Daily Lectionary Readings and Devotional for Thursday, November 23, 2006

You have your choice of readings for today. You can read the regular selections or the ones for Thanksgiving. My devotion will focus on the former.

Psalm 105:1-22 - AM

Psalm 105:23-45 - PM

Mal. 2:1-16

James 4:13-5:6

Luke 17:20-37

For those of you who prefer, here are the selections for Thanksgiving Day

Morning: Psalm 147, Deuteronomy 26:1-11, John 6:26-35
Evening: Psalm 145; Joel 2:21-27; 1 Thessalonians 5:12-24

Featured Scripture: Luke 17:22-27

And Jesus said to the disciples, “The days are coming when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. And they will say to you, ‘Look, there!’ or ‘Look, here!’ Do not go out or follow them. For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day. But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. (ESV)

Today’s devotion is (drumroll please) . . . a sermon! I knew you would be thrilled. Anyway, this is an older message of mine based upon Matthew 24 (particularly verses 36-38), which echoes the verses of Luke’s gospel above

The Days of Noah

“For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man,” writes Matthew.

The season of Advent is upon us, this being the first Sunday.
Advent, like Lent,
is a time or preparation,
a time of getting ready,
And I don’t mean preparing for Christmas celebrations or family get togethers.
And I don’t mean getting ready by buying all your presents in the next few days before all the good stuff is gone and the parking lots at the malls or shopping centers get too full.

Advent is about preparing for and getting ready to meet Christ,
and so it is no surprise that our scripture lessons speak of the need to get ready,
to stay awake,
to throw aside the evils we hold onto and take upon ourselves Christ.

What might be a little surprising, though, is that our gospel lesson doesn’t speak about Jesus coming as a baby so many hundreds of years ago.
Rather, it speaks of Jesus second advent, or second coming.

Now I don’t want us to get too caught up in the particulars of Jesus’ return.
I won’t outline for you a time-line of prophetic events,
nor will I give you ten easy ways to determine the day Jesus will return.
I’m not even going to talk about the Left Behind series of books that have become best sellers.
Besides, it seems to me that these verses from Matthew go a long way to dispute the kind of thinking seen in these things anyway.

In fact, in this passage Jesus doesn’t tell us when he is going to come back at all,
and instead he tells us how we should be living when he does return.
And it is here that Jesus tells us that his coming among us,
whether for the first time or the second time, or any time,
will be as it was in the days of Noah.

Matthew writes:
For as the days of Noah were,
so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage,
until the day Noah entered the ark,
and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man.

Now, notice something about these verses:
in them Jesus does not accuse the people of Noah’s day of doing anything wrong.
He does not go into detail and draw up a long list of their crimes and misdemeanors,
and neither does he condemn the people in the days of Noah for their great sins.

All Jesus says is:
They were eating and drinking and getting married.
Now there is nothing wrong with that.
Everyone needs food and water,
and most everyone needs companionship.
These are not sinful activities.

The problem, we find out,
is not what the people were doing.
No, the problem was what they failed to do.
On the one hand they were unprepared for what was about to happen to them.
They did not expect that a flood would come,
and so they did nothing to get ready for that watery day of judgment.

I am reminded of Monty Python’s sketch, “The Spanish Inquisition.”
In it a man is being questioned in such a surprising way that he finds himself saying,
“Look, Mr Wentworth just told me to come in here and say that there was trouble at the mill,
that’s all -
I didn’t expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.”
And then, as if on cue,
inquisitors burst into the room and one of them says,
“NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Our chief weapon is surprise.
surprise and fear.
fear and surprise..
Our two weapons are fear and surprise.
and ruthless efficiency..
Our three weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency.
and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope..
Our four.
no.
Amongst our weapons..
Amongst our weaponry are such elements as fear, surprise