Matthew 24:36-44 Getting Ready for What’s to Come (Wigmore) – Bible study

Sermon Matthew 24:36-44 Getting Ready for What’s to Come

By Fr. Bill Wigmore

(This sermon was delivered to a group recovering from alcohol and drug addiction.)

On the Church calendar, tonight marks the start of the New Year So let me be the first and probably the only one to say to you: Happy New Year!

• And every year, we start the new-year off with a gospel reading like the one I just read.
• Theyre always readings filled with doom & gloom.

The end of the world is at hand youd better wake up and be prepared!

• Frankly, I dont think this is very good marketing!

Why doesnt the Church start the year off on a happier note?

• Maybe she could choose: Easter Sunday!
• Or even a month from now, start it all off with a bang on Christmas Day?
• The baby Jesus looks all cute and cuddly, lying in the manger!
• That scene always brings in the shoppers!

But what do we get to start off the New Year? We get: thieves coming in the night.

And reminders of a flood that the story says: wiped out nearly everyone on earth.

Maybe as addicts, were impatient to get down to the good stuff.
Lets get on to the happy, joyous and free part of this deal
Patience was never our strong suit! We want it all now!

But for 30 days or so, the Church sets aside a period she calls Advent
Advent means: The Coming and its a time of preparation before Christmas.
And you know, we pretty much do the same thing here in treatment
We too set aside 30 days or so a time to get us ready for something else thats coming.

Whats coming is the question!
It sounds like a sermon might be hiding in the answer.
So lets dig around and see what we can find!

A little background information might help get us started.

When Matthew wrote his gospel around the year 85,
people in his community were starting to lose heart.
Jesus had promised those people that the kingdom of God was at hand and both he and they all thought that its coming was just around the corner.

They thought that the Romans were going to get their butts kicked out of Jerusalem and
the crooked priests kicked out of their temple.

• Good times were gonna come!
• But what they got instead was pain, and trouble, and a very long wait.

At first, the followers of Jesus thought of themselves just like other Jews worshiping God in the synagogues.
But then one by one, people started to turn on them.

• They got kicked out of their synagogues.
• And one by one, people also started to die

Some of the people who died were good people

• Some of them were their own people!
• People who should have made it into the kingdom

if anyone was gonna make it in
And so it all started to look like maybe Jesus was wrong about the time of the coming
and maybe Paul was also wrong, and maybe their other leaders were wrong too.

But unlike us in the program who are asked to take Step X and:
when were wrong promptly admit it,
well, the followers of Jesus were sometimes a little too proud
or a little too stubborn or a little too stuck in being right
about the wrong things, so people started coming up with other explanations.

And this is where Matthew writes Chapters 24 and 25 into his gospel.
Theyre written in a style thats very different from his other chapters.
Theyre whats called apocalyptic writings and we talked about that style a few weeks ago But in a nutshell theyre writings that are there to give people just one thing and that one thing is: hope.

Writings like these are especially important for people who are suffering
People who are under attack like Matthews own little community was at the time

• They were under attack by Rome
• And under attack by their own Jewish community

So these two chapters are here to tell those people that
their suffering is not in vain that God hasnt forgotten about them.
Theyre here to tell them that theres meaning and purpose to be found in it all.
Only stay alert only hold on – just a little bit longer;
God will come and hell make it all right.”

• You see, people can go on for amazingly long times without food
• And people can go for very long times without water
• But what human beings cant go without for very long is:

Hope we need meaning & purpose to survive.

Weve got to know that life even with all its suffering makes some sense and that one day here or hereafter things will be made right.

In early sobriety, right after I got my Big Book,
my first sponsor gave me a copy of Victor Frankels book about life in the Nazi concentration camps.

I should have known right then & there to pick another sponsor! But, anyway, he thought the book might help make me a little more grateful for AA and a little more grateful for some of the food I was being fed down at the Salvation Army.

• He wanted me to find meaning in my mystery meat!

Those people in the concentration camps, they suffered beyond belief.
And Frankel was a psychiatrist and he was there in the camp suffering right along with them. And what he wrote in his book was that he could see when the people who worked in the camps were about to give up and get themselves ready to die.

• He could see the signs they were getting themselves resigned for the ovens.
• They didnt give up because of their lack of food,

or their lack of water, or even from the terrible, bitter cold

• They gave up because they lost hope
• When all the meaning and purpose of their existence was drained out of them
• Once they lost those, he could see it in their eyes
• and he knew they were as good as dead.

The other day, I had to make an amends to my son.
His name is also Matthew, and he just got home from the Marine Corps.
Hes done two tours in Iraq
and he came away with a Purple Heart, and a bunch of medals
and some psychological & spiritual scars
that are gonna take him a long time to heal.

