Gaudete (Advent 3C)

“Gaudete”

16 December 2012

Advent 3C

Homily preached at Trinity Episcopal Church
by the Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson

Ashland, Oregon

8:00 a.m. spoken Mass, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Zephaniah 3:14-20 ; Canticle 9 ; Philippians 4:4-7 ; Luke 3:7-18

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen

Such horrible news this week.  Shootings in a Portland mall filled with holiday shoppers.  Then the horrible murder of dozens of elementary school children and their teachers in Connecticut.   We can only feel anguish and sorrow for the victims and their bereft families and communities, for the souls and poor families of the murderers, and, ultimately, for ourselves.   Lord, have Mercy.

A week ago on Thursday, we here at Trinity recited a “Blue Christmas” litany during the noon healing Mass and then had a remembrance luncheon for those in the parish family who are still grieving for the loss of their loved ones by death in the last year.  

As we approach the holidays, I have had numerous parishioners come to me and express their fear and sorrow at having to go through a time of “comfort and joy” when they themselves feel no comfort or joy, whether because of bereavement, or pain they suffer from bad relationships in their lives, whether with controlling and never satisfied parents, abusive or emotionally distant spouses, negligent and distant children, or former co-religionists in churches they have left because they were just too beaten up by them.  

Friday, as the news from Connecticut unfolded, Elena and I drove up to Portland to attend the annual performance of the Christmas Revels that evening.  The theme was an early American and Appalachian Christmas, with plenty of African-American spirituals, Sacred Harp shaped-note hymns, and the fuguing tunes of William Billings.  It was joyful, happy, and hopeful, with lots of music for and about children.  But the events in Connecticut were on everyone’s mind. 

Thinking about the dead first graders, I found myself weeping several times while children sang such things as “follow the stars, how they run; see the moon, how it grows,” “What a goodly thing if the children of the world could dwell together in peace,” and “God bless the Master of this House, and his good mistress too, and all the little children that round the table go.”  Even the call “rejoice, rejoice, rejoice” seemed hollow.    

Today, the third Sunday in Advent, is called Gaudete Sunday.  We lit the pink candle on the Advent Wreath, and I am in rose rather than blue or violet vestments.   This is the Sunday in Advent when our fearful expectation of the coming of Christ is supposed to turn into anticipated joy, when the coming of Christ is seen as the setting right of all things that are wrong, rather than as the ultimate comeuppance of the wicked, including us.   The Latin word Gaudete means “Rejoice.”

It is what Paul commands us to do in today’s epistle reading.  “Rejoice always, again I say, rejoice.”

But how can we rejoice in the face of such dreadful things? 

Rejoicing amid bad things is incongruous with how our emotions work.  The problem is hinted at in the contradiction we find when we read today’s Gospel, about John the Baptist’s severe moral teachings, along with Paul’s “Rejoice! Rejoice!”   It is shown, I think, by the difficulty that many of us have this time of year if we are bereaved and mourning, or suffering from isolation, loneliness, or despair.      

I do not think that Paul is giving us a dopey repetition of the nostrum, “Don’t worry, be happy!”  He wrote this letter to the Philippians while in prison, after having been beaten savagely several times for declining to denounce his faith.  And in his letters he certainly seems to have the full range of human emotion, from cold rage and blazing anger at times to gentle warmth and affection and even fall down laughing humor at others. 

There is something much deeper at work here.  Our emotional life has a certain shape and dynamic, and normally this horror and sorrow rule out rejoicing.  But perhaps our emotional lives are not complete.   We may seem constitutionally unable to feel joy at times of sorrow as Paul enjoins us, but perhaps our feelers are broken. 

Paul is not arguing for us to become clinically emotionally impaired, whether as rapid-cycling bipolars or sufferers from profound and dissociative mixed states of affect. 

Importantly, Paul says, “Rejoice in the Lord always.”   His point is that the source, object, and driver of our joy should be Jesus, not the circumstances we find ourselves in.   He as much as admits that our circumstances can be pretty bad when he says, “do not worry about anything that may happen,” but rather pray and ask God for our deepest desires in all aspects of our lives with a thankful heart.

What’s petitionary prayer and thanks got to do with it?   Our rejoicing should be in the Lord, that is, in Jesus, and Jesus taught us how to pray.   

