Gloria Dei

The older I get, the more nights I lie awake with insomnia. I can fall right to sleep when I first retire, but somewhere around 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, I often wake and begin what might be an hour or two of watchful wakefulness. I might be awake because I’m excited about something to come in the day ahead. But more often I lie awake, worrying about tasks left undone, or wondering about how to deal with problems I face.

For those of us who suffer with insomnia, a gospel call to Keep Awake may not sound like very good news.  Wouldn’t it have been nicer for the gospel writer to tell us, “Rest assured”?

The season of Advent begins once again with this annual directive, Keep awake!  Stay alert; for you do not know the time or the day of God’s arrival.

Of course, insomniacs have plenty of company this time of year.  Many of you will keep awake especially during these weeks of preparation.  I know very well that some of you were up in the earliest hours of Friday morning so you could get the shopping season started.  In fact, I imagine some of you were up at midnight the night before finishing cleaning the house and preparing the turkey or the Jello so it would be ready in time for your guests to arrive on Thursday.  I suspect some of you will be up late tonight finishing homework assignments that were assigned when the “Monday after Thanksgiving” sounded like a long way away.

And in the next few weeks, we’ll be joined by more of you who are up late or early just trying to keep up writing Christmas cards, studying for finals, balancing the books, baking cookies, wrapping presents, or finalizing some end of the year presentation or report that should have been done in the middle of November.

We will be keeping awake because we know that the coming season is gaining on us.  And there is much to be done before it arrives.

Our Advent wakefulness takes on the energy of a nesting pregnant mother, eager to get the last projects done at work and the baby’s room painted before she goes into labor.  Stay awake because you don’t know the day or the hour.  The time is at hand.

But of course, most of us believe we do know the day and the hour.  We make our lists and check them twice, working feverishly day and night over the course of the next four weeks, because our calendar has convinced us that in fact we have exactly 28 days left before it all has to be done.  Many of us are awake because we most likely know that we have about 35 days worth of work that we’d like to accomplish in these last 28 days.

But that’s where we miss the whole point of Advent.  We fool ourselves into thinking that this season is about our eager preparations for a holiday at the end of December.

But Advent is here to remind us that today, in fact perhaps in this very hour, the reign of God is breaking into our lives. As Pastor Mann reminded us last Sunday, we are pointed to a future which has such a powerful say in our lives, that it marks the way we behave today.

Advent calls us to stay awake not just to get everything we hope to accomplish completed by December 25, but because at any minute, on any day, in every encounter, and in every relationship, God is entering our lives and making them right. Advent calls us to stay awake in the full awareness that this is the day God’s kingdom is coming.  This is the time in which God’s will may be done on earth as it is in heaven.

The prophet Isaiah prayed that God would come soon.  Tear open the heavens now, he cried!  Let the sun burn out, and the stars fall from the sky today.  Join us now to bring about the justice and peace your reign is destined to bring us.  Isaiah’s restless nights were not simply caught up in baking cookies or getting the best buys at the electronic stores. 

The prophet’s fears were more like those of you who are up at night with heavier hearts.  Like those who are up all night hoping for a job offer, despairing about a failed relationship, longing for some hope from chronic pain or depression, watching a loved one suffer.  Isaiah despaired over the state of his nation, and how God’s people would ever know righteousness again.  Like the prophet, some of us stay awake at night for fear of what the morning might bring.

Isaiah appeals to God’s love for what God has created.  No longer let our sin keep us from you, he cries, but reshape us again to be people who know your power to make all things new.

Here’s the good news of Advent:  As Christians, we believe God has answered Isaiah’s prayer.  We believe that in Christ, God has already shaken the powers of heaven, and has opened the way of salvation to all people.  We believe that the fig tree is already putting forth leaves.  God has already forgiven us, and has already reshaped us to stand together with people from the ends of the earth.  We believe that the stars have already started to fall, and the Sun of Righteousness has been born in our midst.

But you see what that means?  It means that what we are waiting for something could happen to us now.  It means that we have already awakened to see God active in the midst of our daily lives.  It means we already experience God’s coming reign today, in the events of our life.  It means we already acknowledge God born among us when we forgive someone who has hurt us or when we serve our neighbors at Project Home.  It means we already claim the presence of God as we work for equal rights for all people, when we speak for those who are powerless, when we fight for economic justice in our communities, and provide food for those who are hungry.

Advent wakes us up to a sure and certain hope which convinces us that the worries that have kept us up at night have already been met by God’s coming reign of peace.  Our regrets and disappointments have already been forgiven.  The fears of our inadequacies and inabilities to get everything done have already been trumped by the love of God in Christ Jesus.  We are invited to stay awake to witness the goodness of God, as it is born in our lives in the evening as we reach out to comfort those who grieve, at midnight, as we offer a hand to the friend who has reached the end of her rope, at cockcrow, as we listen with compassion to the neighbor who can’t find work, and at dawn, as we sit with a loved one who is dying.

No, we are not told to “rest assured.”  We are told to “stay awake, assured.” We are called to stay awake and greet God’s power breaking into our day.  We are called to stay awake and remind each other of God’s desire that all people be treated with respect and dignity.  We are called to stay awake and sing to each other of God’s compassion for a world in need, and God’s promise to never leave it abandoned.

On Thanksgiving morning, hours before my alarm woke me, I woke and greeted the new day.  Rather than fight the sleeplessness, tossing and turning in my fatigue, I decided to use my hour or more of wakefulness to give thanks for all that God has given me. I named all that is good in my life, all that I have received, all for which I am grateful.  Of course, I fell asleep before I exhausted my list.

Perhaps this Advent season, as we wake with fears and worries about what is left undone, we might ask where God is being born in our lives, and pray that God might let us see signs of the in-breaking of God’s realm in all the places of the earth that long for freedom, reconciliation, hope, and rebirth.

Let us stay awake, assured in the promise of God’s coming reign, and stay alert to the ways God will use us to bring about the coming Day.

Thanks be to God.  Amen

Texts:  Isaiah 64:1-9; I Corinthians 1:3-9;  Mark 13:24-37