Sermon on Matthew 24:36-44

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

The Gospel reading for the first Sunday in Advent is always a bit jarring. We’ve just celebrated Thanksgiving, we decorated our sanctuary, our neighborhoods are more than beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and the stores are overflowing with red and green.

And then, here comes Jesus, talking about the end of the world. Read the room, Jesus! We just want to celebrate your birth already! We don’t want to think about all that scary and depressing stuff!

But the beginning of our church year is Advent. It’s more than just a preparation time for Christmas. It’s about Jesus’ second coming, not just baby Jesus in the manger. It’s about the future, not just the past.

So, on this first Sunday of Advent, we read that as Jesus was nearing his death, he warned his disciples to watch for his second coming and to remain faithful.

Since they didn’t know when it would happen, it was important to alwayslive in the way Jesus taught them.

Paul wrote to Jesus followers in Rome in our second reading with some ideas for what that should look like. He gave us a nice little vice list to tell us what we shouldn’t do. Then, he said to “put on” Jesus and to “make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”

His advice, at least to a certain extent, is good. People don’t tend to make the best decisions when they’re drunk, it’s hard to stay in relationship with people who pick fights all the time, etc.

But I’m troubled by the line about making no provision for the flesh. This is a theme throughout Paul’s work and the epistles in general.

Paul draws on the idea in Greek philosophy that there’s a binary between the physical and the spiritual, between the flesh and the spirit. And the flesh is bad, and the spirit is good.

Greek thought has so influenced Western societies that it can seem normal and natural to think of the physical as bad and the spiritual or mental as good.

Christian thinkers built on Paul’s framework, cementing that binary into Christian philosophy throughout the centuries. The Enlightenment valued reason, order, and hierarchy—esteeming the mind over matter. Puritanism, which had a huge influence on American culture in particular regardless of one’s faith tradition, leaned heavily into not “gratifying the flesh,” instead valuing restraint, sobriety, and hard work.

None of these are bad things necessarily, but anything taken to an extreme can be a problem.

When we fully accept this binary, we try to divorce ourselves from our bodies and don’t worry about taking care of the earth.

We try to subdue our bodies, ignoring our needs and treating ourselves like machines.

If what’s physical doesn’t matter—or is inherently bad—then we miss out on the incredible beauty of this universe that God declared good.

A more troubling implication is that when we’re taught to ignore our bodies and not trust ourselves, our intuition, or our experience, we’re easier to manipulate and make obedient to authority figures. We humans don’t have a good track record for having others’ best interests in mind when we have unchecked power.

I’m not saying you should act on every impulse your body has, but our bodies have wisdom to share with us.

By listening to my body, I can realize that I’m acting aggressively because I’m hungry.

My body can let me know I have too much going on in my mind when I become short of breath and my pulse races.

My body can tell me when I’m feeling uncomfortable around a certain person or situation, and I can seek help and establish boundaries that can protect me.

Paul’s vice list perhaps should have included overworking, because I don’t make good decisions when I don’t sleep enough, and I don’t appreciate the good things God has provided for me when I don’t let my body rest.

Rest is an act of faith, because it requires admitting that we can’t do it all and must depend on God.And rest allows us to slow down enough to give thanks to God for what is beautiful in this world.

What is physical in this world is important to God, not just the spiritual.

Our theme for Advent this year is “Dreams and Visions,” because today we start a year of focusing on the Gospel of Matthew in the lectionary, and Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth involves a lot of dreams—Joseph’s dreams, the wise ones’ dreams.

And Advent is about God’s dreams for this world—in the first century with the birth of Jesus, the visions God gave to the prophets of old, and what God has envisioned for our world into the future.

We read today of the vision of God’s peace that Isaiah proclaimed. It’s a vision of a gathering of God’s people on the highest mountain, where everyone can see it, and people are drawn to it from all around the world.

And of course this passage includes the beautiful and vivid image of beating swords into ploughshares—repurposing weapons of war into tools for cultivating the land and feeding people.

Instead of studying how to wage war, people will stream to the mountain to learn how to walk in God’s paths. We won’t need our weapons or strategies for warfare—we’ll instead learn ways of peace and caring for the earth.

God’s vision for peace is physical—involving images of a mountain being climbed and fields being ploughed. We’ll read more next week about what the physicality of God’s peace looks like with predators lying peacefully next to prey.

God dreams of peace for this world—in this world. The full realization of the Beloved Community is material, not just spiritual. And it is very good.

For now, our good world still contains a lot of violence and war. God’s peace will one day be realized, but for now, there is much to be done, inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Through the Holy Spirit, God’s dream of peace can become our dream too.

Jesus said no one knows the day or the hour of his return, but Paul also said in Romans that “you know what time it is.”

You know what time it is: it’s time to dream of what peace actually looks like.

It’s time to care for our bodies, letting them rest enough to be able to make room for holy imagination.

It’s time to learn how to walk in the ways of Jesus.

It’s time to live peaceably in our neighborhoods and communities.

It’s time to care for our neighbors’ bodies so that they can live in peace too.

It’s time to care for our planet, ploughing fields instead of bombing them.

It’s time to beat our swords into ploughshares.

It’s time for God’s shalom. Let’s turn to the Hebrew for an antidote to the Greek flesh vs. spirit binary.

At last Sunday’s Interfaith Thanksgiving service, Rabbi Mati from Temple Beth Tikvah reminded us that “shalom,” which is translated into English as “peace,” has a much deeper meaning than just the absence of violence. It means something more like “wholeness.” It’s a peace that’s about well-being and the world being restored to completeness. It’s physical and spiritual.

That’s God’s dream for this world.

It was God’s dream at the Beginning, when God made this world good and walked aroundthe Garden of Eden with us.

It was God’s dream when God became human and taught us how to love each other as ourselves.

And it is God’s dream for the future, when God’s shalom will be complete.

We don’t know the day or the hour, but we know how to spend the time that we have.

Beloved children of God, be the peace that God dreams of.