Sermon based on Matthew 24:36-44
There’s a strange kind of whiplash built into the Christian calendar year.
We turn the calendar toward Advent—wreaths, candles, kids getting excited, Christmas music humming in grocery store aisles—and the church hands us… the end of the world. Not shepherds. Not Mary and Joseph. Not even John the Baptist shouting from the Jordan. Instead, Jesus speaks of floods, people disappearing from fields, and a thief breaking into a house at 3 a.m.
Merry Christmas.
It’s tempting to soften it. To reach for one of the “theme” words we often assign to the Advent candles—hope, peace, joy, love—and let that be our guide. But the lectionary doesn’t start there. Advent begins at the edge of the unknown. Advent opens not with a Hallmark glow, but with Jesus saying, “Stay awake.”
And that’s actually the point.
Because whether we feel it or not, Advent has always asked us to stand at the doorway between what God has already done and what God has not yet finished. It’s the same threshold Matthew’s community was standing on when this Gospel was written. They were people trying to make sense of a world where Jesus had risen, yes—but Rome still ruled, temples still fell, injustice still took its toll. They believed in a Messiah who had come… and yet they were aching for the Messiah who had promised to return.
And into that tension Jesus speaks:
“But nobody knows when that day or hour will come, not the heavenly angels and not the Son. Only the Father knows.”
It’s almost funny how disappointed we are by that answer. We want details. Timetables. Signs. Data projections. Maybe a calendar invite from God. But Jesus doesn’t indulge any of that. He gives them, and us, something different. Something harder. Something better.
He gives us wakefulness.
1. The Hardest Word in Advent: “You don’t know.”
Let’s be honest: “You don’t know” is not a phrase any of us like to hear. We’re living in a world of long-range forecasting, risk assessments, predictive analytics, and the constant hum of information. We carry smart phones that can tell us when Amazon left a package on the porch.
And yet Jesus insists:
“You will not know the timing. You’re not meant to.”
It’s almost as if Jesus is trying to break the habit of spiritual forecasting before it even begins. If anyone had the right to speculate about the timeline of the second coming, it would have been him. And Jesus still shrugs and says: “Only the Father knows.”
So if Jesus can live with that mystery… maybe we can too.
Because faith isn’t about knowing when God will act.
Faith is what keeps us awake so we can recognize God when God does act.
That’s where Jesus takes his disciples next—into the stories.
2. Noah, Wadis, and the Story Everybody Thinks They Understand
Jesus reaches back to Noah for his illustration. And almost all of us think we know Noah’s story. Animals two by two, a giant boat, and a rainbow at the end. Children’s Bibles have turned it into a whimsical adventure starring a surprisingly patient giraffe.
But Jesus focuses not on the ark… but on the people around it.
People who were just living their lives—eating, drinking, planning weddings, stacking laundry in baskets, checking emails, scheduling dentist appointments. In other words, normal stuff. Everyday life.
And then, in a moment, everything changed.
Jesus’ point isn’t that these people were especially wicked on the day the flood hit. His point is that they didn’t see it coming. The disaster arrived suddenly. They “knew nothing,” Matthew says, until water was at their ankles.
I came across the story of an out-of-town family picnicking in a dry wadi in Tunisia—A wadi is a valley that slices through dry land. It’s dry and empty most of the year, like many of the washes we have here in Arizona. But come a sudden rain… in no time, it becomes a lethal, raging river. Out of nowhere, the water tears through the dry channel, sweeping away anything in its path. The family who picnicked in the wadi were caught in it after a strong rain storm, and they were washed away.
That family didn’t know what a wadi could do.
But the locals knew.
The locals watched the sky.
The locals never picnicked there.
Jesus looks at the church and says: “You are the locals in the world of God’s purpose. You know what God is doing in the world. So watch. Stay awake.”
It’s not fearmongering. It’s wisdom. It’s a way of saying:
“You know God’s story. You know hope is coming. Don’t fall asleep to what matters.”
3. And Now About That “Left Behind” Stuff…
If you grew up anywhere near the American religious landscape in the last fifty years, you probably bumped into rapture theology—the idea that believers get whisked into the air while everyone else is left on earth to face destruction.
I want to say this gently: I don’t believe that is what Matthew is describing.
In fact, Matthew flips the whole idea on its head. In Noah’s story, the ones “taken away” were swept away in judgment. The ones “left behind” were the faithful in the ark.
Matthew says the coming of the Son of Humanity will be like that.
Two people in a field. One taken away—into judgment.
One left behind—safe.
Two women grinding grain. One taken—judgment.
One left—faithful.
This is Jesus reminding a community that’s losing hope that God is still with them. Matthew isn’t painting a timeline for the end of the world. He’s painting a picture of what it means to be faithful in the present.
And it’s here, at this moment, that Matthew does something powerful.
He shifts the question.
Instead of asking, “What will happen when Jesus returns?”
Matthew asks, “What kind of people should we be while we wait?”
4. The Already and the Not Yet
For Matthew, the second coming isn’t a distant threat. It’s part of the fabric of Christian life right now. The early church lived in a strange in-between time—a time some scholars call “already/not yet.”
Already, Christ had come. Already, the world had changed. Already, resurrection had broken open the grave.
But not yet had the reign of God fully taken root.
Not yet had the world become what God intends it to be.
Not yet had justice rolled down like waters.
And Matthew seems determined to tell his community:
“You are living in the turning of the ages. The End has already started. So how you live right now matters.”
In other words:
Advent isn’t just the season we wait for Christmas.
Advent is the season that reminds us how to live the rest of the year.
5. Wakefulness: Not Panic, Not Prediction—Presence
So what does Jesus tell us to do with the not-knowing?
