My father commuted to work.  He drove his car on the Garden State Parkway to and from work every day, five days a week, . . . ever since I can remember.  And because he spent so much time in his car, every few Christmases my mother would give my father an organizer to clip to his car’s sun-visor.  You know the sort of thing I mean:  it has a pocket for sun glasses and a harness for a notepad, with a leather loop nearby for a pencil, and a change purse to hold money for tolls.  . . . Well, Christmas of 1974 must have been a good one for Dad, because when I borrowed his car in the summer of 1975 . . . he had the cadillac of visor organizers.  This thing was made of butter-soft leather with no ordinary pencil stuck in the loop beside the notepad, . . . but a shiny Cross pen.  It was a thing of beauty.

    In the summer of 1975 I borrowed my father’s car to take my family over to our new apartment at General Seminary in New York City.  My plan was to spend the night, drive the car back to New Jersey, and then take the bus back into the city.  But, when we arrived at the Seminary, in the confusion of unloading the last of our belongings and three active little boys . . . one of the car doors didn’t latch quite right.  And somehow, in the night, someone discovered that fact, . . . and in the morning I found my father’s car had been broken into.  The contents of the glove compartment were on the front seat . . . and my father’s visor organizer was nowhere to be seen.  . . . I felt sick; . . . I had not secured my father’s property, . . . and it was gone.  . . . And I said those words of regret that constitute the litany of all human negligence:  . . . “If only”; . . . “If only I had checked.”; “If only I had made sure.”; “If only; . . . if only.”

    So, listening to the Gospel Lesson appointed for today, I find comfort in the fact that Jesus must have said those words of regret Himself.  As the consequence of His own negligence . . . Jesus must have said His share of “If only’s”.  Otherwise He would not have been able to say with such authority,

if the householder had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have watched . . .

“If only I had known.”  . . . “But we do not know,” Jesus says (having learned, no doubt, from His own bitter experience); . . . “We do not know, and so you must be ready!”  . . . And the thing that Jesus is telling us we must be ready for . . . is God.
    You see, Jesus is, Himself, evidence that the God and Father of us all is a vigorous God.  Jesus, Himself, is evidence that the God and Father of us all is not like someone who starts an ant farm and then sits back to watch the interesting creatures behind the pane of glass.  Oh no, God created us in His Image so that He might have an intelligible and interactive relationship with His creation; so that He might communicate Himself to us . . . and so that we might communicate ourselves to Him.  Holy Scripture is full of interactive events between God and humanity.  … Indeed, to save our very lives . . . God sends His Son to come to us and speak with us and comfort us and instruct us, . . . and, finally, by His own suffering on the Cross on our behalf, He breaks the grip of death which sin has had upon us.  . . . And on the eve of saving us from death, Jesus reminds us of what the prophet Isaiah says, . . . that God has appointed an End Time -- a consummation of History -- when all that is and has been . . . shall be gathered into Life’s completeness.  . . . Moreover, Jesus says, there shall be a reckoning; . . . a reckoning in which all the good of history -- everything that is in harmony with the heart of God; . . . all the good of history shall be kept . . . while everything indifferent shall perish.

    . . . And recognizing our human capacity for negligence; . . . having suffered the sorrow of His own humanity -- having recited His own litany of “If only’s”; . . . knowing, intimately, our capacity for negligence, Jesus urges us not to be negligent about God.  . . . And He brings to mind Holy Scripture’s record of a past time -- of the days when Noah was a young man:

“For as in those days,” Jesus says, “before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they did not know until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of man.”

In the days of Noah everyone was so darn self-preoccupied . . . that they were negligent about God!  They were consumed with the ordinary business they thought so important at the time:  they ate and drank at given hours; gave dinner parties and attended them; . . . they provided for the continuance of humanity by marriage and procreation; they worked diligently in order to save and invest and provide trusts for their children so that they would not be in want.  . . . Jesus doesn’t say that in the days of Noah the people were particularly sinful; . . . only that they paid all their attention to their ordinary business and none to their spiritual business.  And, neglecting their spiritual lives, they took no notice of God.  Only Noah paid any attention to what God was up to; . . . so, only Noah knew to build an ark . . . and at what hour to go into it.  And when the flood came, . . . all those self-preoccupied people could only say, “If only” . . . as the flood waters swept them away.

    And so it will be at the completion of History, Jesus says.  So it will be when the Son of Man -- the Incarnate Word -- shall come to gather up the attentive . . . and to leave the negligent to their inattentiveness:

At that time, Jesus says, ordinary people will go about their ordinary business, just like on any other day.  One man will be working at his job while occupying his mind with counting up his hours and how much cash he will have in his pocket; . . . right beside him will be his fellow worker, silently thanking God for the day, the opportunity to work, and offering an intercessory prayer or two as well, . . . and he will be taken up . . . while the other continues to figure his wealth . . . until he perishes.  And in another place, on that same day, one woman shall be going about her everyday tasks while massaging and rehearsing some insult that was done or said to her, . . . and right beside her will be a friend, offering God thanks for the birth of a neighbor’s child and contriving to pass along some outgrown baby things of her own.  This one will be received by Jesus into Paradise . . . while the other will continue to stew . . . until she perishes.

    Just as Christ Jesus, the Incarnate Word, came to us the first time for our redemption, when the Tremendous was clothed in our ordinary . . . resulting in the graciously inconspicuous, . . . so it shall be when God the Father brings this phase of Creation to its completion.  The Incarnate Word will come to us a second time in just such a lovely way as the first; . . . Christ Jesus will come to us a second time for our salvation; . . . to call us (not frighten us); . . . to call us into the tremendousness of Eternity’s Fullness.

    And so, on this, the first day of this new Christian Year, some 2008 years since the birth of Jesus; . . . on this first day of the new Christian Year, we remember that Jesus has urged us not to be negligent about God but to be attentive; . . . we remember what our Redeemer has said about the consummation of History.  . . . We remember because we, who are baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus; . . . we are an expectant people.  We do not believe that this is all there is.  We believe that in spite of the negligences which cause our regrets and our litanies of “If only’s”; . . . we believe that in spite of sin, our baptism has brought us to Heaven’s threshold.  Baptism has brought us tumbling and laughing and cajoling our friends to come with us . . . to Heaven’s threshold.  But Heaven’s threshold is only our beginning.  Penitent and expectant we live at Heaven’s threshold by grace; by being attentive to God, . . . waiting for Jesus and His angels to come and haul us inside.