Long before I became an Episcopalian or had thoughts of being a priest who might be tasked with preaching, I was a preschool teacher. And while there are many surprising things that overlap between being in ministry and the daily care and education of four and five-year-olds, one of the surprising overlaps is the way in which I handled the frequent bumps and bruises, because it actually lines up with how I want to respond to people of all ages. It is tempting when something painful happens or when we watch something awful happen to have a dramatic reaction, but I quickly learned that the kids in my class would feed off the energy of my response. If I was anxious in response to them tripping and falling, then they would skip right past paying attention to their own experience and assume it was awful. So, I learned to ask a quick set of questions—they are simple and I asked them every time. . even the time a very clumsy little girl who I heavily identified with as a clumsy person myself, ran full speed into a brick wall, true story. It’s a simple set of questions, but I asked them every time because it was a moment to check in: “Does it hurt? Are you scared? Or both?”
And when I say that this has overlapped into my ministry, I have used it in the wake of natural disasters and after a partner has broken martial vows. I have asked this question during tidal waves of grief of the death of a beloved one. I use this set of questions because so, so many of us come to the table carrying a deep wound. And I share this set of questions with you today because for many people, maybe many people in the pews today, today’s gospel lesson might leave you hurt, scared, or maybe both.
At our first session with the Rev. Bruce Cory the week before last, as we told our story, in the group that gathered after pizza on Wednesday night, the only native Episcopalian in the room was 13 years old, and that says a lot about your congregation. I don’t have to know all the details of all of your stories to know some of the baggage that many of you may be carrying as you approach God’s table, or the work you’ve done to be able to find your way back to faith, or to find a church home again. For many folks in our part of the world at least, the idea of folks being snatched from the field is inseparable from the Left Behind or Rapture imagery. The gospel narrative that we hear today does not find its way to many of us without having hurt some of us, scared us, or maybe both.
We begin the Advent season today, and while I didn’t grow up with the Season of Advent, I have come to really love it; it is one of my favorite times of the year. And I even like the Advent years that we must nestle into Matthew’s tiny little apocalypses, and I love it in part because apocalypse doesn’t mean actually mean “the end of the world,” as so many of us were taught to fear. No, rather, apocalypse simply means “to reveal.” So, Christ wasn’t painting a gnarly and grim picture of what we ought to fear, but revealing a truth about how the world works, and in the darkness of this world, of which many of us are deeply familiar, God begs us to stay awake.
God begs us to stay awake, and I wonder if we can begin to shift the idea from this little apocalypse being a Left Behind threat to the pronouncement of good news. That God breaking into the darkness of this world like a thief in this night is not something of which to be afraid, but rather something to be celebrated? That maybe this world needs to be stolen back. That the task of staying awake is not to for the desperate salvation of our own souls, but so that we can herald the good news of God breaking back into the world just as the Christ Child broke into this world on Christmas day.
Advent is practice, I believe, in staying awake, not out of fear but with hope. The task of Advent is to keep awake, but not because we’ve got to prove ourselves to someone or to ourselves or to God. No, rather, the task of Advent is to keep awake because there is nothing so isolating when you are in pain than to be alone, so we keep watch. The task of Advent is to keep awake because being a Christian costs us something, yet we choose it every day because we know that being awake is far superior to being numb. And the task of Advent is to keep awake because so many are desperate for the hope of Christ, and so we choose to take up this task and to watch for the first light so that we can herald the good news.
One of the things I love most about my relatively new practice of Advent is that it resists what could feel easy in the weeks leading up to Christmas. It begs us to linger not with those who dance at brightly lit parties, but with those who are still waiting for good news, and it reminds us that no matter how dark times may get, we must stay awake. Advent reminds us that at the cusp of God being born into this world, nothing seemed darker than the circumstances into which our very Savior was born. Darkness was all around, and yet the light of Christ broke through, and the task of Advent asks us to stay awake not with fear, but with a radical and unrelenting hope of the coming Christ Child. Keep watch; watch for the light.
A sermon delivered on November 30, 2025 to the people of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Middlesboro, Kentucky for Advent 1A on Matthew 24:36-44.
Becca Kello 