"The Subtlety of the Second Coming" - Sermon for Advent 1, 11-30-25

To be clear, the Second Coming of Christ, as it is described in the scriptures and depicted in hymnody and bronze and oils, will be impossible to miss. I am not one to second-guess the reality behind the prediction of this terminal spectacle: Christ the Lord, robed in dreadful majesty, descending from the clouds, accompanied by countless hosts of saints and angels. You may think me odd, but I pray for this to happen in my lifetime. I hope I am around to see it.

My hope has been the hope of many in the generations since Jesus ascended into the clouds. The second-coming of Christ has eluded both these well-prepared, sleep-deprived saints, as well as the sound-asleep sinners, recovering from their long night of licentiousness.

How did – and how do – those who share my hope, stay on their toes after centuries of delay and disappointment?

Our readiness comes by appreciating the subtlety of the many ways Christ has already come again, and in the ways I suppose that he has never really left us. We stay awake not so much to await the day and hour that no one knows when – as extraordinary as that instant will be – but to see him in the ordinary ways he shows up every day.

Christ shows up in the ordinary elements of bread and wine, made holy for us to take and eat; the sacramental way he keeps his promise to be with us always, even to the end of the age.

Christ shows up in the confessional room, welcoming home the sin-sick in the priest’s words of counsel and absolution.

Christ shows up in the sacred words of scripture, the divine record of his provident presence in human history, words that challenge some, comfort others, and call us all to conversion.

Christ shows up in you when you take time to come and worship him in the liturgy, and to find him in the ordinary folk sitting next to you who do the same.  

Christ shows up in the bodies of the hungry and the homeless, people whose rootlessness reflects his own lack of a regular place to lay his head.

Christ shows up in the imperiled and in the imprisoned, in the wounded and in the scarred, in the violated and in the vulnerable, in the lost and in the lonely. I could go on, but you get my point.

Christ shows up in these everyday ways, and I believe that one of the gifts that comes from Holy Baptism, and from regular reception of Holy Communion, is the grace to see Christ where and when others miss him entirely.

I wonder if Jesus’s example of two in the field and two at the grindstone, one taken and one left, has to do with their receptivity to his presence. They both will keep at their toil, side-by-side, but, by grace, the blessedly-aware one is taken, while the blindly-unaware one is left. To the one, the bum panhandling on the sidewalk is Christ to encounter; to the other, the same bum is an annoyance to avoid. They both go on with their day, but only one is changed for the better.

To stay awake for Christ’s Second Coming – the big one – is the reason why we pray and worship and study in community and often. It is the grace that comes from common prayer, from common worship, and from common study, that opens our eyes to see the subtle coming of Christ every day. Impelled by God’s grace, it is our practice of seeking and seeing the subtleties that others miss that makes us prepared for that glorious, majestic last day. It is this mortal life-practice that prepares us for the perfection of the life immortal in Christ that is to come.

Father Daniel S.J. Scheid, SCP

1^st Sunday of Advent – November 30, 2025

All Saints’ Episcopal Church, San Francisco

“The Subtlety of the Second Coming"