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Sermon for Advent 1A

December 2, 2001

Jesus said to his disciples, “Keep awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.”

In this verse from the Gospel lesson assigned for this First Sunday of Advent, Jesus is speaking about the future coming—the advent—of the Son of Man, who will come with the power of God to bring judgment and renewal to the earth. Jesus warns his disciples that the Son of Man will come at a time they do not expect, when they are right in the middle of doing something else, anything else, eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, just like the people in the time of Noah, before the flood came and swept them all away. Jesus warns his disciples that the moment of judgment and renewal comes when everything else is going on, when the whole blooming bustling world is laboring and grinding along as usual, at a day and an hour and a moment that they would least expect. “Therefore,” Jesus says, “Keep awake; stay alert; wake up your soul; because you want to see your Lord, and recognize your Lord, and greet your Lord when he comes.” “That way,” Jesus says, “he won’t have to break into your spirit like a thief breaking into your house—but you may welcome him in as Lord and Savior and Friend whom you have stayed awake to greet.”

Jesus’ words here about the unexpected advent of the Son of Man—the unexpected advent of judgment and renewal—can be understood on several different levels.

One one level, of course, Jesus is talking about the end of the world, the apocalypse, the parousia, the unimaginable moment yet to come when God’s glory will be revealed in its fullness in everything, and everything that is not able to stand in God’s glory will be burned away, and everything that rejoices in God’s glory will be raised up and made new and made whole and made forever. That’s what Paul is talking about in the Epistle today, when he says to the Romans, “Salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light” so that when the light comes, we will be able to stand in it. The warning is that the end of all things will come at a moment we do not expect, so we must be awake for judgment and renewal at any time.

On a second level, Jesus’ words can be understood to refer, not to the end of the whole world, but to the ends of our individual worlds, the ends of our individual lives, when we will be judged and renewed in the nearer presence of God. Jesus in the Gospel today warns us that our deaths will come at a moment we do not expect. And that is not an easy thing for us to hear. We contemporary Americans like to think that we are functionally immortal: that if we’re just smart enough and careful enough, nothing ever needs to go wrong in our lives—and if something ever does go wrong, then we ought to be able to find someone to blame. We don’t like to think that our busy, challenging, rewarding lives will end in death, and there’s no way we can predict or control when that death will come. But then something happens that reminds us of the fragility of life—a plane crashes into a building; the doctor calls after a routine check-up and says, “We might have found something; I want you to come in for more tests”; a car swerves around a school bus, even though its red flashers are on, and a child is struck—something happens that reminds us of the fragility of life, and we remember with a shock how close to us death can be. And Jesus says, “Keep awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” The warning is that the end of our lives will come at a moment we do not expect, so we must be awake for judgment and renewal at any time.

There is yet a third level on which we can understand Jesus’ words: a level that refers not to the end of the world, nor to the end of our own lives, but to the end—and the new beginning—that comes to us in every moment, every action, every experience of life. Every moment of our lives is the ending of one thing and the beginning of another: one moment I’m preaching, and the next moment I’m joining in the Creed; one moment you’re a parent of teenagers, with all the craziness that brings, and the next moment your kids have gone off to college and the house seems suddenly too big, too quiet, too empty; one moment of solitude is interrupted by the ringing of the phone, and the next moment you’re sharing comfort and compassion and hope with a friend who is grieving. In every moment God calls us to let go of the past and be open to the future; in every moment God calls us to die a little bit to what has been so that we may live a little bit more for what is yet to be; in every moment God accepts what we have done with the possibilities God has given us, and God gives us new possibilities for what we can do and what we can be next. Every moment is a moment of judgment and renewal; every moment is a time when our Lord comes near to us; every moment is an advent of Christ in the glory of God. What we need to do is to wake up, to be awake enough to recognize Christ coming to us in all the judgments and renewals, all the endings and beginnings, that make up the stuff of our lives.

One day earlier this week, just after the big snowstorm, I was driving on my way to an appointment. And I was in one of those moods where my mind was darting around to everything except the present moment: I was worrying about a conversation I’d had the day before where I didn’t think I’d been very charitable or very understanding to the other person, and I was feeling bad about that; I was feeling anxious about a couple of things coming up later in the day, one of which had the potential to be rather unpleasant; I was fantasizing about how nice it would be to just keep on driving, to go on an impromptu sight-seeing tour of snow-covered hills and forests; anything but where I was at that moment. Then a car cut ahead of me and I had to pay attention—and  suddenly I noticed how bright everything around me seemed. It was a cloudy, overcast day, there was even some fog in the air—but it didn’t seem gloomy or dark at all. The snow on the ground, the snow clinging to the branches of the trees, the clouds overhead, even the fog in the distance, all seemed to be suffused with a soft but radiant white light. It wasn’t like the golden light of direct sunshine of course; not so brilliant, not so blinding—but this white light was coming from everything, there were no dark shadows left out of the light, there was nothing that did not participate in that pervasive radiance. I just enjoyed that beauty for a moment—and then it clicked, and I sort of looked up and said, “Okay God, I get the message.”

That white light that was in everything was like the light of Christ that comes to meet us in every moment. Not brilliant and blinding like direct sunlight or special revelation; but the advent of God’s love for us in Jesus that is there in every moment, every occasion, every experience—provided we are awake and aware enough to see it. Seeing that white light shining in everything around me reminded me that I could look for the light of Christ in everything that I was doing that day—and it reminded me that in the judgment and renewal of Christ’s love, I could let go of worry and anxiety, I could let God be the judge, not me, and therefore I could be open to the new possibilities that God would give me in every new experience. That one moment, seeing that white light transformed the rest of the day, as it made me more awake to look for the coming of Christ in whatever each experience would bring.

And in a real way, that is what this season of Advent is all about: being awake to witness the coming of Christ, not just at the end of the world, not just at the end of our lives, but in every moment, in every ending and beginning that moves us on our way through life. We could even say that waking up to see the advent of Christ in this present moment is what prepares us, what trains us, what strengthens us, to welcome the coming of Christ to us at the time of our death, and to be partners in the glory of Christ when he comes at last “with clouds descending” to remake and renew our world. It is because we learn to see the coming of Christ now in the time of this mortal life that we will rejoice to see the coming of Christ in the time of the life that does not end. That is God’s Advent call to us.

Jesus said to his disciples, “Keep awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” Let it be our prayer today, on this First Sunday of Advent, that we may indeed be awake to see the coming of our Lord today, and tomorrow, and all times and places, and for all eternity.

In the Name of God: Yahweh, Jesus, and Holy Spirit. Amen.