Breaking Dawn (Advent 1A)

Breaking Dawn

1 December 2019

Advent 1 A

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

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

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

           

When I first became an Episcopalian, I was taken aback when Advent came.  For me, it had always been the time for preparing for Christmas.  But then, right there in the lectionary, it was all about the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord!  Yikes!  But a kind priest resolved my conflict.  Advent is the season where we focus on the once and future coming of our Lord.  It happened back then, but it will happen still in the future.  As the Gospel of John puts it, “the hour is coming, and now is.” 

It is part and parcel with the heart of our faith.  We look about the world and see it is broken.  We hope for God to come and set it right.  That’s what “day of judgment” means, after all.  In the Old Testament, the Book of Judges is not about legal court and people in white powdered wigs wielding gavels and being calle “Your Honor.”  It is about people like Samson, Deborah, Judith, Barak:  military heroes who set things right and liberate the oppressed.  That’s the basic idea of the “Day of Judgment.”  But if we ask who are the wicked who might get the worse of it when things are set right, if we are honest, we see that, in the words of Pogo, “we have met the enemy and he is us.”  So we fear the day of judgment as well as hope for it. 

Hope.  That’s what Advent is all about.  We see the world and see that, even 2,000 years after the coming of our Lord in the flesh, it is still a profoundly broken place.  And, in the words of the poet, what happens to hope deferred?  Does it dry like a raisin in the sun? Or does it explode?  Most of the time, hope too long deferred just dies. 

The message of Advent, which talks about how God has come already and will still come again, is this:  don’t give up on hope. 

Today’s readings all have this dual past/present vs. future character.  Isaiah says the great coming day is not one of military victory, but rather one where all people beat their weapons into agricultural tools.  Jesus says the coming day will come suddenly and take all by surprise.  The Psalm gives perhaps the most ironic counsel of all scripture: pray for the peace of Jerusalem?  Was there ever a place more war-torn and divided than the Holy City?  And isn’t religion—claims that God gave this piece of real estate to my tribe and not to yours—at fault?  .

The epistle tells us that the coming day is already upon us:  wake up! 

There are bad ways of waking up and good ways.  When I am jolted from a comfortable and overly long dream by an alarm clock and jump out of bed, it takes me a couple of hours and several cups of coffee to shake off the last remnants of sleep’s stupidity.  When I feel Elena 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 gently.  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.  

Paul tells us to cast away the works more suited to the dark of night and put on the armor of daylight.  Put on Christ.  Importantly he says we need not worry about rules or points of purity in and of themselves.  Rather, show love to each other.  He says that love in fact is the source of all truly good action.  If we love God and neighbor, things will take care of themselves and there is no need to 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.”

“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. 

When I was young, I sometimes heard in Church sermons on 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 about satisfying those raging urges since they take us away from the love of God and of others.    By putting on Christ as clothing, he says, we let go so that all this can 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. 

Sleepers, awake!  Cast aside the works of darkness and don the armor of light.  Put on Christ.  And all will take care of itself. 

In the name of Christ, Amen.