As we are at the advent of a New Year, I want to share the last homily I gave in 2019. It was written as a New Year's homily for the new Church Year, but it applies to any new year. This homily was delivered at Christ Episcopal Church, Yankton,
South Dakota on December 1, 2019
WAKING UP
+ In the Name of
our loving and life-giving God +
“Wachet
auf, ruft uns die stimme…” is the clarion call of our first hymn in its
original German language.
Waking
up is the perennial theme associated with the first Sunday of Advent, the
beginning of a new Church Year. Equally perennial is that the scripture
readings at the end of a church year and the beginning of a church year focus
on the continuum of end times as beginning times, as an eschatological bridge completing
the old in the new.
Although
the end times are the focus of these readings, they ride on a rail of the
present. When Jesus talks about the end
times, it is usually in response to someone’s question about knowing when such
things will happen or when he sees his disciple being distracted by the wonders
of the Temple, the context in which this morning’s second lesson from the
Gospel of Matthew is set.
When
the Gospels were written, the early Christians were expecting the Second Coming
of Christ to happen in their lifetimes. Before
today’s reading from Matthew, Jesus says, “Truly, I tell you. This generation shall not pass, till all
things are fulfilled.” [1] Jesus goes on to say, however, “But about that
day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only
the Father.”[2] When reading all the accounts of Jesus
talking about the end times in the Gospels, it becomes clear that Jesus uses
the end times to awaken us to what we’re doing right now, today.
Two
thousand years have passed since these scriptures were written and for two
thousand years the call to awaken has not diminished in the context of the times
of each and every successive generation.
While some today continue to focus on getting ready to jump this planet
at the first sign of Christ’s Second Coming, Paul pulls us back from that theological
cliff.
In
our first reading, the apostle Paul picks up this theme of paying attention to
the here and now: “…it is now the moment
for you to wake from sleep …the night is far gone, the day is near.”[3] We are always living in this cusp of
completion, “…the night (the time for
sleep) is far gone, the day is near. Now
(the present) is the moment to wake from sleep.”
One
might ask, “What is this wakeup call all about?
Do we really need one?”
Perhaps
the best way to answer those questions is to personally and sincerely ask
ourselves what we find difficult to open our eyes to. Jesus addresses such questions by causing us
to take a deeper look at our daily lives in the dawning light of the nearing
day.
Jesus
literally goes on a two chapter tirade about the end times in the Gospel of
Matthew when his disciples go dreamy eyed on him about all the glittering,
man-made wonders of the Temple. Within Jesus’s non-stop discourse is included
not only today’s reading, but also the parable of the “Wise and Foolish
Virgins,” about staying awake because the Son of Man, the Bridegroom comes when
least expected, in the dead of night.[4] It includes the parable of the “Talents,” the
coins the head of a household gives his servants while he’s away and returns to
find two of the three servants used them to make a profit for the head of the
household, but one buried the one coin he was given; doing nothing with it,
leading him to cursed and cast out;[5] a
reminder that there is never a time for apathy, as there will be work to be
done until the very end.
Jesus’s
discourse ends by bringing his disciples back to the present time and how we
treat one another. He does this by
ending with the Day of Judgment; with the story how the Son of Man as the King
of Glory will divide the sheep from the goats.
He ends by telling that those considered the sheep are the ones who fed
the King when he was hungry, clothed him when he was naked, visited him when he
was in prison and because of such deeds, they will inherit his kingdom. He ends by telling that, in their sheepish state
of surprise at inheriting the kingdom, the sheep ask the King, “But when did we
do these things,” to which the King replies, “When you did these things to
least of my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.”[6]
What
really demonstrates how asleep we are, is the consistent dismissing the needs
of others as their problem, not ours. What
really can bore us into a coma-like slumber are the judgmental and polarizing efforts
that plague us today; where we are being led to perceive some as clear winners
and others as clear losers.
Advent,
this new Church Year [this New Year 2020], begins with its perennial wake-up call; a call to
becoming what God has always intended us to be, his children; to live into
being just that, as Jesus did with eyes wide open to the present.
Advent
is a prophetic season. It is a season to
get us to look at today and see things for what they are and what they are not.
It is a season to let go of the past, the
darkness of the night long gone. It is a season to awaken to the hope of a
dawning day. It is a season to watch faithfully for the light of the nearing
day. Above all, Advent is a season to
allow the ever present love of God to embrace us in the soon to be born in
us.[7]
Let
us pray:
* * * * * * * * * *
Until next time, stay faithful.
Norm
[1]
Matthew 24:34
[2]
Matthew 24:36
[3]
Romans 13:11b&12b
[4]
See Matthew 25:1-13
[5]
See Matthew 25:14-30
[6]
See Matthew 25:31-40
[7]
The concept inspired by the hymn, “O Little Town of Bethlehem” by Phillip
Brooks and the line “…cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.”
