“Hope in the Meantime”
November 30, 2025
Matthew 24:36-44
St. Paul AME Church, Manchester, KY
David Shirey
It’s appropriate to say Happy New Year this morning. I’ll tell you why. January 1 is New Year’s Day on the secular calendar, but Christians have a calendar, too. It has its own timeline corresponding to Jesus’ birth, life and ministry, crucifixion and resurrection, the coming of the Holy Spirit, the birth of the church and the church’s ministry across the ages. The Christian Year begins today with the season of Advent - a word that means coming - as in a Savior is coming – coming to a manger in Bethlehem, but also coming again in glory in the fulness of time. These four weeks of Advent are followed by Christmas, then in January the season of Epiphany (an Epiphany is an Aha! moment as in Aha! The babe born in the manger is in fact the Son of God), then in February and March the forty days of Lent when Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem, then Easter Sunday in April and the six weeks of Eastertide, then the Day of Pentecost in May - the coming of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Church followed by the six months long season of Pentecost or Ordinary Time that continues until a new year begins with Advent as we look toward Jesus’ second coming and remember his first coming. This is the First Sunday of Advent, so Happy New Year everybody.
Now here’s the thing. We know when to celebrate Jesus’ first coming. December 25th is on our calendars. But as for his second coming, nobody knows. Jesus himself said so in this morning’s Scripture: “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Matthew 24:36). But that hasn’t stopped people across the ages from trying to figure out a date and time using various and sundry verses as if they could figure out what Jesus himself said couldn’t be figured out. A guy named William Miller famously predicted the end of the world would take place on October 22, 1844. But it didn’t end. And a guy named Hal Lindsey made a fortune publishing a book called The Late Great Planet Earth in 1970 that predicted the end of the world would take place in the 1980s. It didn’t. Then Y2K came along and stoked the fires of end-times prophesiers – but at the stroke of midnight our computers…and our world…kept on ticking. Back in 2011, a televangelist named Harold Camping announced the end of the world would take place on October 21 of that year. He paid for billboards to warn people. I remember one in downtown Phoenix where we were living at the time. I don’t remember the exact wording. All I remember was the date October 21, 2011 next to which were the words GUARANTEED BY THE BIBLE. I hope his followers got their money back.
I don’t pay attention to people predicting the date of Jesus’ Second Coming, but I do pay attention to the promise that he will come again to fulfill all God’s promises and purposes. And here’s my question: If we don’t know when it will be, what do we do in the meantime? Hear me closely—the mean time. We’re living in a mean time. Jennie and I dropped our subscription to the newspaper years ago. It was chock full of bad news, anyway. Still is. I need to watch my diet of the news, don’t you? It’ll get to you. Hear me when I say we live in the mean time. Amen? Truth be told, Matthew and the church he wrote to lived in a mean time. Roman rule was brutal. There were famines, wars, and earthquakes. Christians were being tossed to the lions. Matthew quoted Jesus comparing his day with the days of Noah “in the days before the flood” (Matthew 24:38). The greek word translated flood is kataklusmou – cataclysm. Matthew was writing to people living in “cataclysm.” That’s us, too. The first readers of Mathew’s gospel and we present-day readers of it live in the mean time between Jesus’ first coming and his coming again.
So what do we do? We can despair. Some in Matthew’s time did. Matthew wrote his gospel about forty years after Jesus’ earthly ministry. Jesus had come forty years earlier and promised his return. So, they waited. Patiently and expectantly at first, I’m sure. But can anybody wait on tiptoes for forty years? Does there not come a time when you say, “Maybe he’s not comin’, at least in my lifetime, to deliver me from the mean time.” And now it’s been 2,000 years since a promise was made that he’d be coming back and he still hasn’t. So, despair is an option. And I see and hear a lot of it. I see and hear it in the number of voices marked by sour cynicism and skepticism. Somebody said, “I’ve seen the future. It’s just like the present, only longer.” I see despair in people whose countenances seem to be formed into a permanent frown, whose brows are furrowed, who if they had one of those cartoon bubbles penciled in above their heads revealing their thoughts it would simply read “Sigh.” No wonder Dante in his epic poem The Divine Comedy has posted above the door to Hell the words “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.” One way to live in the mean time is to lose hope that he’s coming at all and to sink into debilitating despair. “Woe is me” and “Woe are we.”