In his great model of prayer the Our Father, Jesus gives us a whole list of yearnings we should feel and supplications or petitions we should present to God in our prayers:  the arrival of God’s reign, the fulfillment of what God wants on earth as well as in heaven, our daily sustenance, forgiveness of and reconciliation for our failings and the ability to forgive others and reconcile with them, to not be subjected to severe testing if possible, and to be delivered from all ill.    

Where in any of this is the gratitude Paul talks about, the thanksgiving?    

It is found in the opening words of the prayer, “Our Father in heaven, may your name be made holy.” This is the ultimate confession of God’s love and beauty, and of thankfulness for all that God’s love and beauty entails, all the blessings we enjoy.

That is really the heart of the matter.  Paul says that if we have thankful, yearning hearts full of petitions to God, the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will fill our hearts and minds with the knowledge and love of God.  Joy, rejoicing, is found in such peace.  

As I have said over this pulpit before, standing in awe before the eternal weight of glory, beholding the beatific vision of a Holy and perfectly loving God, looking upon the beauty of God and feeling the love of God in the heart of Jesus—this is the core of trusting God, of being open to God, and of being changed, and in changing the world.   It is also the core of peace in our hearts. 

It is at the heart of finding solace in grief, hope in despair, comfort amid horror, joy in all things even when they are pretty horrific, and the strength to advance God’s reign. 

The Revels performance is so moving to me each year for the same reason that I love our Trinity Church Advent Labyrinth walk, precisely because they celebrate the Light in the darkest and drearest part of the year.  A poem written for the Revels and read at each performance sums the idea up well: 

The Shortest Day
By Susan Cooper
And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us – listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!

Carols of this season put it well.  One says, “Good Christians all, this Christmas time, remember well, and keep in mind, what God Himself for us has done, in sending His Beloved Son.”  Another says, “So let us be happy, put sorrows away, remember Christ Jesus was born on this day.”  Another:  “In the deep mid-winter, Frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, Snow on snow, In the bleak mid-winter Long ago.  Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him Nor earth sustain; Heaven and earth shall flee away When He comes to reign: In the bleak mid-winter A stable-place sufficed The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.”  And the Latin carol we often hear choirs sing this time of year, “Gaudete, gaudete, Christus est natus ex Maria Virgine, gaudete!”

Hope in the darkness, joy amid wickedness.  Not joy at wickedness or darkness, but joy at the Light which the darkness cannot overcome, and yearning and hope for the Good and Love that Evil cannot destroy.

Thankful and yearning prayer in the midst of darkness, in the midst of mourning, in the depth of fear and despair, allows us to feel joy in the Lord.  And this is so even if such yearning and prayer is manifested merely as reveling and dearly loving our friends.  When consciously part of yearnings that we in our vulnerability intentionally reveal to God, such prayer empowers us, and moves us to change, and amend our lives.  It is at the heart of what John the Baptist preached, as dour and forbidden as he might at times seem to us. 

Let me close by reading what the Bishop of Washington D.C., the Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde,  wrote in reaction to these horrors: 

Thus says the Lord:
A voice is heard in Ramah,
lamentation and bitter weeping.
Rachel is weeping for her children;
she refuses to be comforted for her children,
because they are no more. Jeremiah 31:15-17

We are united tonight in grief.  Tomorrow shall we unite in resolve to ban weapons whose only purpose is to kill large numbers of people?  And to make it as easy to get mental health care as it is to buy a gun?

I join Dean Gary Hall of Washington National Cathedral in calling on our national leaders to enact more effective gun control measures. We know from experience that such calls go unheeded. But what if this time, you and I took up this issue and wouldn’t put it down until something was done? You will be hearing more about this from the dean and me in the days ahead, but for the moment, let us join in lamentation, in mourning and in prayer. Today we grieve, but soon we act.

Arise, cry out in the night,
as the watches of the night begin;
pour out your heart like water?
in the presence of the Lord.
Lift up your hands to him
for the lives of your children Lamentations 2.19

Other bishops, including our own Michael Hanley here in Oregon, have made similar calls.

Let us go forth from this Eucharist today, this Great Thanksgiving, renewed and recommitted to joy, to love, to caring for children, to supporting and healing the ill and reconciling hurt, and to forgiveness.  Of course, let us mourn the people and things we need to mourn.  And let us be angry as appropriate at the wrong way the world is.  But in this all, may joy in Christ inspire us to work for a better world, both in our own lives and in our communal life together. 

In the name of Christ, Amen. 

