The Sermon: Stay Awake! Be Ready! Advent 2005
December 4, 2005
ADVENT AND THE FINE ART OF NAPPING
This is the first Sunday of Advent; the beginning of the season of year in which we welcome the Savior to our world. We prepare the
I've always been a napper; I usually take at least one nap per day. That is, of course, why I appear so healthy and vitalized before you today! I'll live to be 100 because along with good longevity genes--I've learned the art of napping. Its a quality of life issue. I mean, when I'm tired, I can fall asleep anywhere. I used to have a college preaching class that met right after lunch. I would literally stand up in the back of the room to stay awake while my friends were preaching. I remember helping a friend of mine fix his car he had to work through the night to get it done, and wanted someone to keep him company. At four in the morning, I fell asleep under the vehicle with my head propped up against a tire. There is just so much a person can expect.
PARABLES OF THE
In our passage of scripture, the theme is "Stay Awake! Be ready! No Napping on the job!" In this section of Matthew, Matthew's Jesus closes his final sermon with about equal number of parables about the future kingdom and end times. In doing this, he used images from the Bible (days of Noah), men walking in a field, women grinding grain together, a homeowner not knowing he was about to be robbed. These are eschatological parables that means they are parables that deal with end times. In all these parables, there is one central message; my kingdom and its judgment is going to come at an unexpected time. Stay Awake! Be Ready!
I would like to read the passage from the Message again.
THE DAYS OF NOAH
Let's take a little walk through these various images and think about what they imply. Before the flood, people were simply living their lives as they normally did. They may have wondered what Noah was doing up in that ark working year after year. But they simply didn't think about it they went on in their daily life which as Genesis describes it, consisted in doing only evil continually. What is described here is not necessarily evil. There is nothing wrong with eating, drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. But they are all things a sense of security and comfort. If you feel your life is being immediately threatened, you can hardly think about having dinner. You don't have dinner while a flood is bearing down on your home. You don't go to weddings when the creek is about to sweep your home away. You have more pressing concerns. You go make sure your family is safe and secure. That is the only prudent way to behave. But in the days of Noah, they didn't realize things were as dire as they indeed were.
THE WATCHFUL DISCIPLE
If you know your house is about to be robbed, you don't go to bed and blow it all off. You stay awake and keep the dogs up to prevent the break-in. You would drive all sleep from your eyes and force yourself to stay awake. Jesus' logic here is a little hard to unravel. He says, "If the homeowner had known in what hour the thief was coming, he would keep watch." Then he says, "But no one knows the day nor the hour. Therefore keep awake because you don't know." You could just as easily argue, "Look, since I don't know the day or the hour, why not just go to bed?" But the logic is, "Just as the homeowner stays awake when he knows his home is going to be broken into, you know Jesus is returning, you just don't know exactly when. So you have to be watchful all the time." So it is the duty of the disciple of Jesus to be spiritually prepared at all times for Christ's return.
WHAT DO WE DO?
I have always avoided the eschatological passages (those dealing with end times) because they are so hard to understand. Was Jesus wrong in his imminent expectation? Can Christians, after 2000 years, still look forward to the second coming of Jesus? I remember in my Pentecostal days hearing countless prophecies, "Be ready, saith God, for I am coming soon!" It always struck me as odd that God still spoke in King Jamesese.
But I think God had a plan for this. Jesus left the church with a constant expectation. Christ will return in some sense; the world and each participant in it will come into its final day of judgment. We ought to always live with this as a living expectation. God wants you to live as if you've got only today. Think of how differently you would live if you knew you only had a short time. You suddenly re-order your priorities and de-emphasize your ambitions and emphasize your spiritual condition and that of others. This could be the point of the whole thing. We need to live every day expecting this to be the day that our spiritual accounts will be balanced.
LIVING INTO THE FUTURE
So what do we do with these perplexing and troubling words of Jesus? We ignore them at our peril. Jesus intends to be taken seriously and his warning can and must be heeded. I think there are two applications of Jesus words that are apropos for our day. First is Jesus call to live into the future. Christianity is about the future and what we believe about the future. We believe that God has a future for us and for this world. In a sense, the whole idea of the second coming is this; God has a future consummation for human history that will involve Christ receiving the rewards of his suffering and the final accounting of all things.
Your life today, with all its frustrations and set-backs takes on different meaning when you live that life into the future. With all the uncertainties we mentioned earlier, uncertainties which Jesus himself said perplexed him, your life today is overwhelmed with one overarching hope and certainty. We have a sure assurance of this; Christ will return, Good will prevail, evil will be judged, and right will have the last word. Our faith is based on something that can only be proved with time. But we must keep on believing and trusting and living in that hopeful expectation. We don't know when, how, where, but we do know the who and the what. Jesus will come again. When he comes he will set the game straight.
