November 29, 1998
First Sunday of Advent
One of the great things about the Lectionary is how it moves us from
hearing the story of Christ from one Gospel to another Gospel. The
Lectionary is based on a three-year cycle, and for each of those years,
one of what scholars call the Synoptic Gospels—Mathew Mark, and
Luke—is chosen as the focus for the entire year. The Gospel of John is
left out of that cycle because it is so different from the Synoptic Gospels
that we are sometimes not sure where to put it or how to deal with it.
Last year, Year C, we spent our time on Luke and this year, which starts
today, Year A, we will spend our time journeying with Jesus through the
Gospel of Mathew. And yet, despite the fact that we are starting Advent
today and beginning a new Christian year, the people who composed the
Lectionary decided, for some odd reason, to keep our focus on the end,
rather than the obvious theme of a new beginning. After all, isn’t that
what Advent is all about…the birth of Christ, the beginning of something
new in the universe…the God who has come among us as a helpless
child.
Instead, for some reason, we’re dragged screaming back to the topic of
the Last Days, the End of Time…OK, maybe it was just ME that was
dragged screaming back to this topic. Do you remember a couple of
weeks ago when we found ourselves in Luke listening to Jesus talking
about the Last Days…how he told us that “nations will rise against
nations, and famines and plagues and dreadful portents and signs from
heaven” will be the indicators that we are living in the End Times? Do
you remember how we looked for details but we couldn’t find the nice,
neat little clues, that we were half hoping for? And we figured out that
this lack of details is really Christ’s desire for us to focus on the here and
now. All the details about what will come next in the cosmic drama would
just be a distraction from doing the hard work of being disciples in this
world. Well, if you weren’t convinced by Christ in the Gospel of Luke, the
Gospel of Mathew has even stronger words coming from Christ’s mouth
for you.
Listen to Christ in Mathew--“No one knows about that day or hour, not
even the angels in heaven, nor the Child, but only the Parent.” And then
Christ moves into some mini-parables about what the end will be like…it
will be like the suddenness of the flood in Noah’s day…it will be so
sudden that one of two persons in a field will be taken and the other will
remain. The parables give us a hint of the suddenness of Christ’s return
and then Christ says, at the end of these mini-parables—“Keep awake
therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” Well,
as a people who are waiting, you and I, the church, the question needs
to be asked—What does Christ mean about staying awake? I mean, we
know WHY we should stay awake…we should stay awake because Christ
may come back at any moment. But WHAT does it mean to stay awake—
we know the “why” of staying awake but the “what” of what it means to
stay awake as Christians is not really clear in this passage from
Mathew? When we were walking with Christ in Luke a couple of weeks
ago, we got the hint that one of the reasons that Christ was so
ambiguous about what will happen at the End of Time is because he was
far more interested in how we would react as faithful disciples in those
tumultuous times before his second coming than the actual end of time.
That’s the reason we don’t get the details about the end of time…Christ
wants to know what type of disciples we will be when the end comes.
OK, so we know that, but what does it mean to be a faithful disciple?
What kind of disciples is Christ looking for during this dangerous time?
…or as Christ says in Mathew, what does it mean to stay awake? Well, I
think that the reason the folks who crafted the Lectionary put together
the passage from Romans we heard in the first reading and this passage
from Mathew is to help us answer that “what” question about what it
means to be a faithful disciple and what it means to stay awake. What
do we do as we stay awake for a moment that we don’t even know
whether or not will happen in our lifetime? Well, listen to Paul’s advice to
the Roman church again:
“Always remember that this is the hour of crisis: it is high time for you to
wake out of sleep, for deliverance is nearer to us now than it was when
first we believed. It is far on in the night; day is near. Let us therefore
throw off the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us
behave with decency as befits the day: no drunken orgies, no
debauchery or vice, no quarrels or jealousies! Let Christ Jesus himself
be the armor that you wear; give your unspiritual nature no opportunities
to satisfy its desires.”
Paul begins with reminding the Romans that the time really is near and
he even uses the same metaphor that Christ uses—“it is high time for
you to wake out of sleep” he says. And then he writes this beautiful
sentence…”it is far on in the night: day is near.” For Paul and most of
the first Christians, Christ’s return was just around the corner, something
that they believed that they would experience in their own lifetimes, and
so Paul tells them to wake up and not let themselves be caught in the
dark when the dawn is just about to appear. And then Paul lists out the
things they should avoid—drunken orgies, debauchery or vice, quarrels
or jealousies—all of which he attributes to their unspiritual nature or the
flesh, which is how other translations put it. Don’t give into the worst
parts of yourself—which he calls the flesh—don’t treat your bodies as
anything less than holy, don’t get involved in arguments that don’t
matter, don’t envy what others have—avoid all that stuff that drags you
down, or worse, puts you to sleep. Well, OK, Paul, we know what NOT to
do while we are waiting for the end of time, the end that may not come in
our own lifetime, just as it didn’t come in Paul’s lifetime. Paul seems to
list a bunch of things that we shouldn’t do while we wait for Christ’s return
we seemed to have received some sort of answer to our question,
“WHAT does it mean to stay awake for Christ’s coming?” Is Paul’s
answer only negative…is it only a list of things NOT to do? Actually, no it
isn’t. I think Paul does give us
a positive answer to balance out the negative answer we just heard to
our question, WHAT DO I DO WHILE I AM AWAKE. In the midst of the
negative answer that Paul gives the Roman Church, he also puts a
positive spin on what it means to stay awake as a Christian…listen to him
in the last verse…”Let Christ Jesus himself be the armor that you wear”
and earlier he says, “put on the armor of light.” What am I to do while I
wait for Christ’s return? How am I to be a disciple
of this Christ? By putting on Christ, by becoming like Christ, by doing the
hard work of putting on the armor that is Christ, piece by piece,
sometimes slowly, sometimes haphazardly, sometimes quickly, and then
letting that armor change me into who Christ has called me to be. You
and I have been called to be just like Christ—actually, as we found out
last week, we are actually called to be MORE than just LIKE Christ…we
are actually called to TO BE CHRIST until Christ returns again. You and
I have been called to be transformed into Christ until Christ returns
again. And we do that by putting Christ on like we would a suit of armor.
But unlike most armor, this armor doesn’t simply protect you and I from
the negative forces without, but transforms us from within. You and I are
in midst of being transformed while we stay awake, waiting for Christ to
appear. It could happen at any second, it could happen in the next few
seconds…or it could be a million years from now. Who knows? In the
meantime, we know WHAT we are supposed to be doing while we stay
awake, waiting for Christ to appear. We are to do the hard work of being
Christ until Christ returns and that means to put on the armor that is
Christ and to be transformed by that armor of light. It is far on in the
night, the day is near, says Paul. The night is passing into morning and
one day, perhaps, if we are so graced, we will greet that final dawn on
the day that Christ comes again. But until then, Christ warns us not to
fall asleep while we wait for the dawn. We’ve got work to do, you and I,
and that work is to be transformed into who Christ is. Amen.
