Keep Awake!

Sermon planned for Sunday, November 28th – 1st Advent 2011

Texts: Isaiah 2:1-5; Matthew 24:36-44

I invite you to turn, with me, in your bibles to the prophet Isaiah, chapter two. This morning, our silence is broken by Isaiah’s hopeful vision, and Jesus’ words of caution. How many of you would consider yourselves busy? With work? With your children? What else? This Advent, we are intentionally using silence to slow down from our busyness – we’re using silence to re-order our sense of time. When the worship service begins with silence, I invite you to take that time to slow down your breathing and focus on what we have gathered here to do. Focus on our purpose – to worship and praise God as His children – to listen to His Word and allow it to transform our hearts and minds. From that silence, tune your ears to the words we sing, and the message we hear proclaimed, to the voices from scripture.

This morning, from our time of silence, we come to this word from the prophet Isaiah. He shares his vision with us. This vision is about a time when all people will come to the mountain of God to hear and learn His ways. It is a vision of peace. It is a vision of peace that is quite different from the visions of peace in our world. The visions of peace that occupy the minds of our world’s leaders have violence as a determining feature. According to them, it is only when our nation has conquered its enemies that we will live in peace. The problem is that the act of conquering continuously creates more enemies and further conflict. Isaiah’s vision of peace is drastically different. For him, God’s peace does not arrive once all our enemies have been killed; rather, God’s peace arrives when the nations turn to God, when they come to His mountain, and when they learn the way of peace.

Isaiah uses the familiar imagery that we as Mennonites have come to love. How do the nations learn the way of peace? Well, they first have to unlearn the ways of war. After the nations return to God’s mountain, and after God becomes their judge and arbitrator, the nations will choose to beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. They will choose to exchange their tools of violence for the tools of peace and justice. The rulers of nations and their people will have a change of heart. Unlike our leaders today, who are stuck bickering about how to better kill our enemies, and how to build better fighter jets – there will come a day when the nations and their leaders will no longer study the ways of war. This is the vision that God gave to Isaiah. The nations will turn to God – they’ll say, “Let’s go to God’s mountain and let’s hear what God has to say – let’s learn His way of peace.” This Advent, can you catch a glimpse of this vision? Can you slow down long enough to hear God’s promise in the silence?

The second word we hear from the silence is Jesus’ message of caution. “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” This Advent, all end-times predictions are silenced; those who claim to have a calendar of the final days have their mouths closed. Only the Father knows about that day. Part of the obedience that Jesus modeled for us was His willingness to not know about the appointed Day. Why? So he could live and teach us about how to fully trust God for our future. God the Father alone knows about that final day – take that! all you televangelists and radio preachers! You know nothing about the final day. “About that day and hour no one knows… only the Father”. And from the silence of this not-knowing, we hear a word of caution: Keep awake!

Jesus makes an analogy between the days of Noah and what it will be like on that final day. Just as people were caught off guard when the flood waters surrounded them in the days of Noah, so too people will be caught off guard when the Son of Man returns:
Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. 41 Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. 42 Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. 43 But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.
The date of Jesus’ return is in the mind of God the Father. The rest of us are in the dark about God’s timing. And so, Jesus’ command to his followers, to us today, is that we Keep Awake!

There’s a saying that, although it’s a bit risqué, is quite appropriate – when it comes to the final day, we don’t want to be caught with our pants down. This saying reminds me of my days as a young boy and my experience of getting spanked. I wasn’t always the nicely behaved young man that you see before you today. I know it’s hard to believe, but I once was a ‘guaschtowmel’ – I could be an annoying brat. I caused my parents quite a bit of grief. I was a know-it-all (and Karen might second that motion), and I could be quite stubborn. Of course, in those days, stubbornness mixed with a cocky attitude resulted in spanking.

One evening, after pushing my dad way too far, he told me to go downstairs to my room and ‘prepare for a spanking’. Although I’m not exactly sure what my dad had in mind, I think there’s a connection to this morning’s lesson. My brother once thought he knew what my dad had in mind, when he told us to prepare for a spanking. My older brother took a thin hardcover book and slid it behind his shorts. Judging from what followed, we learned that this was not what my dad had in mind. At least one thing my dad meant with this warning was that we should consider what we had done. But this period of waiting, which was most often followed by a good talk and then us being spared a spanking after profuse promises and pleading – this period of waiting was designed to reshape our moral clock, and it did. My dad wanted us to know his authority but also to know his deep love for us. This period of waiting was a time for us to consider my dad’s clear “NO” to our bad behaviour, but also a time for us to know his profound love for us, his mercy, and his “YES” to us and his sons.