When Jesus does come, the unclear will be made clear. You wouldn't have known it, looking at two men walking up a hill, which was a servant of the master of the universe and which served his own pleasure, but the moment one was whisked away, the question was answered. If you watched two women grinding grain, you could not say if one was a saint. But after one was whisked into God's presence, the puzzle is no longer puzzling.
That truth, that expectation shapes your hopefulness about today. We are a church of persons who have been touched by that hope. In our encounter with the Holy Spirit, we have a foretaste of that future glory. It is only a taste, a shadow. The real is yet coming. I want you to take this in deeply. We need to internalize this; life takes on new meaning in the light of the shadow of the future which is cast over it. The very image of the approaching king can be seen to the eyes of faith. In that shadow, we have a little less attachment to worldly things.
STAY AWAKE! BE PREPARED!
That is exactly what Jesus is saying when he says: "So stay awake, alert. You have no idea what day your Master will show up." Be vigilant just like that. You have no idea when the Son of Man is going to show up. It is the duty of every disciple of Jesus to watch, to be spiritually awake, to be serious about being spiritually at the ready. To watch implies that we live our lives with discipline expecting to be ready to meet him at any moment. The homeowner remained awake, awake when everyone was asleep, because he knew the thief would come at any time.
I'm going to make this as specific as possible. To be ready for the Lord's return means that you live with the spiritual discipline of prioritizing your life with eternities values in view. This is true discipleship to live in accordance with God's values and perspectives for human life. It means that you emphasize your spiritual development and formation. It means that you serve the master faithfully with your tithes and offerings - illustrating that the things of this world do not rule your heart. It means that you are serving the master with your gifts and graces. It means that you live with eternities values in view. This is watchfulness. This is wakefulness.
ARE YOU SLEEPY?
This Advent, you will either come awake or go to sleep. Advent forces the issue. Look, our wealth opens all types of life options to us. We are a terribly wealthy nation and we can do all kinds of things previous generations could only dream of. Long gone are the frontier days when the camp meeting was the most exciting thing to happen all summer long. It is disappointing as a pastor that often, because we have so many options, so much entertainment, so much availability in terms of transportation, so much discretionary income, that our own spiritual formation and discipleship takes such low priority. If the worship of your creator and redeeming God is a low priority for you, you are sleepy. I know life is complicated and challenging. But if serving and worshiping God is not a central organizing priority, I've caught you napping. We always find time to do what we think is important. We always have enough money for what we cannot live without. I say to you, "Wake up! Be ready! Christ will return and you'll be unprepared!"
Our wealth and spiritual sluggishness are put on painful display during Advent, the holiest of seasons. Your children and grandchildren will wake up to a mountain of toys which will be played with for a moment and forgotten.
Are you spiritually napping? Look, if Christ truly is the Son of God, incarnate Word, self-giving sacrifice, then He demands your all. Have I caught you napping? Do you worship and serve this Jesus when it is convenient and comfortable? I caught you napping? Do you give to this Jesus and his work in the world what you can spare? You're asleep. Disciples who are awake give sacrificially because they know this gospel, this God, this grace, and because they organize their lives according to that blessing. Look, giving isn't to be done out of guilt or shame, or as a response to pleading, but simply as an act of faithfulness to our Savior who have his all for us.
MAY I SUGGEST . . .
I'm going to be even more specific. I don't want this to be a nebulous sermon that leaves you wondering what I'm saying. I don't want you to leave and say, "OK, Joel said that I need to be more serious about God and come to church more, and give more." It is so much more than this. It is a whole spiritual re-orientation of life in alignment with the purposes for which you were created. You will never find your life's deepest meaning and purpose until you are lined up with God's purposes and energy in you. How can you do that? Let me tell you, apart from the obvious like "go to church" and "pray" and "read your Bible". It all happens right up here between our ears. We have to reorient our minds to this gospel if we are going to be faithful in our discipleship to Jesus. Everything we have and are is either going to end up in a garbage heap or a morgue. Only eternity's values are worth living for; so live with eternity's values in view. That is what it means to stay spiritually awake.
CONCLUSION
This is the first Sunday in Advent. I challenge you to make this season a season of spiritual growth rather than whatever else it has become. To be ready to welcome Jesus as Lord of the
We've chosen to begin this Advent Journey with a Celebration of the Last Supper of our Lord.