Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!
This week we enter the season of Advent, and while the world around us is ratcheting up into full-blown Christmas mode with the shopping madness of "Black Friday" and wall-to-wall carols, our lectionary gospel text offers a somewhat starker theme as we are cautioned to maintain watchful readiness for the coming of the Son of Man. The imagery Jesus invokes is rather striking -- and somewhat unsettling for us -- as he compares those who are not alert to the people in Noah's day who were "eating and drinking" and were swept away in the flood.