Sermon: Awake and Ready

Matthew 24:36-44

Awake and Ready

James Sledge                                                               December 1, 2013 – Advent 1

I want you to do a bit of imagining with me this morning. Imagine that you have just learned that you have one year to live. In this imaginary situation, you will be able to live a perfectly normal life for most of that time. You will not feel bad, and you will be able to do pretty much anything you can do now. But there is nothing you or anyone else can do to change the situation. You have a year to live.

If you found yourself in such a situation, how would that impact you? What would change? What would you do differently? What things that are unimportant in your life right now might become more so? What things that are important now might not seem so important anymore? What would you start doing? What would you stop doing? Who would matter more? Who would matter less? Take a moment to mull all that over.

When someone has a dramatic event in life – a brush with death, the loss of job or career, the loss or someone important, or some other dramatic change in life circumstances – it’s sometimes referred to as “a wakeup call.” Some of you may have had one. Something happens that shakes us, and suddenly things look different, suddenly our perspective changes.

It’s an interesting metaphor, this “wakeup call.” It suggests that we were, in some way, sleeping up until we were roused into a state of alertness. But what does it mean to say that, metaphorically at least, we’ve been asleep?

Have you ever driven somewhere – work, school, the mall – and upon arriving you cannot actually recall the drive? You have no idea if the lights along the way were green or red. You clearly made it safely from point A to point B, but for all you know, you ran several red lights or stop signs. It’s like you were sleepwalking, or, in this case, sleep-driving.

Think of the things that lull us to sleep as we live our lives: long, monotonous commutes, a teacher, professor, or boss who drones on and on, long hours at a job that has lost interest or excitement for us. We can start simply to go through the motions, to sleepwalk , and it may touch all facets of our lives. We get home, grab a bite, get a drink, plop down on the couch and flip on the TV, or start checking out texts, tweets, and Facebook posts. We may even do all this in the company of friends or family yet hardly be aware of one another.

Most of us have some familiarity with going through the day scarcely aware, scarcely awake, not noticing the beauty all around us, not noticing the hurts and pains all around us. Maybe it’s a coping mechanism, a way to get through long difficult days, to deal with relationships that have soured, and so on, but we can become numb, oblivious to much around us, sleepwalking through our lives.
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Our gospel reading today is part of a much larger section of Jesus’ last teachings to his followers before he is arrested and taken from them. He focuses on their need, and ours, to stay alert and awake. After the verse we heard, he tells a number of parables that speak to this. The last of these, Jesus’ last teaching prior to his arrest, is the so-called Judgment of the Gentiles where the returning Son of Man gathers all people and separates them as one separates sheep from goats. Both sheep and goats say that they never saw Jesus hungry or thirsty or naked of a stranger or in prison. “But,” says Jesus, “Some of you did see the least of these who were hungry, sick, strangers, or prisoners, and so you saw me.” I wonder if the goats didn’t see because they were sleepwalking, walking right by those in need without even noticing them.

Today we enter the season of Advent, a season that a lot of pastors can probably sleepwalk right through. And as happens every year, the first Sunday in Advent features scripture readings, not about Christmas or Jesus’ impending birth, but about his return, his second coming. We missed the full blown, apocalyptic part that speaks of the Son of Man coming on clouds with angels and trumpet calls. Our reading picks up with Jesus’ warning about that return. “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of  heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

Apocalyptic passages tend not to be favorites of Presbyterians, certainly not of more liberal Presbyterians. We’re happy to leave any talk of cosmic signs formulas for the end times, trumpet blasts, and a possible rapture to other sorts of Christians. But that is a mistake on our part. Jesus doesn’t offer any formulas, instead saying that he doesn’t know. He seems little interested in describing particulars of that day, and he doesn’t speak of any rapture, even if those who already believe in such non-biblical notions picture that when they hear Jesus’ words today. No, when Jesus speaks of what is to come, he seems quite focused on what is happening now.

Jesus uses the Noah story to talk about how easy it is to miss what God is up to. Just like people made dinner, went to work, got married and had families right up to the moment Noah went into the ark, so it will be when I return says Jesus. People will be riding the Metro, grabbing a beer, updating their Facebook status, going to school, watching television, and headed to the mall for some Christmas shopping when God’s new day fully comes. And a lot of them will totally miss it… because they’re sleepwalking.

Of course it is hard to stay wide awake all the time. Any child who ever decided to stay up all night and catch a glimpse of Santa can tell you that sleep almost always wins that battle. We can’t stay in a state of hyper readiness all the time. We can’t maintain the expectancy of Advent and the excitement of Christmas drawing near all year long. That would be impossible. But Jesus doesn’t call us to stare at the heavens, longing for clouds of glory to appear. When he explains what he means by staying awake, being alert, being ready, he talks about the work we do in the here and now.

In the parables that follow our reading, his last teachings before he goes to the cross, Jesus tells us to be bold, risk takers in carrying out the work of the church, trusting that God will support us. And he says that those who are attentive to the weak, the hurting, the lonely, and the vulnerable will not be caught off guard when he comes.

Thanksgiving is behind us, and our  eyes have turned toward the horizon of Christmas. We see the hints of its joy and celebration already adding their colors to the predawn sky. This dawn will not surprise us. We will be ready.

And those with eyes of faith can see the hints of another dawn, a day of good news to the poor and release to the captive, of swords beaten into plowshares, and the end of war. We don’t know the precise day of this dawn, but its beauty and hope and promise reshape us into instruments of peace and good news and caring. And so we are awake, and so we are ready.