Wake, Awake!
THE FIRST SUNDAY IN ADVENT
"Wake, awake, for night is flying: The watchmen on the heights are crying, Awake, Jerusalem, arise!" And so we sang together this morning for our processional hymn. "Awake, Jerusalem, [and] arise." As the Lord commanded the old church of Israel, he is once again, on this first Sunday of Advent, calling his people out of their slumber: saying, "Awake and prepare yourself for the visitation of your God." Adventus (Advent), meaning "coming" is the beginning of the Christian year, a preparatory season preceding the Nativity of the Lord, which we will celebrate on Christmas morning.
The start of the new Christian year is pregnant with anticipation, awaiting the fulfilling of the prophets who, by grace, were given to see, though dimly, the future promise of the Messiah. Thus, through the prophet Isaiah, the Lord promised to provide Israel with a Divine sign of their redemption to come, "Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel" (Is 7:14). Immanuel, God promised to be with his people.
The assurance of salvation accompanied the promise of the Divine presence. To Jeremiah, the Lord promised, "In his days [the days of the Messiah] Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: 'The LORD is our righteousness.' As promised, God would remain faithful to his covenant obligation to save his people, as he swore to our forefathers, because "the Lord is our righteousness": meaning, he is the faithful One who keeps covenant with and for us.
The visitation of God, his coming to his people, would not only bring Salvation but Divine judgment as well. Listen to the further revelation he discloses to Jeremiah: "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth" (Jer 23:5). The day of the Lord's coming, his Advent, will usher in both the joy of salvation and the execution of Divine judgment.
These two ideas (Salvation and judgment), which appear to be in opposition to one another, are, in fact, the two foundational pillars of all reality. For all of human history is and will be one grandiose movement of Divine judgment and mercy. Time is on a collision course with the next cosmic event for which all of reality is heading: the second coming of Christ. "Awake, prepare yourself for the coming of the Lord." This clarion call sounds forth from both todays’ Collect and the readings, a Divine shot across the bow, telling us to "wake up" for your King is on the way: the Day of Salvation and judgment is at hand.
You may be asking, "why is the account of our Lord's triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday read on this first day of Advent?" Well, the answer becomes clear viewed through the dual lens of Divine salvation and judgment. Juxtaposed to the Lord's triumphal return to Jerusalem is his casting out and overthrowing the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple: "My house shall be called the house of prayer," says the Lord, "but ye have made it a den of thieves." He rides in on a donkey bringing salvation for those prepared for his coming, and the second, we see judgment come upon a woefully unprepared temple and the thieves corrupting the house of God.
Malachi’s prophecy (which we read today) vividly coming to life in this powerful scene of Christ purging His Father's house: "And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts." But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the LORD" (Mal 3:1-6).
My friends, "Wake, awake, for night is flying." Who knows the day or the hour of his second visitation? That awesome future day when the Lord will "come again to judge both the living and the dead." As it was with the first, the Second Advent of Christ will be a day of salvation, for he will raise the dead unto eternal life, but also the day when every person will stand before the Divine judge to give an account. As St. Paul tells us, "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil" (2 Cor 5:10).
Beloved, let us arise from our slumber and awakened to Divine reality. For "now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now, is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand!" Can you hear the Apostles urgency? His clear sense of immanence? The Great Day of the Lord's coming is at hand, for even now, we stand before our great God. Our very lives lived within his gaze, laid bare before Him.
And here, at the beginning of Advent, we must have this same sense of urgency, whatever we might think of the nearness of the final end of this world, for we stand ever in judgment before the Father, and the span of our life is short and uncertain. Therefore, we must prepare. We must know the time in which we are living.
"Now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed." Yes, on the first Advent of the Lord, when Christ was born on Christmas morning, the dawn broke on a new age, an era of salvation offered to all of humankind. We believe that since the day of his birth, the True light has shined into the world. It has shined into our hearts, and we now live lives in the "daylight." The future light of glory now spills into this age, drawing us through the call of the Gospel to move toward eternal glory. Having been awakened to salvation, we must realize that it is "nearer than when we [first] believed."
Therefore, we must prepare ourselves by "cast[ing] off the works of darkness and put[ting] on the armor of light." First, St. Paul says we must "put off the works of darkness," meaning, we cannot make any provision for the desires of the flesh. While we celebrate the goodness of our created bodies, we mustn't be naive, thinking that all of the scriptural warnings concerning eating, drinking, and what we do with our bodies. Yes, we have Christian liberty, but there are things that Holy Scripture says we simply must rule out sins, and vices that must be cut off without mercy. And, lest we regulate the works of darkness to the realm of the flesh, the Apostle tells us to also do away with "strife and envying" for sin rarely separates the heart and will from the outworking’s of our bodies.
And what is the proper work of preparation for God's people? "To put on the Lord Jesus Christ." This is a command unto godly obedience; to work in the daylight that Holy labor which fulfills the Law: to love one another. "Love worketh no ill to his neighbor," writes St. Paul, "therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." Those who have put on Christ in baptism are to do the commandments of God. To "put on Christ" post baptism is to embrace the spiritual disciplines of daily prayer and meditation, invoking the One who came to save us as Lord over our lives (but also sovereign over all the power that attack us!). He is our Savior and, therefore, able to rescue us the world, the flesh, and the Devil. Spiritual disciplines in and of themselves are worthless unless they produce the fruit of love.
When we open ourselves to the Divine presence and trust in him, we not only come under his mighty protection but assume a posture of humility, where the grace of the Holy Spirit can conform our souls and bodies to the Divine pattern, which is self-giving and relentless love of others. To love just like our Lord Jesus Christ: this is the continual and sure means of our preparing for the Advent of the Lord. It is oil in the lamp of the wisest virgin. It is the real and assuring sign of the Children of Light. Therefore, "Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But [let us] put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof."
Let us pray,
Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious Majesty, to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen+