Imagine (Advent 2A, 3A, 4A Isaiah passages)

The Jesee Tree

Imagine

--The Rev. Anthony A. Hutchinson, Ph.D.

5 December 2010 Advent 2A Isaiah 11:1-10 

12 December 2010 Advent 3A Isaiah 35:1-10

19 December 2010 Advent 4A  Isaiah 7:10-16

A Comment on Advent Isaiah Readings

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen

There is a traditional West African story that in various forms has often been retold in literature and films.  A scorpion asks a frog to carry him across a river. The frog is afraid of being stung, but the scorpion reassures him that if it stung, the frog would sink and the scorpion would drown as well. The frog then agrees.  But in mid-river, the scorpion stings him, dooming them both.  When asked why, the scorpion explains, "I'm a scorpion; it's my nature."  They both then drown.

Now if the moral you draw from this story is “watch out—people do not always base their actions on rationally considered self-interest,” good.  But if you draw the moral, “there is no hope for anyone ever changing for the good,” I think you have made a serious mistake. 

The call throughout the Hebrew scriptures is, “Turn back,  turn back, O Israel—Shuvu, shuvu, Yisrael.”  And though we may have lost our freedom—whether through some primordial missing of the mark in the origin of our race (“Original Sin”), or through bad actions of our own that have become habits, that in turn have become addiction of one sort or another—the gist of much of the Christian Testament is that for God, nothing is impossible.    That doesn’t mean necessarily that God will take us where we want to go, but that God will take us where God wants us to be, no matter how hard it may appear.  Our job is to try get out of the way, to try to attune ourselves in such a way that we are working with God and not against him.  

Isaiah the Prophet, in Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling 

The Isaiah readings we often hear this time of year about “Immanuel,” and a shoot sprouting up from the stump of Jessee are both from the first part of the Book of Isaiah, and come from the lifetime of the prophet, living in the eighth century before the Common Era.  They address the question of whether what we see before our eyes at the present time is “all there is,” is “as good as it gets,” or is “as good as it can get.”   Their answer is an emphatic “No, there is much more and there will be much more.”

Isaiah lived in a world of great and horrifying change.  The first great two international Empires in world history—Assyria and Egypt—had arisen in the suite of turmoil caused by climate change that had disrupted the political arrangements of a thousand years.  Between the two lay the tiny kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the split remnants of the glory days of the early Hebrews, the united kingdom of Jesse’s son David and David’s son Solomon.  Most of the politics of both Israel, Judah, and their neighbor kingdom Aram, centered on the question of how to best survive with such threatening super states all around:  factions supported either allying with Egypt and standing up to the Assyrians or simply paying the exorbitant taxes the Assyrians demanded. 

Isaiah was called to be a prophet the year that king Uzziah died (Isa. 6:1).  This is significant because the short term of Uzziah’s successor was immediately followed by Ahaz, whom the Biblical authors considered to be one of the worst kings in the history of Judah.  Where Biblical authors say that Uzziah "did that which was right in the sight of the Lord" (2 Kings 15:3; 2 Chronicles 26:4-5), Ahaz was another thing altogether.   He was allured the various religious around him, cults that personified wealth, power, sexual pleasure, and fertility in the figures of such deities as Baal and Astarte his consort.  Ahaz even put their sculpted images and altars in the Temple of Yahweh at Jerusalem, probably arguing that Yahweh and Baal were different names for the same reality. Worst of all, when his international policies failed and he lost wars, he took this as evidence that he had done not enough to honor the gods of the “winners,” and thus revived the practice of human sacrifice, even sacrificing one of his own children. 

Isaiah saw all of this as an unmitigated disaster, one that basically had ended the line of Judah’s kings—going back to Jesse’s son David—and all that mattered in Judah’s national life. 

A new form of political leader had arisen in Assyria—Tiglath-Pileser III, who took power in a military coup and then proceeded to form the first Imperial Power in world history truly based on a centralized military and bureaucracy.  In 735 BCE, King Pekah of Israel (also called “Ephraim”) joined with Rezin, king of Aram with his capital at Damascus, in a tax revolt against Assyria.  The two threatened the king of Judah, Ahaz, to force him to join the revolt. 

