As it was in the days of Noah,
so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.
Noah was not motivated to prepare for the flood by his understanding of climate science. No, what he saw and understood of the world around him were the same as what those who were not preparing, but living life as usual, also saw and understood. The only difference was his faith in divine revelation. So too for Christians in our own day. We see the same world as others do but we understand it differently based on the perspective faith gives us. Divine revelation gives us an interpretive key to reality that is not available to the paradigm of empirical science. Even philosophy was not enough to suggest that Noah ought to build an ark. Nor can it tell us enough about our own eternal destinies to suggest how we ought to prepare. Philosophy can help us to eat and drink and marry virtuously, and therefore without regret. It can help make us the people with whom others won't object to sharing an ark. But it won't actually tell us to help with the building or to watch the skies for rain. It can help make us wise enough to listen when someone makes the case that we should enter the ark. But it won't automatically prevent us from being caught up in daily life in such a way that we don't give the prophets who call to us a fair hearing. There is often a certain amount of believing in the unlikely or apparently impossible that is asked of us when we are called to make an act of faith. Philosophy tends to resist extremes. But the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, cannot be overdone. They can, it is true, be done in the wrong way. But when they are done in the right way there is no such thing as excess since God himself is their object.
They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away.
So will it be also at the coming of the Son of Man.
The only warning we have about the impending judgment we will face at the end of our lives and that the world will face at the end of time is the one that we have because of our faith. A philosophical perspective might recognize that it is not contradicted but rather fulfilled in finding the world to after all be one in which justice is real. But it might stubbornly resist anything, even fulfillment, that is alien to its own way of understanding. It could not, of itself, discover how mercy and justice would be reconciled. It really could not have even made a guess of the direction and goal of history. And given that this perspective, apart from faith, is the best we've got, we need to recognize our need for the warning Jesus gives in today's Gospel reading.
They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away.
So will it be also at the coming of the Son of Man.
Two men will be out in the field;
one will be taken, and one will be left.
In the flood it was those not taken by the water and the waves who were the fortunate ones. It was those who were left, the divine remnant protected in the ark were those who were blessed. It was often thus in the history of Israel, when those taken into exile or lost in battle were not the ones to envy. It was those who remained, who enjoyed God's protection, that attained a desirable result. That's one of the reasons we can tell that this passage has nothing to do with the rapture or dispensionationalism. In this case we don't want to be among the taken. We want instead to be among those preserved in the ark that is the Church established by Jesus himself, the barque of Peter.
The rains of the flood may not yet be falling in an obvious and visible way. But we nevertheless need to heed the command of Jesus to stay awake. We can't allow ourselves to be lulled by what seems normal to those around us. Whatever floods may come to us in our lives will require from us a response of vigorous faith. Therefore we must remain alert to what matters most. Those of us who are lukewarm or merely half awake are at risk. We might say, as Augustine did, "Oh Lord, give me chastity, but do not give it yet", assuming that we can get serious about are own conversion at some distant as yet undetermined future date. But it was precisely our reading today from Romans that caused Augustine to wake up and to stop delaying.
not in orgies and drunkenness,
not in promiscuity and lust,
not in rivalry and jealousy.
But put on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.
We too are called to have hearts that are ready to welcome the Lord Jesus Christ. Advent is a precious time in which grace is given to us to help us prepare. It is also a time in which it is very easy to be lulled into what the world considers normal by the business and commercial nature of the secular season. And so we must let the words of Jesus and not the world define us and our reality.
O house of Jacob, come,
let us walk in the light of the Lord!
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