"Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord."

"Keep awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming."

"You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep."

One of the most powerful metaphors, one of the most persistent themes, of the Advent season is the image of seeing the light, the image of waking up from sleep. Like all powerful metaphors, the metaphor of waking up is intended to mean many different things, in many different contexts, for many different people. We in the scientific West like things to have one meaning, one significance; so spiritual metaphors that are intended to have multiple meanings can make us kind of nervous. But that is the way of spiritual meaning: it can only come to its full significance when it means something for you, in your actual life and your unique experience. And how we discover our meanings for spiritual metaphors, and take our meanings deeper by learning from each other's meanings--that's one of the main practices of spiritual growth in the church. So what can we do with the metaphor of waking up? We all know the words--but what could the words mean for real people living real lives? What could the words mean for you living your real life?

In the late 1970s, when I was living in Minneapolis the first time, going to graduate school at the U, I came about as close as I have ever come to a clinical depression. I was never diagnosed or treated for it, so medically speaking I don't know how bad I was. But I know I went through a lot of my days feeling like I was wrapped in a gray fog, feeling like I was half sleep-walking, being so wrapped up in my own anxiety and unhappiness that everything else seemed just slightly unreal to me. I went to class, and I held a job, and I put one foot in front of the other, and my life went on--but I stared at the walls a lot, and I drank too much, and it felt like all the important stuff in life kept passing me by.

Then one day I was walking home from my job at Farmers & Mechanics Bank, and for some reason I looked up, and I noticed on a building--a building I'd walked by dozens and dozens of times without ever really looking at--on this building, right there just below the cornice of the roof there was a band of yellow. I don't remember now if it was yellow stone or yellow brick or just yellow paint--but there on a building I had always thought was plain featureless gray there was yellow. And just seeing that bit of color where I had thought everything was gray felt like waking up, it was like having my eyes opened where they'd been half-shut all the time, it was like seeing light where before everything had been dim and shadowy, it was like stumbling out of sleep-walking and coming awake. And in that moment I think it was God giving me the grace to recognize that I didn't need to stay wrapped up in my own sadness and loneliness and anxiety, but that, if I wanted to, I could keep awake to the presence of colors and experiences and people and Spirit that would be more engaging and more life-giving than the depressive mood I had allowed myself to become so accustomed to. Looking back, I think that depressive episode began to lift on that day--though of course it took many more days to get myself really feeling back together.

That's one thing it can mean to wake up.

Years ago I had a conversation with a man who was very involved in advocacy and service and ministry with the homeless. He told me that he first got involved with homeless ministry when his church gathered a cadre of volunteers to go work for a night in a shelter. He went because it was a church thing and he did church things, and he knew that homelessness was an important issue and he ought to do something about it. But that night at the shelter, he spent almost the entire night talking with one man who had just come in off the street. They talked about how hard it is to make a life on the streets, and how it only takes one or two bad financial turns to get you to a place where you can't pay your rent and you lose your home; they talked about how you keep your hopes up when everything seems hopeless; they talked about finding gifts of God in the simplest little things that keep you going from day to day.

And my friend said two things happened for him in that conversation. First, he realized that basic things in life, things like food and shelter and clothing and staying warm and having someplace to go, things we all take for granted, are things that should not be taken for granted, and that he felt a profound gratitude for his life and for the good conditions in which he was able to live it. The second thing that happened was that he began to see the homeless man as a person, someone with a name and a story and an identity, someone who was not just a statistic or a stereotype or a ministry-client, but a person. He said later it was in that conversation that he first began to understand that social ministry isn't something to do for the poor, but something to do with the poor, it's a way to be in mutual relationship--not just one-way relationship but mutual relationship--in order to build up better communal well-being for everyone. He said having that conversation was for him like waking up, it was like having his eyes opened to see something he'd not seen before, it was like becoming aware of facts and realities that were part of his everyday waking consciousness but he'd never before realized actually made a difference to him. That experience in the shelter that night helped him wake up to a real sense of personal vocation in his life.

That's another thing it can mean to wake up.

And I think we all have moments like that, experiences where we wake up to the presence of God, the coming, the advent, of Christ, into the midst of ordinary activities. What does waking up mean to you? I want you to think of some time in your life when you felt you woke up to something new--or maybe something going on in your life right now where you feel God is calling you to be more aware, to be more attentive, to be more awake. Think of a story of your waking up. Then find one other person, somewhere in this church, and tell them your story. Share your waking-up stories with each other--and be awake to each other in the stories you share.

[Time for storytelling. While the grownups are sharing stories, invite the kids up front and ask them how they think they can "wake up" and "be ready" for Jesus.]

How was that? Did you hear a story from someone that helps you understand what it can mean to wake up to the coming of Christ? Did you tell a story that helps you be more awake to the ways Christ comes into your life?

Advent is our time to be specially mindful of being awake to the coming of Jesus. In this in-between time, this time between the First Advent of Jesus as a baby in Bethlehem and the Second Advent of Jesus as the One who will bring all things to their fulfillment--in this in-between time Jesus comes to us, Jesus makes his advent to us, in all kinds of ways, in all sorts of experiences, in all manner of people. What we have to do is be attentive enough and aware enough and awake enough to recognize Jesus when he comes. As Paul wrote to the Romans, now is the moment for us to wake from sleep. How will you wake up this Advent?