In Isaiah 7, the prophet goes out to meet Ahaz as he is inspecting the city’s water works to insure he can withstand a siege from Aram and Israel.  He is contemplating throwing in his lot with the biggest “winner” of all, Assyria.   In a passage we often hear this time of year (Isa 7:1-17), he tells Ahaz,

Be careful, keep calm and don’t be afraid. Do not lose heart because of  . . . Aram and of [Israel], Yet this is what the Lord Yahweh says:
  ‘It will not take place,
   it will not happen, …
   Within sixty-five years
   [both countries will cease to exist]
If you do not stand firm in your faith,
   you will not stand at all. …’

Then Isaiah offers proof of the validity of his words by predicting that Ahaz will soon have a son, and that before that child old enough to know right and wrong (and reject Ahaz’s bad ways), the two nations that Ahaz is fearing will be destroyed and a great national disaster will make reduce the population to the degree that the boy will be raised eating the food of a changed economy:

… the Lord himself will give you^[ a sign: a young woman [that is what the Hebrew says, the Greek translation of it makes this sign all the more marvelous by suggesting, “a young woman who is as of now still a virgin”] will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him “God with us.” He will be eating curds and honey before he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right,  for before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste.  Yahweh will bring on you and on your people and on the house of your father a time unlike any since Ephraim broke away from Judah—he will bring the king of Assyria.

But Ahaz did not heed Isaiah’s call, and instead actually called upon Tiglath-Pileser (the Bible calls him “Pul” in 2 Kings 15:19) to come to his aid and put down the revolt.  This the Assyrian did with a vengeance.  By 732, the he had destroyed Damascus, installed an Assyrian governor, and made Aram a province of the Assyrian Empire.  By 722, Tiglath-Pileser’s successor had destroyed Israel as well.   He annexed all of Israel, killed its king, installed an Assyrian governor, and deported tens of thousands of the leading elites of the tiny rebellious state.  Israel, simply, had ceased to exist as a nation.  

 

Hezekiah's Water Tunnel

But the sign offered by Isaiah, the birth of a son to Ahaz, took place.  His name was Hezekiah, one of the kings of Judah most praised by the Biblical writers.   Hezekiah took the idols out of the Temple and reformed worship.  Much of the Bible’s treasure of Wisdom literature was written during Hezekiah’s reign, including Ecclessiastes, Proverbs, and the Song of Songs.  Hezekiah built the Broad Wall, which doubled the space protected from attack in the city, including for the first time the city’s western suburbs.  To keep the city supplied with water during an extended siege (a reasonable precaution, given the Assyrians’ methods) he had a 500 meter tunnel known as Hezekiah’s Tunnel (still there today) dug to bring in spring water underground.  

So Isaiah had some reason to hope against hope that finally things would be put to right.  He saw the death of Ahaz and Hezekiah’s accession to the throne as a break with the past, a new hope.    He described the line of the Davidic kings as a tree springing from David’s father Jesse.  As far as Isaiah was concerned, Ahaz had all but destroyed that tree.  It was now but the dead stump of a tree that had been cut down.  But the prospects for Hezekiah’s reign were good.  So he describes it as a sprout springing up from the dead stump: 

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,

and a branch shall grow out of his roots.

The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him,

the spirit of wisdom and understanding,

the spirit of counsel and might,

the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.

This is a loaded image rich with Isaiah’s acerbic irony.  He calls the Davidic dynasty a dead stump.  It is cut down and useless, seemingly at an end.  But this bit of satire contains a hope rooted in Isaiah’s trust in God to be faithful to his promises.

  

Portrayal of good king Hezekiah in crown of Holy Roman Emperors

He makes Hezekiah a tender sprout or shoot coming up from the apparently dead stump.  He describes the qualities of an ideal ruler that he thinks will make such a revival possible: 

His delight shall be in awe before Yahweh.

He shall not judge by what his eyes see,

or decide by what his ears hear;

but with justice he shall vindicate the poor,

and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;

he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,

and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.

Justice shall be the belt around his waist,

and faithfulness the belt around his loins.

But then in a leap of fantastic imagination, he says that this ideal king of the future will make all things right:

The wolf shall live with the lamb,

the leopard shall lie down with the kid,

the calf and the lion and the fatling together,

and a little child shall lead them.

The cow and the bear shall graze,

their young shall lie down together;

and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,

and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.

No one will hurt or destroy

On all my holy mountain;

For the earth will be full of the knowledge of Yahweh

As the waters cover the sea.

