Wake Up and…
First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
1st Sunday in Advent – December 2, 2007
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[Texts: Romans 13:11-14/Matthew 24:36-44]

Wake up . . . two little words that most of us hate to hear. “Wake up” signals the end of pleasant slumber. “Wake up” calls us to return to harsh reality. “Wake up” says that it’s time to be alert and to be active. Wake up!

I “Googled” “Wake up and” and got tons of hits! What most interested me were the number of books with “wake up and” or just “wake up” in their titles – over 44,000! By and large the titles had to do with wake up calls – poor reading scores, student plagiarism, the poverty of the two-thirds world and so forth. Others had a similar content but employed the “wake up and smell the coffee” motif. In other words, you’re drowsy while something is happening right in front of you – so wake up!

Wake up, then, also carries the idea of “watch out” with it. Watch out, be vigilant, be alert – wake up; that is what we hear in the texts from Romans and Matthew today and it’s the great theme of the Advent season. Liturgical scholar and author Gabe Huck observes, “A character in one of J.D. Salinger’s short stories says that the most important word in the Bible is ‘watch.’ That person would love Advent and especially the Gospel. “Be on the watch! Stay awake! Watch with a sharp eye! Look around you! Be on guard! Why would ‘watch’ be anyone’s favorite notion? How do we watch? What are we watching for? . . . What would help us stay awake and watch?” [Advent LTP, p. 22-3]

Huck’s questions are quite appropriate. I think we’ve become a nation more accustomed to watching in the last few years. We’re certainly on the alert in airports and when traveling – if for no other reason than annoyance at times – and especially when traveling abroad. In fact, there are some who would like us to believe that this increased watching and the world’s situation – shaky economy, growing violence, a general sense of unease – are all signs of the times leading to the Lord’s imminent return. I’m not so sure they’re correct.

The early church expected that the Lord’s parousia – his return or second coming – was imminent, near at hand. We can certainly catch that feeling in the reading from Romans – “the night is far gone, the day is near” – and it’s there in the Matthew passage, too – “keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” Many were, no doubt, disappointed when the parousia was delayed. As I am sure others who predict its arrival and never accurately – like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Seventh Day Adventists, the followers of Harold Camping on Family Radio, Tim LaHaye and Hal Lindsay – are as well. Quite honestly, I don’t think that is what God is about, let me explain.

Both of these texts use apocalyptic language. Apocalyptic is a literary genre that is quite complex, very rich and often quite misunderstood. It involves a vision of the world to come. As the late Roman Catholic Biblical Scholar Raymond Brown wrote, “The vision of the supernatural world or of the future helps to interpret present circumstances on earth, which are almost always tragic.” [An Introduction to the New Testament, p. 775] It is vibrant, intense, expectant language designed to wake us up and get us on to the right track. It is also language that designed to comfort people going through rough times. Apocalyptic says: “Hang in there! Help is on the way!” Apocalyptic, however, is not designed to necessarily be productive of anything but a heightened sense of awareness or, perhaps, comfort.

John L. McKenzie, another Biblical scholar, points out: “Apocalypse is the cry of the helpless, who are borne passively by events which they cannot influence, much less control. The cry of the helpless is often vindictive, expressing impotent rage at reality. Apocalyptic rage is a flight from reality, a plea to God to fulfill their wishes and prove them right and the other wrong. Apocalyptic believers could hardly think the saying, ‘Go, make disciples of all nations,’ was addressed to them. Had apocalyptic believers dominated the church since the first century, there would have been no missions to unbelievers, no schools, no hospitals, no orphanages, no almsgiving. The helpless cannot afford to think of such enterprises; they can only await the act of God, and then complain because that act is so long delayed. The gospels and epistles rather tell the believers that they are the act of God.” [The New Testament without Illusion (1982) quoted in Advent, p. 25.]

There’s the point, we are the act of God. Don’t go worrying about the second coming until you’ve started to live out the first. I am absolutely convinced that the Lord is not coming back until we get it right – and we don’t. We don’t. We don’t love each other as we should. We don’t behave toward each other as we should. We don’t do the ministry that we’re to do. We don’t. So why should he come back? We’re not ready – we’re not ready. What we are to wake up to, to watch for, to be on the alert for is right there in McKenzie’s last line – “The gospels and the epistles rather tell the believers that they are the act of God.” The time of the Lord’s coming, as Paul tells the Romans, is a kairos moment. That is, it’s not clock time, which is chronos, but God’s time, the right time, the appropriate time is kairos. It’s like one commercial used to say that every time is time for consuming that product, kairos says every moment is about our being and our acting as God’s people.

Advent serves as a wake up call for us as we come near to the end of one calendar and approach a new one. It reminds us that we’re to wake up and function as God’s people, making a difference in the world and making a difference the lives around us. Each day is precious, every moment not to be wasted because God is in it, in the moment, and in that moment we have the ability to touch and be touched by God, we have the ability to touch and change others as we live toward the Other – as our own lives are changed.

Paul says “put on Jesus Christ,” get ourselves appropriately dressed. He also talks about armor; the armor he tells us to put on, the principles that will protect us each day are those virtues that lead us into God’s life. Remember that virtue implies moral excellence or character. Our armor, then, is the so-called ‘theological virtues,” because they lead us into God’s life: faith, hope and love. The sacrament we’re about to share is a visible, tangible reminder of those virtues and a sign to us of God’s presence to us and God’s care for us in this moment and in every moment. Let me remind you, again, of what we’re called to be as a result of that. As Augustine said to his people in Hippo Regius back in the early history of the church, “You are what you eat.” You partake of Christ and you become Christ. So after eating at this table, go out and live like the One you have put on, whose life you have put on. Go live like Christ, because that’s what we’re to wake up, watch out and do. May it ever be so. Amen.