I.N.I.

A sermon to be preached at Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church, Elizabethtown, PA on the 1st Sunday in Advent (a.k.a. 5 December) 2004, and based on the Epistle for the day: Romans 13:11-14.

Grace, mercy, and peace be yours in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Dear Friends in Christ,

(Very brief introductory comment about the Advent season starting.)

This passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans can delight us with its interweaving of images of time and of light and darkness and of putting on and taking off. The central point of these few verses is that we put on the armor of light and live ready for the quickly-dawning day. The problem is that even many of us Christians aren’t quite ready to do that. Paul, however, also gives us the key to opening up a way to get this done. How’s it all work?

Look with me at how he opens this passage: “Besides all this … ” (the “all this” is what he just wrote in chapter 12 and the first part of chapter 13 about living a consecrated life … from “offering your bodies as a living sacrifice” in 12:1 to “love is the fulfilling of the law” in 13:10). So, “Besides all this” Paul writes, “you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep.” I imagine we’ve all been at that point physically somewhere along the line when we wake up just before our alarm clock goes off and we can somehow tell — without even looking at the clock — that it’s about time to get up. Our bodies know. Or maybe you’re one of those folks who goes to bed early enough so that you don’t need an alarm clock to rouse you in the morning, and you wake up at the same time, at the right time, every morning, just knowing that you’re on time.

Paul, naturally, is not writing about a natural morning and a natural waking here and in verse 12 where he tells us that “the night is far gone and the day is near.” He’s writing about the spiritual sleep people fall into at various times and seasons. He’s talking about the dawning of the day in which our salvation will be finally and fully realized. Paul’s telling us about the day on which Jesus returns in his glory to sweep us up in his arms and finally carry us home. It’s a marvelous illustration.

This time of year in the northern hemisphere we have short days and long nights, which means that more of us get to see the sunrise than in the summer. That’ll help us understand what the Apostle is telling us in this passage. A lot of us are now getting out of bed in the dark or around dawn. We know ahead of time that the day is dawning. We can see the signs. The sun has maybe lit the sky even though it isn’t over the horizon yet. There are birds waking and calling to each other. Perhaps we hear a neighboring farmer’s machinery cranking up, or a neighbor with a long commute pulling out of her driveway. It’s easy to tell that another day is about to be off and running.

Translate those images with me into Paul’s thought pattern. Look around yourselves at the world and its creaking and groaning. Look at the “wars and rumors of wars”. Look at the trouble and turmoil that fill the news channels we follow. Look at the ‘signs of the times’ in our own country, state, and county. What do you see? War, corruption, pollution, cheating, scandal, crime, neglect. And that’s on a good day. It’s the same old story. Those of us who follow history note the same signs since the earliest times. This period of universal stress has dragged on for quite a while. This is a long, long time period of darkness in our world.

But Paul points out that it’s also apparent that the dawn is not far off. Yes, it’s been years and years since Paul wrote these words. But it’s also only been a “twinkling of an eye” in the history of the world. Here in Advent as we turn our thoughts toward the coming of Jesus, both as baby in Bethlehem and as triumphant king of the universe, we realize in our bones that we live in two times and two places all at once. First, we live in the chronological 24 hours per day time of the kingdom of this present world. But we also live in what the Bible calls kairos time, the fulfilled time that ushers us into the kingdom of Heaven. Two times. Two places.

Paul highlights the in-betweenness of our lives with this picture of the dawn. Okay, he says, yes it still is night, but the dawn is coming as we can all clearly tell. “The night is far gone, and morning is near.” We aren’t in the middle of the deepest dark any more. We’re about to witness the bursting forth of the new day, the new way, the new kingdom of God, the long-awaited “salvation that is nearer to us than when we became believers.”

Jesus pointed out in the Gospel for today that we don’t know just when this will happen. But he wanted his hearers to be ready at any moment.

Paul wants us to be ready, too. He calls us to “lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” Sure. Why wouldn’t we want to do this? Well, usually because we’re too comfortable as we are. It’s been night for so long. We’ve been laying around in our spiritual pajamas for such a long time. And maybe we’ve gotten too used to it, too used to living in the dark years where these comfortable night clothes seem the right thing to have on. Well sure. We grant that all things are fitting in their place. Pajamas are suited for bed, not the grocery store. Works of darkness are made for the long night, not the dawning day. And just as it may take you a while to change from p.j. ‘s to clothes, just as some of us here eat breakfast before dressing and some of us wouldn’t leave the bedroom before dressing completely, just as we make this change physically at different rates, so also do we make the spiritual conversion at different rates.

