Ps 122
Rom 13.11-14
Mt 24.36-44
KEEP AWAKE! Jesus tells us. BE READY!
No, it's not time-change Sunday, that was a
few weeks ago.
And Paul is likewise inviting us into the
delight of wakefulness. NOW IS THE MOMENT to wake from sleep. So... anyone napping?
That's a trick question, obviously. Because
clearly we would not be dozing off - especially not in church. Right?
But Jesus - and later St Paul - speak of
the importance of being awake. That the time is near to wake up.
So let's think about TIME for a moment -
this is not the tick tock of our clocks and watches - the first clock was some
1200 years after Jesus walked the earth. Nor is it a demand for us to pull out
our day timer and schedule in something - the calendar as we know it was
developed some 1500 years after Jesus.
So how was TIME understood in the
scriptures?
Well, here's the fun. There are 2 words in
Greek that translate as time. One is 'chronos' - earthly time. It's where we
get the meaning of a set series of events - a chronology. The other word is
kairos - and it means the perfect time for the perfect thing to happen.
Basically, kairos means God's time.
So that's the time that Paul and Jesus are
both talking about. Wake up - God's time is near when God's perfection will
literally burst forth into this world. Be ready for it! Prepare now.
And that's exactly what this beautiful new
season of Advent is for. Preparation - getting ready. And not in the earthly
sense. We all know how easy it is to get
caught up in our earthly time with our earthly to-do lists. I mean, Christmas is
4 weeks today. 4 weeks! Yikes! There are presents to make and buy, and wrap;
there is baking to be done - (or you can just come out Saturday to Comfort and
Joy and let others do the baking for you!). There's trees to be trimmed and
stockings to be hung and all that other ...stuff... that society tells us we
have to do to prepare for Christmas. While listening to some 8,000 different
renditions of so-called "Christmas Music" - let's not go there.
But the scriptures - those beautiful
scriptures that speak the truth of Advent - the scriptures tell us differently.
The scriptures don't tell us to stuff the
turkey and hang the lights on the house and brave the crowds at the mall. No,
the scriptures tell of a very different way to prepare for the coming of the Christ
child.
The great prophet Isaiah tells of people
who want to come together and seek out the House of the Lord - God's house -
where they can learn God's instructions and God's words. Where they can come
together and be intentional about building community - people who previously
quarrelled will change weapons of destruction into instruments of harvest;
where their education will change from division and warfare into collaboration
and unity.
God's house - the house of Jacob - is a
place where we're all invited - to learn to walk in the light of the Lord; the
light for which we all are longing.
The Psalmist echoes this plea - to go to
the house of the Lord, to come together as the city of God. To work to put
aside differences and encourage mutual support and growth, to wish the very
best for everyone else in God's house, to truly wish them peace, to seek God's
goodness within them all.
The house of the Lord - biblical prime real
estate - where God's faithful prepare their hearts for the coming of the Son of
Man, and build up the kingdom of God in the here and the now.
The house of God is where the chronos and
the kairos interconnect. It's where the perfect thing at the perfect time can
be measured within the earthly scope of reality, marked on a timeline.
It's that one. perfect. moment. It's that
moment that we all wait for, that we all long for, that we all celebrate
through our faith is coming.
That is what Advent is all about - the
waiting - the "now!" feeling completely intersecting the "not
yet!" feeling. It's that one moment when we want to be ready.
So we're back to the "KEEP
AWAKE!" message. The "about that day and hour no one knows"
message. Because we don't know - but we want to be ready. And that takes
effort. That takes work. That takes constant spiritual commitment to be
prepared for the coming of the Lord. It's the event for which Jesus clearly
states "YOU MUST BE READY".
It's the wake up call from our napping
soul, from our spiritual complacency, to live our lives differently - starting
this very moment. Paul is challenging us to live our lives as though the second
coming would happen at any moment. And Paul believed that it would - he
encourages the Romans to realise that preparing for Jesus' return is not
something to be put off; that faith formation is nor something to procrastinate
about. Instead, he insists that we all know what time it is - what kairos it is
- it is time to live into the fullness
of our faith. It is time to live into the fullness of Advent. It is time to fully
prepare our community for the coming of Christ.
