Unexpected

"Unexpected"
Matthew24:36-44

Do you remember all those disaster movies that were hits a long time ago?  One of the first was the movie, "Earthquake" that came out in 1974.  It was the first film that came out in sensuround, a kind of stereo sound that was supposed to make you not only hear the earthquake, but feel it as well.

The storyline of the movie began with introducing the audience to a number of characters.  We watched and became involved with their individual stories.  We saw how their everyday routines were lived out each day.  As the audience, though, we knew the secret the characters on the screen did not.  We knew an earthquake was coming.  The people in the movie just went on with their everyday lives.  But we in the audience wanted to shout out the secret, "Watch out you idiots—an earthquake is coming!!"

That's about the way every disaster movie since then has been developed.  Whether it was an alien attack in several movies, like "Independence Day," or a volcano erupting out of the La Brea Tarpits in Los Angeles in the movie, "Volcano", we first get to know characters carrying out their everyday lives until the huge unexpected event drops in their laps.

That's also what is so scary about all the terrorist attacks that go on every day around the world.  You never know.  People are carrying on with their normal everyday lives.  They are going to work.  They get on the subway.  They get on a school bus.  They are standing around the coffee pot having their normal morning banter.  Then the subway train starts gaining speed and the brakes don't work.  Or a bomb goes off.

Each day, people look at the mounds of work on their desk in their cubicle, wondering when it would get done.  They were thinking about the argument they had had with their spouse that morning across the breakfast table.  And then everything starts shaking.

They were looking through their iPhones and iPads, sending texts and tweets, updating Facebook.  Then a spaceship shows up, shoots a death ray into the building, imploding it.

They were kissing loved ones at the airport terminal and boarding what they thought would be a routine flight.  They were asking stewardesses for a pillow for the long flight ahead.  They were opening their laptops once the OK was given by the pilot to turn on electronic devices.  Then the unexpected happened:  Snakes on a Plane!!

The movies and the real life events people have faced in our country lately have all served to remind us of the reality that none of us knows what's going to happen in the next moment.  We assume life is a stable progression of events, mostly predictable with few if any surprises.

But the truth is, we really can't be sure what unexpected things might be dropped into our lives at any one moment.  Possibly the very next moment.  As the bumper sticker from the late 1960's stated, "One atomic bomb can ruin your whole day."

Jesus was making the same point about the unexpected return of the Savior.  Jesus likened it to the time of Noah.  People went about their everyday lives.  They carried out their ordinary kinds of tasks.  From small, routine matters to big ceremonies they lived through their predictable, ordinary lives.

Then the rain started falling.  Nothing out of the ordinary.  Nothing unexpected.  Everyone saw the rain clouds forming.  Lots of people probably looked up and said to someone else, "Looks like rain."  Rain was a normal kind of occurrence.  Except this rain didn't stop as expected.  "It rained and poured for forty daysies, daysies…" until all life on the planet was drowned except Noah's family and their floating zoo.  That was totally unexpected.

That, said Jesus, is what the Second Coming of the Savior will be like.  People will allow their lives to be lulled into predictable routines.  They will become numb to the holy.  They will go on with their treadmill lives, with no Godly pursuits happening.  They will make their squirrel cage existence go round and round, but never make something happen with the Lord..  They will continue to live like rats in a maze, scratching down alley after alley, looking for a reward that doesn't even matter in the larger scheme of things; or maybe giving up on the idea that there ever was a reward somewhere in the confusion.

And then, BAM!!  The Lord will return unexpectedly, sweeping up the faithful and leaving the rest behind to face their fate.  No one will see it coming.

Jesus used the story of Noah for a very particular reason.  That reason was because he wanted us to see that this is the way God likes to make things happen.  The biggest events God has made happen, and will make happen were totally unexpected.  It's just the way God does things.

Let's use a couple of pieces of the story of Moses that I've been telling the kids.  Moses, out in the wilderness taking care of sheep, doing, day after day, whatever it is shepherds do.  And then, whoa!, there's a suddenly a bush on fire nearby, but it's not burning up.  Moses couldn't have expected that, no matter how creative his mind may have been.

Or, standing at the edge of the Red Sea, Pharaoh's army coming like a dust storm down upon them.  Had they escaped, just to be slaughtered?  But then God tells Moses to hold up his staff, and when he does, the sea parts before them, and the Hebrew people walk across on dry ground with two huge walls of water on each side of the procession.  Totally unexpected.

Or, moving to the birth story of Jesus, Mary's life unfolded with the normal, small town, Middle Eastern culture predictability.  She was arranged by her father to be married to Joseph, a man from a family on the good side of town, with a respectable occupation.  As a carpenter, Joseph lived by the rule, "Measure twice, cut once."  It applied to every part of his life.

Mary would have a stable life (pardon the pun) being a wife, and, God-willing, a mother of several sons.  Well, God was willing, only a lot sooner than Mary was willing.  In an unexpected way and with an unexpected message, God dropped his world-changing plan into her lap.

But more than that, God dropped the Savior into the lap of an unsuspecting, unexpectant world.  In one of the smallest of Israel's towns, in a cattle stall, while the rest of the world carried on, or slept on, God was birthed into his world.

With the same kind of unexpectedness, Christ will come again to end and remake all of creation.  That's how God likes to make things happen, says Jesus.  So you better be alert.  Those least alert will be left totally clueless.  You don't want to be one of those, Jesus added.

Or, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard Jesus is supposed to come again, but I'm not going to wait around for it.  I'm going to go on and live my life and not hold my breath.  I've got places to go and people to see."  According to Jesus, those kinds of people were drowned in the flood.  Or, will be left behind at the second coming of Christ.

Queen Victoria was one of the most loved Queen's of England.  She would make unexpected calls on the farm folks who lived in cottages or small villages across the British countryside.   Any day might be a royal day, and the humble Brits would put a chair at their table prepared for a possible, yet surprise, visit.

They would keep their houses spotless. They were a clean and wholesome people, but the Queen's surprise visits added to the joy of keeping their homes lovely. The old people who remembered her visits in their youth charmed visitors by the expression used in the residences across the countryside. They would say, "Perhaps today, she’ll come my way."

Or, as Christians, we should say, "Perhaps today, the Lord will come our way."  The people, with the first coming of the Savior, had all but given up that God would send such a one into the world.  They were already amending their expectations that God would usher in a "Messianic Age" but that an individual Messiah probably wasn't a part of God's plans.

Then, surprise, Jesus the Savior is born, and all their expectations went out the window.  It was God, who had to say, through Jesus' coming, "Perhaps today, the Savior will come your way," so that they could get back on track with what God was doing.

The kinds of questions you need to be asking yourself, this Advent, are questions like, How could the Lord catch you the most unawares?  What kinds of activities do you get so wrapped up in that you would miss today—the coming of Christ or the Second Coming?  What kind of qualities do you have that would make you "takable" rather than being "left behind?"  When are the times you are most attentive to God?  Most inattentive?

What I'm thinking is, if God is important to you, you better be ready for the unexpected.  You better be ready for anything.  And, especially, you better be ready to have God impose his agenda and his schedule upon you.  Because, in the end, ready or not, that's how it's going to come down.

"Maybe today, the Lord will come your way."