Bloomsbury Central Baptist
Church
11.00 Sunday 1st Dec 2013
Isaiah 2:1-5 The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw
concerning Judah and Jerusalem. 2
In days to come the mountain of the LORD's house shall be established as the
highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations
shall stream to it. 3 Many
peoples shall come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the
LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that
we may walk in his paths." For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and
the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. 4
He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they
shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any
more. 5 O house of Jacob,
come, let us walk in the light of the LORD!
Romans 13:11-14 Besides this, you know what time it is, how it
is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now
than when we became believers; 12
the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of
darkness and put on the armor of light; 13
let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in
debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. 14 Instead, put on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
Matthew 24:36-44 "But about that day and hour no one
knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37 For as the days of Noah were,
so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
38 For as in those days before the flood they were eating and
drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the
ark, 39 and they knew nothing
until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the
Son of Man. 40 Then two will
be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. 41 Two women will be grinding meal
together; one will be taken and one will be left. 42 Keep awake therefore, for you
do not know on what day your Lord is coming.
43 But understand this: if the owner of the house had known
in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and
would not have let his house be broken into.
44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is
coming at an unexpected hour.
I wonder what image, what picture,
comes
to mind when we think of Jesus?
Perhaps, as we approach Christmas,
we
might visualise Jesus the tiny baby,
born
into a stable environment somewhere near Bethlehem.
Or maybe, to be perhaps more faithful to the
season of advent,
if
not to scripture itself,
we
might conceive of Jesus as the unborn child,
carried
by his mother on a donkey, led by Joseph.
Or perhaps we might imagine Jesus the teenager,
precociously
engaging with the scribes in the temple,
Or Jesus the adult,
eating
meals with friends,
annoying
the religious authorities,
and
bringing healing and wholeness to those he encountered.
Or perhaps we might think of Jesus on the
cross,
or
the Jesus of the empty tomb…
Or maybe we think of Jesus in more metaphorical
terms:
Jesus
the good shepherd,
Jesus
the light of the world,
Jesus
the messiah,
Jesus
the bread of life
Jesus
the living water
Jesus
the gateway to eternal life
However, there’s one image that I’m going to
guess won’t readily come to mind,
and
yet it’s one with strong scriptural precedent,
and that’s the image of Jesus as a thief in the
night.
We’ve
already met Jesus the thief in our passage for this morning,
he’s there in verses 43-44 of our
gospel reading,
but
we can also find him in a number of other places
elsewhere in the New
Testament:
In 1 Thessalonians
5:2, Paul says that
‘the
day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night’,
something which he reinforces a couple of
verses later,
reminding
his readers in Thessalonica that
because
they live in the light, and not in darkness,
they
will not be surprised when the day of the Lord comes ‘like a thief’ (v.4).
2 Peter 3:10 makes a similar point, taking the
language of Paul
and
re-appropriating it for a later generation.
He says: ‘the day of the Lord will come like a
thief,
and
then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise,
and the elements will be dissolved
with fire,
and
the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.’
And in a similar apocalyptic vein,
there
are a couple of references to Jesus the thief in the book of Revelation.
Firstly in Revelation 3:3, the church in Sardis are told to,
‘Remember
then what you received and heard;
obey
it, and repent.
If
you do not wake up, I will come like a thief,
and
you will not know at what hour I will come to you.’
And then secondly in Revelation 16:15 ,
the
voice of Jesus proclaims
‘See,
I am coming like a thief!
Blessed
is the one who stays awake and is clothed,
not
going about naked and exposed to shame.’
This idea of Jesus breaking and entering a
house
in
order to plunder the property within
also finds a parallel in Mark’s gospel,
where
Jesus gives his parable of the strong man:
Mark 3:27 reads, ‘no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his property
without
first tying up the strong man;
then
indeed the house can be plundered.’
In
this short parable, Jesus makes his subversive intentions clear,
likening his mission to that of the
thief.
In
Mark’s gospel, Jesus’ ministry can be understood in terms of
his breaking into Satan’s house,
tying him up,
and releasing that which has been
held captive.
Matthew,
in our passage for this morning, presents the same idea but slightly
differently,
offering us a different perspective
on Jesus the thief,
emphasising the unexpectedness of
the manner of his coming.
One of the interesting things about many of
these references to Jesus the thief,
and
it’s something we find in our passages for today as well,
is the way in which they interplay
between
the language of light and darkness, of daytime and night.
Jesus the thief comes unexpectedly in the
night,
he
comes suddenly into the darkness of a slumbering world;
but when he comes, what he brings with him
is
light and life, because he brings the ‘day of the Lord’.
The darkness of the night gives way to the
light of ‘the day’
This is a strange kind of thief, isn’t it?
