121314Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For 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 armour of light; let us live honourably as in the day, not in revelling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
At the end of Romans chapter 13, Paul encourages his readers to wake up. Now is the moment for you to wake from sleep, he says. This idea of waking up as a metaphor for being prepared for Christ’s coming is hard for me to relate to. To me, the literal moment of waking from sleep is miserable. I have a very comfortable mattress, a very comfortable pillow, and a snooze button on my alarm clock which I make great use of. There are many times of the day that I enjoy – the time when I eat lunch, the time when I go for a walk, the time when I read a magazine, the time when I talk on the phone with a friend – but the time of day when I wake from my sleep is pretty close to the bottom of my list. I almost always would rather stay in bed a little longer.
Even so, “waking up” is a metaphor that Paul uses here to refer to the fact that this age will someday end, and we are in a period of waiting for a new age to come. “Waiting” is a word that we have heard already several times this morning, and it’s a word that we’ll continue to hear for the next three Sundays leading up to Christmas. This is the time of Advent, which is a time of waiting. We are waiting, liturgically, for Jesus to come and be born on Christmas Day. We are also waiting, liturgically and literally, for Jesus to come a second time and bring his salvation to completion.
How is it that you define yourself as a person? There are several ways you could do this. One is to focus on the present. For example, my name is Rebecca Jordan Heys, I am currently a seminary student, I live in Princeton, New Jersey, I am a preacher, I am a singer, I am a wife, and a friend. This is one way of describing my identity.
But just looking at the present doesn’t tell you the whole story. To truly understand someone, you need to define her according to her past as well. I was born Rebecca Lea Jordan, I grew up in Fremont, Michigan, I grew up in a Christian family. As a kid I tried successfully to play the piano; I tried unsuccessfully to play team sports. I used to want to teach English literature – at some point I decided to come to seminary. My past defines me. All of these past stories tell you very important things about who I am. Even without telling you these details about my childhood, simply showing you my family tree would tell you a lot of very important things about who I am. My parents, my community, my genetics – my past has a lot to do with what defines me as a person.
There is still a third approach to defining your identity. That is to define yourself by the future. Where I have been and where I am right now don’t limit me as a person. I still may change and grow, and that is part of my identity as well. My hopes and dreams for the future are also a part of who I am. I hope to graduate from seminary, I hope to be a pastor of a church, I hope to become a mother, I hope to travel to many new places. These things about my future make me who I am, just as my past and my present make me who I am.
All three: past, present, and future – define a person. One of the three might be more important than the others for different people, depending on their age, their culture, or their personality, but we can’t ignore any one of the three when we ask, “Who am I?”
It’s not just individual persons who are defined by past, present, and future. All of us, as Christians, are defined by our past, our present, and our future.
Our past: Part of our identity, and part of Advent, too, is about our past. In the past, Mary waited for her son Jesus to be born. We remember that waiting during Advent, and we anticipate our celebration of that great day in our past, the day when Christ was born. In his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus brought salvation to all people and to all of creation. Our identity as Christians is defined by this salvation in our past, 2000 years ago.
Our future: Another part of our identity, and of Advent, is about our future. We know that God’s complete salvation has not yet been realized. There are still so many things wrong with the world, but we Christians are also defined by our future. We have a hope and a promise that Christ will come again and make all things new. We live out our current waiting during Advent. Our identity as Christians is defined by the hope of salvation in our future.
And then there is our present. Who are we now? Jesus, in his first coming, ushered in a new era of God’s work in the world. Jesus, in his second coming, will usher in the final era of God’s work in the world. Right now, we are in the middle – we’re in the waiting time. Advent really expresses something that is true for us all year round – we are waiting.
As I thought about Advent, I thought how ironic it is that our lives are lives of waiting, and yet, in our lifestyles today, there is almost nothing that we have to wait for. Instead of waiting to see my family in Michigan, I call them on the phone. Instead of waiting for a loaf of bread to bake, I order a pizza. Instead of waiting to receive a letter in the mail, I get an instantaneous e-mail. I order things on-line instead of waiting in line at a store. There is not a lot that we have to wait for.
