What is the problem about Advent? You hear of the Son of Man coming. Sometimes you hear of His coming as a thief in the night: sometimes you hear of His returning as a bridegroom from the wedding. In the passage from which my text is taken both these forms of speech are combined. What do they signify; are they merely figures which point to the necessity of preparation for death?
I. The first coming of Christ in great humility imports a continual lordship of His over the being and faculties of man. His purpose, the Apostles teach us, was not accomplished till He rose from the dead, and ascended on high, till He had claimed the glory which He had had with His Father before the worlds were. That was the vindication of His title to be Lord. That was the beginning of a society which could be nothing but universal, because it stood in the Name of the Son of God and Son of Man. That was necessary that the promise might be thoroughly accomplished, "The Lord God shall dwell among you, and He shall be your Father, and ye shall be His children." By this language we are able to understand that other language which refers to the coming, or to the appearing and unveiling of the Son of Man after His Ascension. We may very well admit that when our Lord says, "In such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh," He gives us all and more than all the warning respecting the hour of death which preachers have ever drawn out of His words. Assuredly it is no contradiction of His other teaching to say that, though on earth we may fancy ourselves under a law of selfishness, though here we may act as if we had no ties and relationships to those who surround us, when we close our eyes on the things with which they have been familiar, we pass into a region where we shall know assuredly that the Son of Man is reigning, where it will be impossible any longer to think that we are out of His Presence, or to escape from that Divine law of love which binds man to man, which binds earth and heaven together. The lie upon which we have acted must then be laid bare, the whole scheme of our existence must be exposed and broken in pieces; we must confess Him who gave Himself for men to be the Lord of all.
II. If this be the idea of Christ's coming, whether to the world or to individuals, which the New Testament sets before us, what is to make us ready for his coming? What is to save us from that sleep into which our Lord warns us that we may fall? What is to arouse us if it has overtaken us? Surely we must be reminded of His Presence with us. The natural notion that what is invisible is unreal; that He does not govern us because our eyes do not see Him; that He does not govern the world because the world fancies that it governs itself, this must be set at nought. We must have an assurance that the senses are as little judges of what is true in morals as they are in physics; that self, which appears to be the centre round which everything here revolves; is no more really the centre than our earth is the centre round which the heavenly bodies revolve. What shall give us this assurance? In the Eucharist we declare that our hope is in a Lamb of God which has taken away the sin of the world by the sacrifice of Himself: therefore, we ask that we may be ready when the Son of Man comes to claim us as sacrifices to God; and that we may not be found choosing another master for ourselves, and shutting ourselves up in a hell of selfishness and despair. In the Eucharist we give thanks for a death not for ourselves only, but for the whole world, therefore in it we look forward to a redemption, which shall be not for ourselves only, but for the world, when Christ shall appear without sin, unto salvation.
F. D. Maurice, Sermons,vol. i., p. 1.
References: Luke 12:40. R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons,2nd series, p. 110. Luke 12:41-48. A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve,p. 340. Luke 12:42. Parker, Christian Commonwealth,vol. viii., p. 3.Luke 12:43. H. M. Gunn, Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 245.Luke 12:47; Luke 12:48. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iii., p. 18. Luke 12:48. H. M. Butler, Harrow Sermons,p. 332; Ibid., Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxv., p. 312; J. M. Neale, Sermons for Children,p. 214; H. Scott Holland, Church of England Pulpit,vol. v., p. 152.