On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

Modern readers can look at this and think, “Clearly, Isaiah was getting carried away by his own enthusiasm for the new king.”  We do this because we have become somewhat jaded about what political leaders can do.  We all remember what high expectations everyone had (sympathetically or otherwise) when Barrack Obama became President of the U.S.  Many at the time said that there was no way that this man who was elected on a platform of hope for change could reasonably fulfill his supporters expectations.   They did so based on prior experience with new Presidents:  the job is just too hard and complicated for anyone to do it perfectly.  The Onion satirically headlined at the time. “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job.”

Hezekiah did turn things around in many ways for Judah, but did not end up being the ideal king of the future in Isaiah’s rich poetry.   He faced the same international relations problems as Ahaz, and eventually revolted against Assyria too, unsuccessfully trying to get Egypt to come to his aid.  Archaeology suggests that his reforms in putting down irregular worship domestically were not as thorough as the Biblical authors describe.  At one point later in his life, Isaiah even had to chastise Hezekiah for getting too cozy with another Assyrian rival, Babylon (2 Kings 20:12-19). 

But there is something larger at work here than simple naïve enthusiasm for a new king.  The transcendent hope expressed in the image of transformed nature is found elsewhere in the first part of Isaiah in passages not directly addressing the ideal future king, but rather addressing in general Yahweh’s goodness and ultimate triumph over what is wrong in the world. In Isaiah 35 (perhaps written after Hezekiah had turned out not to be the true ideal king of the future), we read:

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,

the desert shall rejoice and blossom;

…

They shall see the glory of the LORD,

the majesty of our God.

…

Here is your God.

He will come with vengeance,

with terrible recompense.

He will come and save you."

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,

and the ears of the deaf unstopped;

then the lame shall leap like a deer,

and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.

For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,

and streams in the desert;

the burning sand shall become a pool,

and the thirsty ground springs of water.

Such hope and poetic power ensured that the words of Isaiah would live, and his imaginative portrayal of an ideal future king who would set all things right lived on with them.  When the early Gospel writers were trying to find the words to describe Jesus, they turned to Isaiah’s ideal future king regularly.    “Son of David,” “Prince of Peace,” “Immanuel,” “son of a virgin”—all of these images and more come from Isaiah or Greek versions of Isaiah.But are the Gospel writers’ use of Isaiah in this way just a case of a tall tale growing in the retelling?   I think that Christian faith requires us to say “No.”

Note that Isaiah’s image of the ideal king of the future contains elements that are patently self-contradictory and impossible from a literal reading:  he says that as a result of the future king’s rule, carnivores and herbivores will all eat grass, and no natural predation will occur.    Isaiah was not an ignorant man.  He knew very well that cows and sheep had different digestive systems from lions and panthers, and that predation was in the very nature of some animals.  Yet he says that in the ideal future reign, all animals would live without the battle of “nature red in tooth and claw.”   

He is basically saying that as the result of the future ideal king, even nature itself will be transcended, and the seeming impossible will be made possible.  I doubt that he meant such words literally applying to Hezekiah.  He intended them metaphorically.  He was imagining a world where predation ceased, whether it was Assyrians on petty states, the rich on the poor, or lions and bears on sheep and cows. 

And here we come to the central point I want to take from these passages today—imagination.  In a world that is perhaps too concerned about the literal meaning of things, about the practical, and about the realistically feasible or likely, our imagination is a great gift. 

“He’s imagining things.”  “Isaiah has let his imagination get the better of him.”  “The Gospel writers simply imagined that Isaiah foretold the birth of Jesus.”  All of these phrases betray a contempt, or at least a healthy suspicion, of the human imagination. 

We tend to see the imagination as a creative activity of the mind.  But the great Church fathers, most specifically St. Thomas Aquinas, saw the imagination as an instrument of perception, as a way of seeing things that were not otherwise readily apparent to the senses.  The basis of St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises is trained use of the imagination in reflection on scriptural passages.

The metaphorical use of the “heart” (“of one heart and mind” “follow your heart”) has suffered a similar fate in the West as the idea of the imagination.  We tend to think the heart is merely the center of emotion or feeling, and as a result it is sometimes seen as a mere epiphenomenon.   But, as Cynthia Bourgeault points out, traditionally in Western and Eastern spiritualities, the heart too is an organ of perception, something with which we see that which is not otherwise readily apparent.   Paying attention to how we emotionally react to things can tell us many things about ourselves, and with this, about our world. 

Isaiah here is imagining what he certainly knew was impossible under normal circumstances.  He imagines the transformation of nature itself—not only of lions, bears, panthers, asps, and vipers, but of human beings and their rulers.  His imagination is based on trust in God’s promise, and on God’s goodness and justice. 