And yet, strangely, the only thing that we do is wait. We have hope for the future, but it hasn’t been fully realized yet. We are in the in between time – in between what Jesus has already done and what Jesus has not yet done. This waiting is so much a part of the Christian faith that theologians often just call it the “already/not yet tension.” Salvation has already happened, and salvation has not yet happened. Both of these things are true at the same time. We Christians are people who wait.
At the end of Romans 13, Paul brings a new character to all of this waiting. He knows that our future is one of the things that shape our identity. He takes the way that we are defined by our future and drags that future right into our present. He says, “Salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers.” When he says “salvation,” he means the complete salvation of the future. In some ways, Paul’s statement seems completely obvious. “Salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers,” is like saying “Tomorrow is closer to us today than it was yesterday.” In other ways, though, no matter how obvious it is, we really need to hear this.
We get so caught up in our present life that we forget that this is not the whole story. We get so discouraged about what we can see that we forget the hope of what we cannot yet see. We get so caught up in who we have been and in who we are now that we forget that the future defines us as well. Who we will become and what will happen to us when Jesus comes again actually has everything to do with who we are right now!
This is what Paul is saying in Romans 13. He’s saying “the end is near.” When I think of that statement, “the end is near,” I think of someone in a city park with a sandwich board sign, someone who claims to know exactly when the end will come. Our text from Romans, and the other text we heard this morning from Matthew, show us that this is not the New Testament picture of the end. The New Testament does not make any claims about when the end will come. Even Jesus does not know the exact time of his return. What the New Testament does claim is that the end will come. This life is not the whole story. We have a promise from God that God’s salvation will one day be complete.
Since this is not a sandwich board kind of promise, “the end is near,” we do not have to feel the kind of fear that those signs are sometimes meant to inspire. Instead, we can live into our hope in freedom. The future defines our identity, and it guides what we are to do in the meantime. Paul lists some practices in this present time that can distract us from our hope about the future. The list includes reveling and drunkenness, debauchery and licentiousness, quarreling and jealousy. Instead, we, the people of the future, are free to be rid of those things, and to “put on” Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ defines our past in his first coming, and Jesus Christ defines our future in his coming again. Our hope for this coming allows us to live freely in the power of his love.
The more common title for our Savior in the New Testament is “Jesus Christ the Lord.” In this text, he is instead called “the Lord Jesus Christ.” “Lord” comes first here to show that Jesus is in charge over the evil that we see, in charge over the suffering of this age. Jesus is in charge of it now, because we have a promise that Jesus will completely get rid of it in the future. Hope in Jesus Christ is a powerful thing – more powerful than any evil that seems to have power in the world today.
The song that the choir will sing during the offering is called “View the Present Through the Promise.” I would like to read you the words to this song now, and invite you to reflect on them further as we sing in a few minutes.
View the present through the promise, Christ will come again.
Trust despite the deepening darkness, Christ will come again.
Lift the world above its grieving through your watching and believing
in the hope past hope’s conceiving: Christ will come again.
Probe the present with the promise, Christ will come again.
Let your daily actions witness, Christ will come again.
Let your loving and your giving and your justice and forgiving
be a sign to all the living: Christ will come again.
Match the present to the promise, Christ will come again.
Make this hope your guiding premise, Christ will come again.
Pattern all your calculating and the world you are creating
to the advent you are waiting: Christ will come again.
I mentioned earlier that waking up in the morning is my least favorite time of day. I think, though, that Paul did not have in mind an adult who is a little short on sleep when he used this metaphor. Instead, I think it is more fitting of the eager anticipation of Advent to picture a child the night before his birthday. He has trouble falling asleep because he is so excited about the activities that the next day will bring. When he does wake up in the morning, his eyes snap open, his feet hit the floor, and his little legs carry him dashing into his parents’ bedroom to wake them up so that the day’s festivities will begin as soon as possible.
Advent is a season of waiting, but it is not a waiting that has to do with a distant, disconnected future. We wait with eager anticipation a future that already breaks into our present with hope. A new day is dawning – let us live as people of the rising sun!
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