Most
thieves operate in darkness, and like to keep it that way.
They
come in darkness, steal what they have come to acquire,
and then leave under the cover of
darkness.
But although Jesus the thief comes in darkness,
what
he brings is not more darkness,
but the growing brightness
of
the dawning of the ‘day of the Lord’.
The unexpected hour of the arrival of ‘the day’,
reveals
the deeds of the night for what they are,
bringing
into view that which might otherwise remain shrouded in darkness.
As Paul says in our reading from his letter to
the Romans:
the
time has come to ‘lay aside the works of darkness,
and
to put on the armour of light,’
to
‘live honourably as in “the day”’
Now,
I’ve heard this language of the ‘thief in the night’
used very unhelpfully over the
years,
and
I want this morning to offer us a different,
and I believe better, way of engaging
with it.
The
application of this image of Jesus, as the thief in the night,
certainly shouldn’t be, ‘Look busy,
Jesus is coming’.
Neither
should it primarily be about personal morality,
and the risk of getting caught out
doing something naughty.
In
fact, I would suggest that any attempt to use the promise of Jesus’ coming,
as a threat to enforce ethics by
fear,
is a long way from the good news of
the gospel of Christ.
And
neither is this passage about what has often been called ‘the rapture’
which is a largely unscriptural and
relatively recent doctrine
that teaches Christians to expect
that
at a sudden and
unexpected future advent of Jesus,
they will be swept off
the earth to glory in the clouds,
whilst the world quite literally
goes to hell beneath them.
Rather,
this passage is about the incarnation.
It is about the coming of Jesus into
the world as a human being.
Not
as a king, but as a refugee,
not as a powerful ruler, but as a
dissident revolutionary,
not as the son of a king, but as the
child of a young and unmarried girl.
Jesus,
the light of the world,
came into the darkness, not as
anyone expected him to come,
but in the most surprising way
imaginable:
He
came as a thief in the night,
under the cover of darkness,
to bring the new and unexpected light
of the day of the Lord.
He
came to plunder the house of the strong man,
and to liberate those held captive.
He
came to steal the world back from the forces of Satan,
and to break the power of the owner
of the house.
And
the earth has been enslaved for far too long;
the forces of the satanic empire
have held power over the peoples of the earth
for so long that it has
become normality,
and too easily we have grown
complacent to the horror of it.
The
image of two men in a field,
with one taken and one left,
or
two women at the mill,
with one taken and one left,
is a
stark metaphor for the terror that the satanic empire
wreaks across the face of the earth.
Tom
Wright helpfully reminds us of the force of this image.
He
says:
This doesn’t
mean (as some have suggested)
that one person will be ‘taken’ away
by God
in some kind of
supernatural salvation,
while the other is ‘left’ to face
destruction.
If anything,
it’s the opposite:
when invading forces sweep through a
town or village,
they will ‘take’ some
off to their deaths,
and ‘leave’ others
untouched.
The
empire flexes its muscles, and someone dies, while someone else lives.
And we say to ourselves that ‘it’s
the way of the world’.
We
justify our complicity in such satanic systems,
as long as it’s me and
mine that live.
We
comfort ourselves with the mantra that the death of others, elsewhere,
to war, starvation, or oppression,
is regrettable, but
unavoidable.
The
force of Jesus’ image of two workers side by side,
with one taken to their death, and
one escaping with their life,
is
that all humans are equal, that all workers are alike.
Whether
a person is working at the top of the pile in the affluent west,
or at the bottom of the pile
in the dangerous and impoverished
developing world,
we are all equal in the
sight of God.
The
shock of one being taken and one left
vividly highlights the capricious
nature of those principalities and powers
that control life and
death on a global scale.
Whether
it’s the Roman empire of the first century,
or the empire of global capital of
our own century,
Jesus
invites us to realise
that when someone dies in the
collapse of a poorly built factory in Bangladesh,
or at the bottom of a sub-standard
coltan mine in the Congo,
they
are in actual fact the worker standing alongside us
as we wear our affordable clothes,
using our smartphones to update our
status.
The
other has been taken, and we remain.
This
is the darkness of the satanic empire,
and it is into this darkness
that the light of the
world comes,
like a thief in the night,
to steal the world back from
the forces of empire.
This
is how Jesus came,
it is how he still comes,
and it is how he will
come again, and again, and again.
The
light of the world comes as he has always come,
as a thief in the night:
unexpectedly, irrevocably,
subversively.
Slipping
in under the radar,
to steal the world back from those
forces that currently hold it hostage.
The
strong man’s house is still in darkness,
the military and economic forces of
the empire still tower over the world,
lulling
those of us who live here to sleep with the opiate of affluence,
inviting us to close our eyes to the
darkness that is all around us.
