Leaving a Light On in the Dark
A sermon for the first week of Advent, 2025
If you walk through a neighborhood late at night, you can sometimes tell which homes are waiting for someone.
Most houses are dark—shades drawn, blue glow of a TV fading behind curtains, cars settled in the driveway like they have no intention of moving until morning. But every so often you see a porch light left on. A lamp glows in the front room. There is a place set at the table or a blanket folded on the couch. Someone in that house is not finished with the day. Someone is awake, or at least ready to rise, because a loved one has not yet come home.
That single lamp changes how the darkness feels. It is still night. The streets are still quiet. But the light says, “We are waiting. We are expecting. We are leaving room for an arrival.”
Jesus’ words in Matthew 24:36–44 are spoken to disciples in the dark. The Temple will fall. The world as they know it feels shaky. They want timelines, clarity, a schedule. Instead, Jesus gives them a different kind of gift: not a countdown, but a calling—to be the kind of people who leave a light on.
He speaks of unknown hours, the days of Noah, pairs of workers in fields and mills, and a homeowner who wishes he had stayed awake. These images are not meant to paralyze us with fear or fuel our speculation. They are invitations to a different way of living in the dark.
As we step into Advent, when the nights grow long and our calendars grow full, this text asks us a simple question: What does it mean to be the house that keeps a light on for Christ?
Seeing the Text in Its Own Light
Matthew 24–25 is sometimes called the “little apocalypse.” Jesus is on the Mount of Olives, looking at the Temple that dominates Jerusalem’s skyline. He has just pronounced woes on religious leaders and predicted that not one stone of this complex will be left on another. The disciples ask the question we would have asked: When? What will be the sign of your coming and the end of the age? (24:3).
In response, Jesus paints a broad canvas—wars, earthquakes, persecution, false messiahs, the desecration of holy space. Much of what he describes tracks with events leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, even as his language stretches beyond any single historical moment toward the final renewal of all things (Wikipedia).
By verse 36, the conversation shifts from “signs” to limitation:
“However, no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself. Only the Father knows” (24:36, NLT).
In Greek, the verb is oiden—no one “knows” in a full, settled way. Not the angels. Not, in his incarnate self-emptying, even the Son. Only the Father holds that knowledge. That sentence should make us humble. If the Son entrusted himself to the Father’s hidden timetable, we are not meant to pry it open.
Jesus does not linger on that paradox. He moves to a story his listeners know well: the days of Noah.
In Noah’s day, he says, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, “up to the day Noah entered the boat. People didn’t realize what was going to happen until the flood came and swept them all away” (24:38–39, NLT). Their problem was not that they were doing wicked things every second; it was that they lived as if God’s patience would last forever, as if the preacher building an ark down the road was an oddity, not a mercy.
Then come the paired images:
Two men in a field—one taken, one left.
Two women grinding grain—one taken, one left.
We are not told their names, their denominational affiliations, their political leanings. They are simply coworkers. From the outside, they are doing the same tasks, under the same sun. But the coming of the Son of Man reveals a difference that was hidden: one has been living awake to God, the other functionally asleep.
We are not given all the mechanics of what “taken” and “left” mean—whether it echoes the flood sweeping away the unprepared or Christ taking to himself those who are ready. But we are shown the effect: the arrival of the Son of Man discloses the truth about lives that looked identical.
Finally, Jesus tells a tiny parable. If a homeowner knew what hour a thief was coming, he would stay awake and not let his house be broken into (24:43). You don’t schedule your vigilance for some other hour; you stay awake when danger is near.
Then the summary:
“You also must be ready all the time, for the Son of Man will come when least expected” (24:44, NLT).
In other words: you cannot control the calendar of God, but you can choose to be a certain kind of person in the dark.
Reading Our World Through This Word
If any generation understands “unknown hours,” it is ours.
We know something about sudden floods—literal and metaphorical. We have seen cities washed by tsunamis, markets shaken overnight, routines overturned by pandemics, communities upended by conflict. We wake up to news alerts that tell us yet another thing has “swept away” what felt stable yesterday.
At the same time, we are experts in distraction. We carry in our pockets devices that ensure we are never bored and rarely still. We have a 24-hour news cycle that can keep us informed about every tremor and yet untouched by any of them. It is possible—maybe easier than ever—to live as if the only things that matter are the next meal, the next show, the next notification.
Jesus is not asking us to add a layer of anxiety on top of that. He is not calling us to scroll prophecy blogs late into the night, as if enough information could make us safe. He is calling us to a different posture altogether.
