ordinary things in their day. They consider and make lists of things for which they are thankful, places where they need God’s help, things that they wish had been different, and places where they’ve seen God at work in their lives.

You can see how, when you participate in such an exercise, suddenly the ordinary isn’t so ordinary anymore. When you take time to consider how God has been present in the ordinary moments of the day, they suddenly aren’t so ordinary anymore. Perhaps you suddenly remember the opportunity you had for a caring exchange with a Starbucks employee or a cab driver. Maybe you just had peanut butter and jelly for lunch, but when you think about it, there are far too many people who don’t know where their next meal will come from at all and suddenly PBandJ isn’t so bad. And the new guy who sits three desks away from you at work—if you really consider your day carefully, maybe tomorrow you’ll finally ask his name and find out something about him. Maybe, if you’re truly bored and times really are ordinary but you know that God is a part of it, you’ll take more time to seek out people who are suffering and do something about it.

People who take the time to think about their day in this way find greater value in the ordinary things. They experience a greater sense of gratitude about their lot in life; they treat other people more kindly; they find more meaning in the simple things; and they aren’t as easily bored with ordinary times. Rather than watching TV and wondering why life isn’t more exciting, they watch TV and know that it isn’t real life.

I think this is what the scripture passage we read is talking about. The passage says Jesus was talking about how in the days of Noah, people were eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage. The ones who were living faithfully in the ordinary times were perhaps more thankful for what they were eating and drinking. The food tasted that much better to them. In their marriages, they were less likely to cheat out of boredom or to take one another for granted. The passage talks about two people working in a field or in a mill—ordinary work for ordinary people. But what if the ones who are living faithfully work together as friends? They know each other’s stories, hopes, and fears. They laugh together, and their friendship makes the long days of work go by a little faster. And because they invest this way in the ordinary days, the extraordinary days are different as well. When trouble comes, they have someone to help them through it, and when something really great happens, they have someone to celebrate with.

Life is full of ordinary days, and make no mistake about it, faithful living happens on those days too. Faith isn’t just about miracles and moral teachings. More often faith is about how we get through the ordinary times and make meaning out of each day God has given us—because sooner or later our days will be at an end.

The passage we read today is read almost every year on this Sunday—the first Sunday of the season we call Advent. Advent means coming, for it is during this season that we prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ at Christmas. In this season, we are to think about what it means to be watchful for the presence of Jesus even on ordinary days. My invitation to you is to think more intentionally about what happens on your ordinary days, and how you might be more intentional about making those ordinary days valuable. Make the ordinary parts of today matter, for we really have no idea how many of them we may have. That’s how we’re told to prepare for the coming of Jesus. Amen.