Some people still live spiritually as if it is deepest night. And some have gotten fully dressed in their spiritual clothes — what Paul calls the “armor of light” — already. Where are you?

The text calls us to “lay aside the works of darkness,” to take off those spiritual pajamas that have been so cozy, comfortable, and lazy for so long. And in case we’re not clear on what Paul means by this, he gives us a list: “Reveling and drunkenness . .. debauchery and licentiousness … quarreling and jealousy.” Phew! Are you thinking that “at least he didn’t mention my secret sin”? Don’t we often think something like that instead of letting the Law speak to us?

Work backwards through this short list with me for a minute. “Quarreling and jealousy.” Well, maybe a little. It hasn’t been out and out fighting or green-eyed, slathering jealousy, but there have been feelings of discomfort at the success of others maybe. Or a little quickening of the pulse when we’ve been driving down the highway and cut off by someone going a little faster than we were. Or there was that tightening in the pit of our stomachs when we heard or read yet another political speech from the other side in the last couple months. Aren’t there all kinds of ways in which we play the quarreling game? Aren’t there all kinds of varieties of jealousy?

“Debauchery and licentiousness.” Maybe we don’t go to that extreme, but don’t a lot of us — maybe all of us — indulge in some sensuality once in a while? (Need I reference the excesses of the Thanksgiving dinner and tables?) And don’t a lot of us — maybe all of us — disregard some legal and moral restraints at least once in a while?

“Reveling and drunkenness.” That is, noisy partying or excessive use of alcohol. Or, perhaps, this could be extended, as all of these works of darkness could be extended, to include simply any excess, any taking of a good thing to an unhealthy extreme. That seems to be what this list is all about: taking good things to sinful extremes.

And for lots of us, we’re just used to living this way. We have gotten comfortable with it. It’s what we know, so it’s what we go with. It’s easy. It certainly seems easier than living otherwise.

Saint Paul, though, calls us to a different way of life. He calls us to notice what’s going on around us and to react appropriately. Paul calls us to see that there’s a new day dawning and that it’s time to get up and get dressed.

What the apostle wants us to do is to “put on the armor of light.” He spells out what that means down at the end of the text, when he writes that we should “instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”

It isn’t as hard as it might sound. It’s not a difficult thing to do. We who are Christians have already been clothed in light. We’ve already “put on Christ.” The wonder of it all is that despite having done this at our baptism, we often live like we did not have the armor of light on. We live like a Clark Kent or a Peter Parker who never appears in costume and not like the Superman or Spiderman that we really are. We hamper ourselves. We put restraints on our God-given gifts and abilities, on our Christian “superpowers,” if you will.

Instead of falling to the temptation to remain in spiritual street clothes or pajamas, Christians should heed the call of St. Paul to dress in that armor of light that is ours by virtue of our faith relationship with Jesus. The Lord has covered us at our baptism, so let’s make it known.

This is the kind of thing that Luther and others have written about when they tell us to engage in daily repentance, recalling our baptism as a power to aid our daily living. It’s why we can say “I am baptized” instead of “I was baptized.” Putting on Christ in our baptism wasn’t something that was just a historical fact, which happened in the past with no continuing significance in the present and future. It changed us. It made us into the people God wanted us to be from the start. It gave us the armor of light.

Now as each of us look around us at the signs of the times, we can see that the dawn of a new day is not far off. It is no longer time (if it ever was) to live as if Christ’s second coming was far off. It is no longer time (if it ever was) to lounge around in our spiritual pajamas. It IS time, however, to lay them aside and to move about in our armor of light, in the body of Christ, as the powerful, motivated, children of God we have been called to be.

You and I can each take part in the provision of justice and peace around us. You and I can each find ways to shine the light of Christ into the still darkened corners of our community. You and I can learn ways to be Christ to Christian and non-Christian alike. As the day fast dawns, our world needs our presence, the presence of spirited, Spirit-filled people.

Our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed, Paul says. The fulfillment of all the yet-unfilled promises of God, the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus, is about to come to us. And for those people yet without the armor of light to dress in, the time is running short. Can we possibly not show them how to put on Christ? Can we deny them the chance to dress for the day? No. We need to return daily to our own baptisms in which we first put on Christ and gain there the strength, power, and motivation to be the people clothed in light that we were meant to be, thereby helping others to own and put on their own armor of light. God grant it for Christ’s sake.

Amen.

And may the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.

S.D.G.

Note, the following appeared at the beginning of the original typescript:

I. Goal: that we put on the armor of light and live ready for the dawning day

II. Malady: it’s comfortable lounging around in our night clothes, the works of

darkness

III. Means: recognition that we’ve already put on Christ at our Baptisms and

simply need to return to that ‘daily’