Think of those ancient tsunami stones along Japan’s coast. After devastating waves in the late 19th century, villagers carved warnings into stone: “Do not build any homes below this point… remember the calamity of the great tsunamis.” Later generations, tempted by flat land near the shore, sometimes ignored those markers—with tragic results. Others heeded the old words and survived because they built higher (Wikipedia).
The Sermon on the Mount, the parables of mercy, the cross, and resurrection—they are Christ’s “stones” in our landscape. They stand there, telling the truth about what is coming: not only judgment on sin and injustice, but a kingdom where the meek inherit the earth, where the merciful are blessed, where forgiveness and enemy-love are the true currency.
To live awake is to remember those stones when the ground feels solid and the sky is clear.
Jesus’ thief-in-the-night image also cuts through our illusions. In the aviation world, pilots observe what is called the “sterile cockpit rule.” During takeoff and landing—when the margin for error is small—non-essential conversation stops so that the crew can focus on what matters most (ASRS)
The church lives permanently in that kind of threshold time. Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again. The plane is not in the hangar; it is in the air. It is not time for trivialities in the cockpit of our lives.
But here is the crucial thing: Christian watchfulness is not white-knuckled fear. It looks more like a night-shift nurse, staying awake so that others can rest. It looks like a parent who lets the teenager borrow the car and waits up until the headlights turn into the driveway. It looks like a congregation that refuses to go numb, that keeps praying for the world, that keeps setting one more place at the table.
To “keep awake” in Advent is to live as if Jesus could knock on your door at any moment—and as if, somehow, he already has in the faces of the hungry, the lonely, the fearful, the neighbor.
Becoming a House That Keeps a Light On
So what does this look like on a Tuesday?
1. Cultivate Daily Practices of Wakefulness
We cannot control “that day and hour,” but we can shape “this day and hour.” Consider simple practices that act like spiritual smoke alarms—small habits that rouse you before you drift into apathy:
A fixed moment of Scripture and prayer morning or evening, even if short. Not doom-scrolling, but listening.
A brief daily examen: “Where did I notice Christ today? Where did I ignore him?”
One deliberate act of mercy each day—a text of encouragement, a generous tip, a patient conversation with someone who drains you.
These are ways of leaving the lamp on, even when you feel tired.
2. Live Ethically Awake in Ordinary Work
Remember that Jesus locates his images in fields and mills, not in monasteries. The question is not whether you can quit your job to watch the sky, but whether you can do your work in a way that would make sense if Jesus walked in:
If you manage people, do you treat them as image-bearers or as units of productivity?
If you handle money, do you do so transparently, resisting shortcuts that depend on no one watching?
If you parent or grandparent, do you model a life where faith touches decisions, not just Sunday.
Advent watchfulness means asking, in each role: If the Son of Man came today, would this way of working make sense in his kingdom?
3. Stay Awake for Others, Not Only for Yourself
Night-shift nurses stay awake so that patients can heal. Fire departments run campaigns like “Hear the Beep Where You Sleep” because they care about families sleeping safely.Nationwide Children’s Hospital
Likewise, the church’s watchfulness is not a private survival plan. It is for the sake of the world.
Pray intentionally for those who do not believe anyone is coming for them.
Be alert to the quiet despair in coworkers, neighbors, family members.
Let your readiness take the shape of hospitality: an extra seat at the table, a listening ear, a willingness to bear someone else’s weariness.
4. Let Advent Re-Train Your Sense of Time
Finally, receive the “unknown hour” as a mercy. We are not in charge of the schedule of the kingdom. We are free from the burden of prediction. Instead, we are called into the sacrament of the present moment.
Every ordinary day—school runs, emails, groceries—can be lived as if Jesus is near, because he is. The One who will come in glory is the same One who comes now in Word and Spirit, who identifies himself with the hungry, the imprisoned, and the overlooked.
To be ready for his coming then is to welcome him now.
BENEDICTION – A Blessing for Those Who Wait
May the God who knows the day and the hour
teach you to live this day awake.
May the Spirit keep a lamp burning in your heart
when the world grows dark and drowsy.
May the Son of Man, who will come when least expected,
find you faithful in small things—
honest in work, gentle with neighbors,
merciful to the least,
and eager to open the door when he knocks.
And as you leave this place into fields and mills and kitchens and screens,
may you go as a house that keeps a light on in the night,
until the dawn of his appearing.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.