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The same thing has, I'm sure, happened to you: you live your whole life without seeing or hearing a certain word or phrase or expression, and then you see or hear it two or three times within a relatively short period.

The first time I saw this particular phrase was a few years back at a synod assembly. I attended a small group session led by a pastor who had just returned from Nicaragua and El Salvador. He was showing some of his slides to help us understand the political and economic situation in those troubled lands.

About midway through his presentation, one of the slides showed what I took at first to be an outdoor chapel or worship area. There were pews and kneelers, and up front, an altar. Grass and weeds, about a foot high, were growing in the aisle and under and around the pews as well. But then I saw that this was -- or had been -- a building. At least one of the walls was visible in the slide.

The pastor explained that this was indeed a Roman Catholic church which had been bombed out in the recent violence. The roof had caved in and the walls had gaping holes blown out of them. The incoming rain and sun had allowed the grass and weeds to grow among the rubble.

The next slide showed a close-up of some graffiti that had been spray-painted on a wall, beneath a depiction of Christ on the cross.

In other slides, we had seen many political and revolutionary slogans similarly spray-painted on walls. But this one was different. I neither read nor speak Spanish. I didn't need it in order to recognize the oldest and most passionate prayer of Christianity: "Pronto viene, Jesus Christo."Come quickly, Jesus Christ.

Into this world of mindless murder, bloodshed and bombing -- come quickly.

Into this insane world where men and women disappear under cover of night and are never heard from again, where children are gunned down in the streets and in their own homes -- quickly come.

A prayer, a cry of profound anguish and suffering and yet also of profound hope born of faith, spray-painted in flat black, beneath a crucified Christ, bidding him to come, and come pronto.

Several weeks after that assembly on my way to Danbury, Connecticut, for the ordination of a friend, I passed by an area across the river from New York's Spanish Harlem. One of the fields along the highway was a dumping ground for about two dozen stolen or abandoned cars and trucks. Most were burned out, completely stripped, completely rusted. One was parked close to the shoulder of the highway. A four-door sedan it was -- or had been. The dull orange of the rust and the black soot from the smoke provided the background for a bright red bumper sticker someone had pasted on the car's trunk. It read: "Pronto viene, Jesus Christo."

In North America's urban blight and decay no less than in Central America's violence and revolution, the same cry, the same prayer, "Come quickly, Jesus Christ!"

So the promise of Jesus as recorded in Matthew is: "The Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour." It is a restatement of Malachi's prophecy: "The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. Behold he is coming, says the Lord of hosts."

And so we say in our eucharistic prayer, "Amen, come, Lord Jesus." And in our Advent prayers: "Stir up, O Lord, your power and come."

The last words of the New Testament, "Maranatha. Amen, come, Lord Jesus," echo and answer the last words of the prophet Isaiah: "Oh, that thou wouldst rend the heavens and come down."

Come down, come quickly, come pronto. Suddenly come into this house of doom, this chamber of corruption and despair. Break down its walls and set us free. Come. And come quickly.

Jesus describes his return as an event, not a process. As sudden as the flood that inundated the globe in the Noah story, so sudden will be the coming of the Son of Man. Those who eagerly await this coming are called to be awake, alert, ready, for no warning will be given: the Son of Man will come suddenly and at an hour known only to his Father.

But how long can even the most ardent believer sustain such "red alert" readiness? A week? An Advent season? Surely not a lifetime! The prior question is: What constitutes readiness? The old Adam and old Eve think instinctively in terms of moral readiness: Live in such a way that the sudden return will find our behavioral slates clean. We have, however, lived too long and accumulated too many experiences of our moral frailty to believe we can ever be morally ready for one whose standard is perfection.

This Advent, I invite you to think instead in terms of spiritual readiness: Live in such a way that the cry, "Pronto viene, Jesus Christo," is a natural expression of your heart's true desire for the Lord's sudden and promised return. The old Adam and old Eve fear such a return, for they know it spells their doom.

But like those unprepared in the Noah story, the old Adam and Eve have been drowned -- in this case, drowned in the waters of baptism. From those waters, a new being in Christ arises: one whose heart cries out, "Come, Lord Jesus. Quickly come."

Come quickly to the brutal terror of oppressive regimes, to the grinding poverty of center cities, to the mindless cruelty that paints swastikas on synagogues, to the fear and emptiness of our own lives: come quickly.

And until you come, we will -- by your grace -- trust and wait and pray, and work and live by the values of your coming kingdom.

Living by those values sometimes sets us in opposition to the ways of the present age and present neo-pagan culture with its values and assumptions. So our text speaks honestly of "two in the field; one will be taken and one left. Two grinding meal; one taken, one left."

Until that day, we give thanks to our Lord and bless his name for allowing us to glimpse his coming: in the miracle of human reconciliation; in the too-rare efforts of nations to talk out rather than shoot out their differences; in the opportunity to serve our Lord by serving his poor and needy ones all around us; in the bread and wine of the eucharist, in which God comes to us, and by which he makes of us a community, a forgiven family of his children.

In all these things and countless others, he comes to us. Not yet fully, but enough to make our hearts long for and yearn for and ache for that day when he does; and in the meanwhile, to be about the peacemaking, reconciling, life-affirming work God has entrusted to us.

And so we pray, "Stir up our hearts, O Lord, to prepare the way for your only Son. By his coming, give us strength in our conflicts and shed light on our path through the darkness of this world."

Create in us new hearts, O God. And renew a right spirit within us. Hearts and spirits that reach out, and join in the ardent prayer of our brothers and sisters of every time and every place: "Pronto viene, Jesus Christo." Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus, quickly come.