No one knows the time of Jesus’ coming – no one but the Father. Jesus’ Word for us, as we wait in this silence, is that we ‘Keep Awake’. As the early church struggled with being faithful, not knowing when Jesus would return, the apostle Paul encouraged his friends in Rome to stay awake. Turn with me to Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter thirteen, beginning at verse eleven:
11 Besides 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; 12 the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; 13 let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. 14 Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
In the darkness and silence of not-knowing when their Lord would return, Paul encouraged them to stay awake. What does the bible mean by the command ‘stay awake’? We hear it on Jesus’ lips and now with Paul: Stay Awake, keep watch. One part of this command comes from the fact that we don’t know God’s timetable – so we need to keep watch. It’s an active verb, but it doesn’t necessarily include a lot of action. We are called to actively keep watch!

Another part of this command includes a different way of life. For people who aren’t aware that Jesus is coming again to rule, life carries a different meaning than it does for us. For many, life’s meaning is defined by material successes, having control and power over one’s future, and enjoying the fulfillment of every desire. For Paul, and for us Christians, these attitudes are marked-off as dangerous for discipleship – we must avoid gluttony, laziness, quarreling, drunkenness, wastefulness, corruption, and squabbling with one another. In fact, its precisely these kinds activities that places us on the wrong side when the final day comes. These activities place us in the same league as those who were swept away in the days of the Great Flood. Wickedness and Sin will face Judgment – just as my frequent bad behaviour had me preparing for a spanking. Matthew’s text is a warning, prepare for the day of Judgment.

But in Jesus, we hear not only God’s “No” to us – not only a Word of Judgment. We also hear God’s “Yes” to us; it is both a Word of judgment and mercy. We find the same judgment and mercy in Isaiah’s vision of God’s peace. In Isaiah, we hear God’s “NO” to the tools of war – to swords, spears and fighter jets; and we hear God’s “Yes” to a new way of life. In chapter two, verse five, Isaiah gives a word of command: “O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD!” In God’s future for us, on that final day, God will embrace the nations; and in the meantime, we ‘the house of Jacob’ are given a clear “YES” – God has chosen us to be His people, and we have been called to be a light to the world. We have been called to be a foretaste for the world of what God has promised to everyone.

But if we’re to be a light to the world, we first have to walk in the light. In Romans, Paul speaks about putting on the ‘armor of light’, he speaks about ‘putting on the Lord Jesus Christ’, which is the opposite of focusing on our fleshly desires. Our world tells us to obey our desires, our inclinations and our orientations – but, as Christians, we know the truth: our desires have gone wildly astray. We dare not listen to the commercials that command us to “obey your thirst.” Our desires are a loose cannon. That is why we need to put on a suit of armor; that is why we need to put on Christ. Our desires need to be properly ordered by the life of Christ, so that they can produce beauty, and so that our desires don’t destroy us. By putting on Jesus, we are having our desires re-shaped into Christ’s desire for us.

His desire for us is that we would stay close to Him. This is why the first Word we hear from Jesus is the word “NO”, because there’s just so much that wants to separate us from him. There’s so many distractions that keep us from knowing God in prayer and scripture reading. There are so many other voices that crowd-out God’s own Spirit in us. When Jesus tells us to “Keep Awake”, he is commanding us to do away with these distractions and to silence these other voices. This is God’s “NO” to us this morning. “NO” to spending half our day staring at a screen. “NO” to a life of such busyness that you never eat a meal together with your family. “NO” to a lifestyle that depends only on your wallet. If we want to hear God’s Word of mercy, we must first draw near to Jesus; and we can only draw near to Jesus if we put away the stuff that distances us from him. This is part of the meaning of repentance – metanoia – turning away from the bad towards the good.

And when we have heard this word of Judgment, we’re also ready to hear Jesus’ Word of mercy. This Word is Jesus’ “YES” to us. Jesus embraces us as His brothers and sisters, children of God. Jesus’ is God’s Word of mercy to us, and to the entire world. It is to Jesus that the nations will come, seeking His way of peace. It is to Jesus that people will turn to unlearn the ways of war and to learn the way of Shalom.

Jesus’ “Yes” to us involves us in a new way of life. During Advent, we learn what this new way of life looks like. It’s a life of patient waiting, but also a life of activity. We are called to put on the armor of light, to put on Christ. What does that look like for you? How have you been a light for Christ this past week? What opportunity will God place before you this week? Through Isaiah’s word, God commands us to walk in the light. Unlike me being sent to my room, this period of waiting, which we as a Church are in, is a period of joyful activity, bearing witness to Jesus and His life. As you quiet down, this Advent – as you become silent – hear these words from Isaiah and Jesus: God is going to restore peace in our hearts, in our world, in our lives, families and relationships. Therefore keep awake! Participate in God’s good purpose by walking in the light today. Amen.