Introduction
Welcome back to Year A, beloveds. Matthew is a stark contrast to the other Gospels. Because of this, I encourage you to wrap your mind around what Matthew’s tone is before jumping into one of Matthew’s more judgment focused sections (Matthew 24). I wrote a short “Turning Our Eyes Toward Matthew and Grounding in Year A” article to help get into Matthew’s trajectory and tone. Please feel free to take a look if it’s helpful.
But as in every Advent (no matter the year), we are jumping in headfirst into the Apocalyptic section of the Gospel. So, how is Matthew using this section and how does it prepare us for Advent?
Narrative Context
Matthew’s Gospel does not ease us gently into Advent. Instead, we begin with a jarring apocalyptic passage near the end of Jesus’ ministry because Matthew wants to pull our heads up, shake us awake, and remind us of what’s at stake. Today’s text sits in the middle of a long apocalyptic discourse in chapter 24, a section where Matthew most intentionally channels the prophetic tradition of Israel.
More than any other Gospel writer, Matthew presents Jesus as a prophet like Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Amos. Not simply like them, Matthew’s Jesus speaks in their very register. He uses their images, their urgency, their cadence. And what prophets do is issue a wake-up call:
Turn back to God. Reorient your life. Do justice. Pay attention to the vulnerable. The choices you make shape the world you live in.
This prophetic edge often troubles modern readers and preachers. We’d prefer the Gospel to be soft, comforting, and reassuring. But Matthew’s Gospel is rooted in a tradition where judgment is not about punishment, it is about truth-telling. The prophets never warned Israel of judgment to instill fear; they warned Israel to provoke change.
When Jeremiah cries out, “3Thus says the Lord: Act with justice and righteousness and deliver from the hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place. 4 For if you will indeed obey this word, then through the gates of this house shall enter kings who sit on the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses—they, their servants, and their people. 5 But if you will not heed these words, I swear by myself, says the Lord, that this house shall become a desolation.” (Jer 22:3-6), he is not promising torture for those who fail. He is naming what happens to a society when righteousness collapses. What it will do to itself. When Amos calls for justice to “roll down like water” (Amos 5:24), he is naming the alternative to a world eroded by greed, neglect, and violence.
Matthew stands squarely inside that same worldview.
So when Jesus speaks of people being “swept away,” or of the suddenness of the Son of Man’s coming, he is not describing God as the destroyer. He is naming what happens when a community drifts too far from God’s ways. The unraveling of community and the abandonment of one another.
Matthew’s eschatology is therefore both a warning and an invitation. The day of judgment is not meant to terrify us into passivity but to focus us on fidelity. It is not about predicting the end of the world but about shaping how we live in the meantime.
That is why the Isaiah 2 reading is paired with this Gospel. Isaiah’s vision of swords turned into plowshares is not merely a future dream, it is God’s picture of what a faithful world looks like. Nations walking in God’s light. Peoples streaming toward wisdom rather than destruction. A world that unlearns war.
Matthew’s Jesus invokes this prophetic imagination to call us into that kind of readiness. Readiness is not vigilance for signs in the sky. Readiness is active participation in God’s justice.
This becomes unmistakable when you read ahead into Matthew 25, where Jesus describes the final judgment not in terms of dogma, but in terms of compassion: “I was hungry… thirsty… a stranger… naked… sick… in prison…” (25:35–36).
In Matthew’s Gospel, preparedness for the Son of Man’s coming is about the care we extend to others now. And at the very end of the Gospel, the risen Christ doesn’t tell the disciples to wait. He sends them out into the world, to act, teach, serve, and embody this kingdom for all nations.
The day of judgment, in Matthew’s hands, is not about fear of what God will do, it is about clarity regarding what we are called to do.
Preaching Possibilities
The Prophetic Voice Is Loving, Not Threatening
One of the complaints that I hear most about Matthew’s Gospel how violent or harsh it sounds. This is not just from lay people, but I hear it mostly from pastors and preachers. And truthfully, it pains me to hear it because I actually think Matthew is full of grace and mercy. But it all begins with truth-telling.
That’s what prophetic ministry is. It’s not beating people down. It’s not to promise harm or violence to someone. It’s to explain that when the world is turning away from God and each other, we have a habit of doing serious harm to one another. And God cares deeply about that. God trembles at that thought.
And so, starting as soon as possible in Year A, I implore you to help your community hear the difference between divine punishment and divine concern. In the prophets and in Matthew, judgment is ultimately God’s refusal to let harm be the final word. What if the “unexpected hour” is not a plot twist but an invitation to ongoing conversion?
Advent Hope Is Active, Not Passive
Advent is a season of waiting, but not the passive kind. This text invites communities to name where they see God calling them to wake up. Where are people numb? Exhausted? Overwhelmed? Overly distracted? What would it mean for your congregation to “keep awake” not by anxious watching, but by spiritual attentiveness, by choosing compassion over apathy, justice over comfort, mercy over indifference?
Advent Hope Is Both Cosmic and Incarnational
Yes, Advent points us toward the future hope that all things will be made right, a hope deeply rooted in the Hebrew Scriptures and one Matthew leans into often. There is a promise of the day to come. But our primary Advent hope (and Matthew’s too) is incarnational: God comes to us now, in this world, in this moment. Emmanuel.
If we emphasize only the final day, we miss the hope that God enters a very real, very broken world in Jesus, and still does.
This is an opportunity to look for hope in our local contexts. To keep awake not only in broad spiritual terms, but through concrete, immediate action. What ministries embody Matthew’s call to readiness? What organizations are living out Isaiah’s vision of peace and justice? Where are people speaking prophetically today? Where are you feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, welcoming the stranger?
Micah Krey 
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