When we Christians apply these prophecies about the ideal future Davidic king, this anointed one (or “Messiah”) , to Jesus of Nazareth, it is based on our experience of the Risen One’s power to transform us and those around us.  It is an act of imagination, to be sure, but one that we believe  describes the underlying realities of the world around us.  

We all need hope desperately.  This is a world that is lost if it does not have hope.  Without hope, we are likely to think that change is impossible, that how things are now are as good as it possibly can get, and that isn’t too good.  Without hope, without our imaginations seeing the ground for hope beyond the current crisis or horror, we are likely to see the world wholly as described in the story of the scorpion and the frog.

In our prayers during the rest of Advent, let us use our hearts to perceive, let us use our imaginations to see.  Let us be taken up into these stories.  As we near Christmas, let us, in the words of the Nine Lessons and Carols Service, ourselves go with the shepherds and see this babe lying in a manger.   May we see the vision of a transformed world that Isaiah saw, and see it in the person of Christ.

In the name of Christ, Amen. 

Let us pray.

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Night is Almost Over (Advent 1A)

Night is Almost Over

28 November 2010

Advent 1 A

Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44; Psalm 122

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen

           

Romans 13:8-14

⁸Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for those who love others have fulfilled the law. ⁹The commandments, "Do not commit adultery," "Do not murder," "Do not steal," "Do not covet," and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: "Love your neighbor as yourself." ¹⁰Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. ¹¹And do this, because you recognize what time it is: The hour has come for you to wake up from your sleep, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first came to faith. ¹²The night is nearly over; day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. ¹³Let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and licentiousness, not in rivalry and jealousy.¹⁴Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and stop worrying about how to gratify the raging desires of the you that resists God.  (trans. –AAH)

There are different ways of waking up.  There are bad ways of waking up and good ways.  When I am jolted from a comfortable and overly long dream by the sounding of the alarm clock and jump out of bed, it takes me an hour or more, and several cups of coffee to shake off the last remnants of the stupidity of sleep.  When I feel my wife lean over and kiss the back of my neck, and then we gently cuddle for a while before we start to say prayers of discuss plans for the day, I ease into the day more easily.  When I wake up without any external stimuli except perhaps the first rays of the new day peeking into the room or maybe the rich smell of coffee coming from the kitchen, and lie still, then maybe gently stretch like a cat, I gradually get out of bed and happily begin the day.  

Today’s epistle reading, all about waking up, comes from the closing section of Paul’s letter to the Christians living in Rome.  He is counseling them to be good, to amend their lives.  Importantly he says that they do not need to worry about rules or points of purity in and of themselves.  Rather, he says, they need to show love to each other.  He says that love in fact is the source of all truly good action.  If you truly love God and neighbor, everything else will take care of itself and there is no worry about the specifics of rules.  He then uses the graphic image of waking up in the morning and putting on clothes for the new day to describe why showing love and acting in love it is so important: “The hour has come for you to wake up from your sleep, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first came to faith. ¹²The night is nearly over; day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. … clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and stop worrying about how to gratify the raging desires of the flesh.”

“Salvation is nearer now than when we first came to the faith.”  Paul is talking about the end time, the day when God will act to save his people, the day when all wrong will be put to right and all accounts settled.  He places this in the future, and given the passage of time, he notes that whenever this Great Day of Salvation happens, it is always closer and closer to us.  Following Jesus’ teaching, he believes that in some ways the Great Day has already started, but is not here in fullness quite yet.  We are living in the “between time,” the twilight between night’s darkness and day’s brightness.”  

“Night is nearly over.”  Twilight is a curious state—part day, part night.  It can signal the onset of night, or precede the breaking of day.   Paul wants us to be sure that we look at the mixed signals around us and realize that God is at work and things are going to get better, not worse.  It is going to get lighter, not darker.  The between time we live in once we have come to faith is the twilight leading to day, not to night. 

In Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet at daybreak gently argue whether they have heard the nightingale or the lark, because they want the night to be longer and do not want the day that will separate them to come.  But Paul wants the night to end and the day to come.  Night here is this messed-up world, the age in which we live, characterized by abuse of the good creation God has given us, of abuse of ourselves and fellow creatures.  Day here is the coming of God’s reign, the age to come, when all will be set to right.   