Or we can avoid despair in the mean time by just keeping ourselves busy and entertained. Give up on any grand hopes or dreams of a Savior’s coming and just do your work and pay your bills and treat yourself to a nice dinner and watch a movie every once in a while on Netflix. Here’s a fact: the entertainment industry always thrives in down economies. Why? It’s an escape. Sports, video games, movies, 999 television channels, surfing the web. Keeping busy and entertained are great pass times and great distractions. And they beat despair in the mean time.
Of course, we can also dull the pain and anxiety. Anesthetize ourselves. Numb ourselves with drugs, alcohol, too much food – whatever insulates us from the mean time.
Let’s see: We can despair. We can keep busy and entertained. We can self-medicate with our own unhealthy prescriptions of whatever numbs us. Or we can steadfastly, insistently, courageously hope that the God who came in Jesus to Bethlehem will in fact come again in glory. When he’ll come, we don’t know. But that he will come, people of faith are certain. Somebody said, “I don’t know what the future holds, but I know who holds the future!” Somebody sang, Standing on the promises that cannot fail! When the howling storms of doubt and fear assail, by the living Word of God I shall prevail, standing on the promises of God. We can steadfastly hope because God has always come in saving power in the mean time:
A 40 day flood but then a rainbow!
40 years in exile in Babylon but then a ticket home!
Two days in a tomb, but on the third day a resurrection!
Old Jeremiah, that beat-up prophet who had every reason to despair defiantly refused to give in or give up because he heard from the bottom of that stinky cistern where he was imprisoned, “I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. (Jeremiah 29:11). We have reason to hope in the mean time!
Matthew says, When God comes in saving power, people will be surprised by hope: “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man” (24:37-39). Got that? They’re just living life in the mean time when Wham—they didn't know what hit them. Surprise! Jesus says hope happens like that. Matthew says, His second coming will be “like a thief” (24:43). A thief doesn’t make an appointment with the homeowner: “Hi, I’ll be there shortly after 2 a.m next Thursday. Is the back window all right?” No, he comes as a surprise. Jesus says hope is like that. It’ll break in on you unawares and instead of taking everything, Hope will give you everything-- everything you need to live in the mean time. Surprise! A young woman named Mary is minding her own business in backwater Galilee unimportant, unknown, but then she hears “Hail, O favored one. The Lord is with you.” Surprise! Be hopeful Mary. A cartoon showed a couple shepherds leaning against their staffs, bored, watching their flocks by night. A brilliant star is beaming in the night sky overhead but they don't see it. And the one says to other, “Nothing exciting ever happens on this job.” Surprise!
“And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. And the angel said to them, “Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:9-11).
That’s how hope works— It doesn’t make an appointment. You can’t plan on it. You don’t know the day or the hour when God will break in and give you hope – but God will surprise us with hope in the mean time.
Our assignment this Advent as we remember Jesus’ coming the first time and look forward to his coming again is to be bearers of hope in the mean time. I invite you to ponder how to bring hope to somebody who needs it. Surprise someone who is despairing, ailing, sighing, mourning. I remember the Rev. Dr. William Barber a few years ago remembering his childhood and how his grandmother would prepare to go out during the week to do “some calling.” She’d put on an apron that had in the front pocket across her waist a Bible, some lotion, a needle and thread, some homemade goodies, and tea bags. She’d go call on people in the neighborhood. With the Bible, she’d read. With the lotion, she’d gently rub it onto arms or legs or backs or faces. With the needle and thread she’d mend what had been torn. And with the goodies and tea bags she’d serve up a mid-day treat. Dr. Barber said, “Whenever I asked my Grandma where she was going with her apron on, she’d say, “Grandma’s goin’ out to hope people. The good Lawd has hoped Grandma, so Grandma’s goin’ out to hope others.”
We’re preparing over the next four weeks for when Jesus first came. We have no idea when he’s coming again. But don’t you dare despair. And don’t you numb yourself with mindless entertainment or too much numbing food and drink. Y’all go and hope somebody.
Come, Lord Jesus, Come. Surprise us with hope in the mean time. Amen and Amen.