He wasnt in a concentration camp but he suffered his first real taste of hell.
And a few weeks ago, Matt got his own apartment.
But he wasnt there a week when he came home one night and he announced that he was going to go out and get himself a dog.
And, of course, Im trying to be the practical father Im looking out for the kids best interests So very lovingly I say:

• What the hell do you want a dog for?

Dont you know: you gotta walk the thing four times a day
Dont you know: itll pee all over the carpet and chew-up your rug!

And of course, he got a little mad because the sins of the father are carried on for ten generations and getting mad is one of my old sins that I inherited from my father.
But when he cooled down, he came back and he said to me later what was maybe his own little version of an apocalyptic story.

He said, Dad, you dont understand! See it was only the thought of someday having a dog that kept me going over there When none of it made any sense I thought of this Golden Retriever in my mind I thought about holding him and him licking me and thats what got me through another day.
(pause)

• Go get the dog, Matthew! Piss on the carpet!

Weve waited two thousand years for the second coming of Jesus –
And we may wait two thousand or twenty thousand years more.
Ours isnt to know when the end is coming.

Our reading says the angels dont know the time
and even Jesus doesnt know only the Father knows

So Im not gonna waste time trying to figure it all out like some of those guys do on TV –
because if I do then like most Christians,
Ill probably miss the main point of Matthews two chapters

You see, theyre not so much written to describe what the end is gonna be like or even when its all going to come – Theyre written to tell us that its safe for us to put our trust in God – and even more important – theyre written to tell us what we ought to do while were waiting.

So let me read the final part of Matthews 2 chapters cause heres the part we need to hear. Heres where Matthew gives meaning and purpose to his peoples suffering.

Matthew writes this: When the son of man does come
When he comes in all his glory
then all peoples will be assembled before him,
and hell separate them into two groups,
much as a shepherd segregates sheep from goats.
Hell place the sheep to his right and the goats to his left.

Then the king will say to those at his right,
Come you who have the blessing of my Father,
inherit now Gods kingdom
the kingdom that was prepared for you from the very
foundation of the world.

For as you remember,
I was hungry and you gave me something to eat;
I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink;
I was a foreigner and you showed me hospitality.
I was naked and you clothed me;
I was sick and you visited me;
I was in prison and you came to see me.

Then theyll say to him,
Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you,
or thirsty and give you a drink?
When did we notice that you were a foreigner and extend
hospitality to you?
Or naked and clothe you? Or in prison and come visit you?

And the king will respond to them:
I swear to you, whatever you did for the least of these, my children, you did it for me.

Its Advent – a time to get ready.
A time to sort out what we need to bring forward into a new life
and what we need to leave behind in the old.

And if youre new and in treatment here I couldnt think of a better to time to be here
or a better time to be getting yourself ready.

As alcoholics and addicts what we have to prepare for isnt the end of the world
weve already seen Armageddon and some of us may have tried to cause it!

But God is good, and he can be trusted, and weve been given a reprieve –

What we have to prepare for is the insanity of our illness return
The insanity of once again picking up a drink or a drug.
And whether we do that or not the Book says – will all depend upon the state of our
own spiritual condition.

And heres where, if Jesus were to come back today, I think hed be pretty happy with what he sees us trying to do in recovery. Our first reading said:

Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking & drugging as intensive work with other alcoholics and addicts.
It works when other activities fail.

So this is our twelfth suggestion:
Carry this message to the others who still suffer!
You can help when no one else can.
You can secure their confidence when other fail.
Remember they are very ill.

• Your life (the Book says) will take on new meaning
• (and youll now have a whole new purpose for living.)

See, it aint all about us anymore
To watch people recover, to see them help others,
To watch loneliness vanish,
To see a fellowship grow up about you,
To have a host of friends
This is an experience you must not miss.
The Big Book and the Good Book sound a lot alike in how to spend our time waiting for Jesus return:

• Frequent contact with the sick, with the lost and with the least.

• Frequent contact with the ones in prison and the ones in detox –

• The ones right on the edge of giving up

Finding them – bringing them a little bit of Gods kingdom
Theyre now the bright spot of our lives.

Before Dr. Bob died, he pulled Bill Wilson aside and he said,
For Gods sake, Bill, dont louse this thing up.
Keep it simple. Remember: love and service are our code.

So our program teaches us to do just that while we wait:
Clean house serve God carry the message to those who still suffer.
Bring hope to the hopeless. Love to the least.
Thats what Jesus did.
Thats what Dr. Bob and Bill did.
Thats what were now being called to do.
And for that, we need to get ready. Amen.
Copyright 2007 Bill Wigmore. Used by permission.