The call in the images of Jesus as the thief
is
that we should wake up,
we
should open our eyes,
we
should learn to see the world around us in the light of his dawning day.
We should be ready for the revolution,
not
napping the night away.
We may be the under-cover sleeper-agents of the
in-breaking kingdom of God,
but
mustn’t to be caught sleeping with our heads under the covers.
The call is for us to be ready and alert to the
light of Christ
which
shines in unexpected places,
never
thinking we know in advance where Jesus will be found next,
but always ready to greet him when he
comes,
ever
attentive to the dawning of the day of the Lord.
But this invitation to wake up, to open our
eyes,
and to learn to see the world
differently,
is
an invitation that it’s very easy to ignore.
You see, the world can just seem so normal, can’t
it?
It
can be so hard to believe that not everything around us is of equal value,
it
can be so hard to believe that not everything we do is of eternal value.
So here, perhaps, we need to hear the lesson of
Noah.
He
could see that the world was going change,
his eyes were opened to the darkness
that surrounded him,
and he started building accordingly.
But everyone else just went on eating,
drinking, and marrying,
little
realizing that they were sleep-walking their way to disaster.
The story of Noah offers a clear parable,
of
just how easy it is to carry on ‘carrying on’,
whilst
remaining wilfully or blissfully blind
to
the darkness that is closing in all around us.
But it also offers a message of hope to those
who live upon the earth,
because
the promise to Noah, at the end of the story,
is
that God is turning his back forever on the strategy of ‘re-booting’ creation.
Genesis 8:21-22 The LORD said in his heart, "I will
never again curse the ground because of humankind… nor will I ever again
destroy every living creature as I have done.
22 As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold
and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease."
The story of Noah explores and rejects the idea
that
God might one day re-start the earth
with
a small group of the elect few, lifted above the tumult,
to
survive and repopulate a re-created earth.
Our future is here, on this earth,
and
we need to wake up to the impact that the empires we create are having
on
the created order that is ours to tend.
Because God is not, I think, going to give us a
‘get out of jail free’ card
that
re-starts it all for the favoured few on a newly-minted earth Mark II.
It’s no small irony that this passage has been
used so extensively
by
those who have argued that we should expect exactly this.
But I think they are wrong.
The point of the parable of Noah is that the coming
flood
is
not a flood of destruction,
but
the flood of the in-breaking kingdom of God.
It’s the flood of the dawning day of the Lord,
it’s
the coming of the Son of Man;
whose light shines in the darkness,
exposing
to the light the even darkest corners of the earth.
The encouragement to wake up, to be alert, to live
in the light,
is
both an encouragement to build lives
that
will endure when exposed to the light of Christ,
and
a warning to those whose deeds and priorities and relationships
are
only sustainable in darkness.
As Jesus said earlier in Matthew’s gospel,
Matthew
7:26-27 Everyone who hears these words of mine and
does not act on them
will be like a foolish man who built
his house on sand.
The
rain fell, and the floods came,
and the winds blew and beat against
that house,
and it fell-- and great was its
fall!
The coming day of the Lord is a flood that
exposes
the
very foundations on which our lives and empires have been built,
and it asks us to consider carefully
the
ground on which we’re building.
We might get away with it once,
we
might get away with it twice,
we
might get away with it for years.
But in time the behavior becomes a pattern,
and the
luxury becomes an addiction,
and our priorities slowly re-orientate
themselves
away
from a life lived in the light of Christ,
towards
a life lived in darkness.
We displace God revealed in Christ as the ground of our being
and fill the void with patterns of our own devising.
And all the while we blind ourselves to what is happening,
closing our eyes to the light of day,
and
slowly we sleep-walk our way to destruction.
Wake up! says Jesus, because the day of the
Lord comes like a thief in the night.
The
days of darkness are numbered,
and
the time has now come to walk in the light of the Lord (Isa 2.5).
‘Keep awake therefore,
for
you do not know on what day your Lord is coming’ (24.42)
In Thomas Hardy’s novel Tess of the
D’Urberville’s
the
heroine Tess ponders the day of her death;
and she observes that everyone who has died,
is
always remembered on the anniversary of their death,
and yet they lived their whole life never
knowing that date,
passing
over the day of their death as if it were just another day.
‘Keep awake therefore,
for
you do not know on what day your Lord is coming’ (24.42)
No-one expected Bethlehem,
no-one
expected a baby,
no-one
expected Mary, or Joseph, or a stable.
No-one expected the homeless wandering prophet
of new life,
no-one
expected the cross,
no-one
expected the resurrection.
But, as Bruce Cockburn so memorably put it,
‘redemption
rips through the surface of time
in
the cry of a tiny babe’
So be alert! Keep awake!
Because the son of man comes like a thief in
the night,
to
steal the world for good.
