Pastor Taylor Shippy - Matthew 24:36-44

Today marks the beginning of the Advent season but also the start of a new Christian Year. And historically but also traditionally, the church calendar doesn’t begin with the beginning but actually with the end! The anticipation and expectation of the consummation and culmination of all things. A day and hour that no one knows (Matt 24:36). A day and hour that likely elicits more anxiety than eager enthusiasm (if not unhealthy obsession). The internal clocks, the circadian rhythms of the Church are reset and renewed not by revisiting a tranquil evening gathered around a manger - though that eventually comes - but by initially and briefly glimpsing the apocalypse. But maybe our Christian ancestors, who invented the seasons of the Christian Year, who drew up the season of Advent and imbued it with rich meaning and symbolism, recognized that there are lessons that only the apocalypse can teach us…