He gives us the image of a thief in the night. A strange metaphor, but an effective one. No thief calls ahead and schedules an appointment. They arrive when you’re not expecting them.
Jesus says: “if the head of the house knew at what time the thief would come, he would keep alert and wouldn’t allow the thief to break into his house.”
Again—the point isn’t fear.
The point is attentiveness.
Presence.
Wakefulness.
It’s the posture of someone whose heart is anchored in what matters most.
When I think of wakefulness, I think of people who have trained themselves to see what God is doing right under their noses. People like the two women in Matthew 28—the Marys—who showed up at the tomb at dawn. They didn’t know what they’d find. They didn’t know the timing. They simply knew that God keeps promises. They showed up. They watched. And because they were awake, they became the first witnesses of the Resurrection.
Wakefulness in Scripture is almost always this:
Being where God is likely to show up.
Standing in the places God calls us to.
Keeping our attention tuned to healing, mercy, justice, and love.
Wakefulness doesn’t mean scanning the sky for earthquakes or eclipses. It means scanning our neighborhoods for places God is already stirring life.
6. Living Awake in a Sleepy World
If Matthew were writing today, I’m convinced he would have no shortage of examples of a sleepy world.
A world where some people are lulled by comfort.
A world where others are exhausted by survival.
A world where the noise is constant, and the urgent crowds out the important.
A world where scrolling on our phones can deaden us.
A world where fear can shut us down.
A world where distraction is so easy it becomes a way of life.
And right inside this sleepy world—Jesus whispers: “Stay awake.”
Not in an anxious way.
Not in a paranoid, end-times-calculating way.
But in a grounded, intentional, spiritually alert way.
Stay awake to injustice.
Stay awake to suffering.
Stay awake to the lonely.
Stay awake to the good.
Stay awake to beauty.
Stay awake to the quiet ways God is growing hope in the world.
Stay awake to your own heart.
Because the moment we fall asleep to our own souls… we risk missing what God is doing in us.
7. The Responsibility of Being “Left Behind”
For Matthew, being “left behind” isn’t punishment.
It’s responsibility.
The faithful who remain are given more to do—not less.
The parables that follow this reading make that crystal clear:
• The faithful servant who stays compassionate and consistent is given more responsibility.
• The bridesmaids who are prepared get to enter the party.
• The servants who steward their talents faithfully are entrusted with more.
• And the righteous who feed, clothe, welcome, care, and visit—the ones who love the most vulnerable—are invited to inherit the kingdom and continue the work.
In other words:
God’s reign isn’t something we wait around for.
It’s something we step into.
It’s something we participate in.
It’s something we practice, right in the middle of our ordinary days.
Being awake looks like this:
Paying attention to the hungry child.
Paying attention to the grieving neighbor.
Paying attention to the stressed-out teacher.
Paying attention to the planet we’ve been entrusted with.
Being awake means seeing where the world is still “not yet” what God wants it to be, and doing something about it.
8. Advent as a Countercultural Claim
And this is why Advent matters.
Because Advent refuses to let Christmas be just a cozy season.
Advent pulls us back into the larger story.
It reminds us that the birth of Jesus is not the beginning of something sentimental. The birth of Jesus is the inbreaking of the End—the capital-E End—into the middle of history.
Advent says:
The End has already begun because Christ has already come.
And the world is still being remade.
It’s not always spectacular. Sometimes it looks like slow, faithful work in quiet places. Sometimes it looks like a church stepping into a need. Sometimes it looks like a person choosing compassion when revenge would be easier. Sometimes it looks like doing the right thing even when no one sees.
Advent asks us to look for those places.
To cultivate those places.
To join those places.
To believe that God is still pulling this world toward a future we cannot see, but deeply hope for.
9. Becoming Local Experts in God’s Future
Remember the wadi?
The locals knew better than to picnic there.
In the same way, we—Christ’s people—are meant to be the locals in the terrain of God’s future. We know the story. We know the trajectory. We know that hope is not naïve. We know that resurrection is real. We know that light is stronger than darkness. We know that God’s love is outlasting everything that tries to bury it.
So we watch.
We stay awake.
We keep our eyes on the horizon.
We keep our hearts attuned to grace.
We keep our hands ready for service.
We keep our lives pointed toward the One who promised to return.
We stay awake because we know something the world doesn’t always see:
God’s future is already breaking into the present.
10. A Final Word for a Busy Season
Let’s be fair: between now and Christmas, life is going to get loud. Baking and shopping and travel and school programs and stress and joy and all the little details that come with this season.
And right in the middle of it, Jesus offers a simple invitation:
“You—yes, you—be ready.”
“You stay awake.”
“You remember what matters.”
He doesn’t say it harshly.
He says it like someone who knows we’re prone to drift.
He says it like someone who loves us.
Like someone who wants our lives anchored in something solid.
Like someone who refuses to let us sleepwalk through our days.
Advent is not the warm-up to Christmas.
Advent is the wake-up call to Christian hope.
So what if, this year, we approached Advent like locals?
What if we stayed awake to the signs of God’s presence?
What if we watched for Christ in the places he always shows up—the hungry, the lonely, the forgotten, the overlooked?
What if we lived like people who know the end of the story?
Because that’s who we are.
We are the people who know that darkness doesn’t get the last word.
We are the people who know that love outlasts death.
We are the people who know that God is not done with this world.
Not by a long shot.
So stay awake.
Stay alert.
Stay present.
Stay grounded in the hope that holds you.
And maybe—just maybe—the world will see something in you that points toward the dawn.
What if the first step toward that awakening begins today? Amen.
Written by: Rev. Dave Wasson
Dove Sermons 
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