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.