Nor the Son

[A reflection on the Gospel appointed for the Mass of the First Sunday in Advent, November 30, 2025. All the readings and other resources may be found here: Episcopal-I Advent]

Well, our parish's experiment with The Advent Project has come to a close. For years, we observed a seven-week Advent season, ostensibly to break free of the commercial circus of the secular Yuletide season and help foster a calm with each Sunday based on the traditional antiphons for the Canticle of Mary at Vespers that are said from December 16 (English use) or December 17 (Roman use). We encountered several problems, mainly that with a heavy consecrated religious presence at the parish the fact that the Mass cycle and the Office cycle got disrupted was one factor, but truly to escape the commercial circus we would have to start Advent after Labour Day.

That would be a bit much.

Who would have predicted that the problem would have expanded to engulf the expansion itself? Or who would have predicted that the project would have left a significant number of people with an unsatisfactory experience? We certainly did not. We tried our level best, but human ability to predict is notoriously wobbly at best and downright deceptive and delusional at worst, just like the predictions we have been hearing lately about the date of the return of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

This year we have, by my count, encountered one such "date" with a lot of coverage and a second "date" that was marked by significantly fewer people. There may have been more. These all come from the Dispensationalist heresy (yes, HERESY), which puts the actions of the Holy Spirit in nice, convenient boxes and then in many forms indicates a rapture or sudden removal of all redeemed believers just prior to a horrible seven-year period (or three and a half, depending on your flavour of Dispensationalism) period of judgement, terror, and suffering called the Great Tribulation. The predictions of the coming of Jesus to take the favoured few away from all this have been part of our history for a long time.

Much of this hysteria hinges on the interpretation of today's Gospel reading, where Our Lord states that at the coming of the Son of Man some will be taken and some will be left. A Dispensationalist Rapture neatly co-opts this passage by ignoring a key factor in storytelling and literature...if you want the meaning of a passage, look at its context. In the context of some being taken and some being left, Our Lord compares it to the days of Noah, where many were swept away, and some were "taken". Many assume "taken" means taken out of the mess, but Classical languages of the day, particularly the Greek of the New Testament, give "taken" the sense of "destroyed". The ones "left" are the ones spared at the coming of the Son of Man. The ones "taken" are the ones destroyed, and that is at the consummation of the age, not the beginning of the Great Tribulation.

Here is where the predictors really fall into heresy. "...About that day and hour, no one knows, neither the Angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." The time is not even known to all the persons of the Most Holy, Glorious, and Undivided Trinity. What hubris it is for us to presume that we know or that we receive a revelation not even afforded to the entire Godhead?

Why even tell us then? Why not keep us in ignorance until that day? The truth of the matter is that God had let us go our own way without much in the way of warnings, but we all know how that turned out...we develop a sense of complacency, thinking we'll get around to everything needful later, that we have time. Our Lord says here that maybe we do have time, but maybe we don't, because even HE is not sure when the Father opens the schedule to the Son and the Spirit. The message here is that the Son and the Spirit may not know but are always ready, and God the Son in the person of Jesus Christ tells us likewise always to be ready, because it may happen in moments, or in days, weeks, or months, or years, or because we may need to help our succeeding generations to ready themselves for the coming of the Son of Man. This readiness also is not selling all our property and standing in white robes on a series of hilltops (that's been done, and they felt really silly after the imagined time had come and gone), but by bringiing near the Kingdom of God, showing mercy to the poor, the captive, the widow, the orphan, and the outcast, by perfecting ourselves in the love of God that has become possible with the gift of Our Lord in his Passion, Death, and Resurrection.

Lord, have mercy upon us, we are so unready. So many lack food, water, clothing, and shelter. Many are unjustly imprisoned and detained, downtrodden in fear and terror, and deliberately deprived of the resources and opportunities to improve their lives. We waste and destroy the resources given into our care and stewardship, confusing "dominion" with exploitation. Love for our neighbour is poor at best. We do not know when Our Lord returns, and when He does, will he find faith on the earth? Who is taken versus who is left is not for us to wonder, even as when it happens is not for us to know. What is required of us is to be ready by being true to the Kingdom of God.

Remember, love God, and because you love God, love your neighbour just as fervently. Only this way can we be ready.