When I was young, I sometimes heard in Church sermons of what they called the “signs of the times,” or the signs of the end.  Most of these were disastrous indications of the world going to hell and destruction.   I only later learned that this was a gross misunderstanding of the New Testament idea of  “signs of the times.”  In Matthew 16:1-3, the Pharisees and Sadducees come to Jesus and ask him to show them a sign from heaven.   They have heard of his marvelous healings and acts, which he says is a sign that the reign of God has come near.  They want a proof before they’ll believe his claims.   He replies, “You know how to read the weather, but not read the signs of the times.^”  For Jesus, his marvelous acts that showed God’s grace and love and healing were the true signs of what time we live in.  

Paul agrees—this twilight is leading to light, not darkness.  He wants the night—with its “works of darkness”—to end. 

He uses the image of all night chaotic and promiscuous partying that will surely be cause for regret and headaches the next morning to describe such “works of darkness,” that is, the actions that are symptomatic of this messed up and unjust word.  He also adds jealousies and strife as other examples of the behavior in this age that will not be present in the age to come. “Because the day is coming,” he says, “stop this bad behavior right now.” 

 “Wake up,” he says, “and put away this age’s abuse of yourselves and of others, its injustice, its selfishness, its absorption in self, and put on new clothes for the new day.”  He calls them “armor of light” as if to say that the clothes we put on for the new day serve as a hedge or protection against the darkness of the current age.  “Actually,” he says, “put on as your new clothes Jesus Christ himself.”  In so doing we will stop “making provisions for the desires of the flesh,” a phrase that for him simply means “stop planning and doing all we can to satisfy the raging urges of the you that resists God.” 

Because he uses the image of flesh here, and describes the works of darkness as “orgies, drunkenness, licentiousness, promiscuity, anger, and rage,” we tend to think that Paul is calling us to wake up from our debaucheries and try to whip ourselves into submission to God’s commandments and rules.  But this misses Paul’s point.  Again, for him, all such rules are summed up in the commandments to love God and love one’s neighbor.  He is not asking us to resist and beat down our natural urges, forsake all pleasures and have contempt for our bodies.  He is simply asking us to stop worrying so much satisfying those raging urges that take us away from the love of God and of others.    By putting on Christ as clothing, he says, we take the step necessary to make all this take care of itself.   Like an armor that keeps us in the daylight and turns aside the remaining darkness of night, being clothed in Christ ensures that we stay awake, and remain surely in the coming day.   

It’s the difference between “good” waking up and “bad” waking up.  

Beating ourselves into submission and forcing ourselves to follow rules against “works of darkness” is a recipe for unhappiness and tension—the very kind of tension that leads us to feel compelled to engage in works of darkness.  “Clothing ourselves in Christ” will bring us to the light more and more, and actually empower us to show love, and the bad behaviors will of themselves drop off and cease. 

Paul is talking about putting the example of Christ before our eyes, putting gratitude for what he has done for us in our hearts.  A heart full of gratitude has little room for the selfishness that generates unjust, hurtful, abusive, and wanton acts. 

This is the first Sunday of Advent.  This is a penitential season.  I pray that sometime before the Christmas Feast begins in four weeks, we all may look into our own hearts, and try to see the darkness that remains there.  Let’s try to be honest.   What makes us uncomfortable, ashamed, angry, or annoyed are good indicators of possible problems.   And then turn them over to God.  If you think it might help, seek a wise and a discreet priest or counselor to talk things through.  And then rather than worrying about the problems that are you, reflect on Jesus.  Think on his life.  Read the Gospels.  And pray to him and through him.   Don’t try to take charge.  Let him take charge. 

In the name of Christ, Amen. 

Let us pray.

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

 

Collect for Advent

A Note on Advent Prayer

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer wrote this collect and placed it in the first English Book of Common Prayer (1549) for the first Sunday of Advent. From 1662 on, prayer books have given the instruction that it be said daily throughout the entire Advent Season, It is based on the epistle for the First Sunday of Advent, Romans 13:8-14 (my translation):

⁸Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for those who love others have fulfilled the law. ⁹The commandments, "Do not commit adultery," "Do not murder," "Do not steal," "Do not covet," and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: "Love your neighbor as yourself." ¹⁰Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. ¹¹And do this, because you recognize what time it is in which we live. The hour has come for you to wake up from your sleep, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first came to faith. ¹²The night is nearly over; day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. ¹³Let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and licentiousness, not in rivalry and jealousy.¹⁴Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and stop worrying about how to gratify the raging desires of the you that resists God.