The Day is Dawning

from my message on Dec. 22, 2013, from Romans 13:11-14

Do you know what today is?  Yes, December 22.  It is also the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, the longest night.  It is also the fourth Sunday of Advent.  You nearly forgot that it is only 2 shopping days until Christmas.  Then there is the classic poster, Today is the first day of the...rest of your life.  For the Apostle Paul, today is also one day closer to the second coming of Christ.

I know we United Methodists don't spend a lot of energy during this season on the second Advent of Christ.  We tend to focus on the sweet baby Jesus, the first coming of Christ.  But Paul believed that Christ was coming again, and coming soon.  The night is far gone, the day is near, he says.

I go to a Catholic retreat house, a house of quiet and prayer, called Lebh Shomea.  Father Rocky (I am not making this name up) wrote in his newsletter that Advent is the season when we live each day as if  Christ was coming that day.  I know we don't have that same sense of immediacy and urgency, but I do believe that we believe that Christ is coming again.  We believe that the God of creation is also the God of completion.  We believe that the days are not just a series of random events but are actually leading to a conclusion.

I want to tell you some stories to back up this claim.  There was a man who lived some time ago.  I won't share his name or time just yet, because he seems to be quite contemporary.  He was a spoiled child.  I know we don't have any spoiled children around here today.  He had lots of advantages.  It allowed him to dabble in all of the esoteric mysteries of his day.  He tried out all of the philosophies and mystery religions of his time.  He was attracted to Christianity.  A preacher named Ambrose had a special appeal as did the liturgy.  Yet he was also drawn to sex and drugs and rock and roll.  If there was something to stimulate his senses, he tried it.  He would go to the church, and then go back to his wasting of life.  He was really torn between the darkness and the light.  One day, in a time of stress, when this conflict was raging inside him, he retreated to the backyard, to the garden of the house.  There he heard a child singing.  He could tell if it was a boy or a girl.  He couldn't tell if the voice was across the fence or inside him.  The child was singing, "take up and read.  Take up and read."  His friend had the letters of Paul in a bound book, which he handed to him.  This torn man resolved to do whatever he placed his hand upon in the Bible.  I do not recommend this method of Bible study to you.  It could lead you to some dangerous places.  Anyhow, he opened the book to Paul's letter to the church of Rome, to the 13 chapter, the 13 verse. "Let us live honorable as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy."

The light shone brightly in his life.  Christ came in a powerful way.  It was exactly the word that he needed to hear.  He was never the same person again.  He was immediately baptized.  His name was Augustine.  We call him Saint Augustine.  He became a bishop in Hippo.  He wrote extensively and shaped the life of the early church. He was the one who wrote, "our hearts are restless till they find their rest in thee."

Did you notice that the next verse after the one that got to Augustine said to "put on the Lord Jesus Christ?"  This is baptismal language.  We put on the light of Christ.  In Godly play, the lesson on baptism involves giving each child a candle.  Light is taken from the one Christ candle and is used to light each child's candle.  The point is made that the light of Christ is not diminished even as it is shared.  In fact, it only grows and grows. So it is with us and Augustine.  We take on the light of Christ and grow into his likeness.

We believe that the fullness of the light of Christ will shine one day in hope.  We believe in the second coming of Christ.  I know we do, or else, why would we do some of the things that we do?

I will share some stories with no name mentioned but based upon actual events as they say in the movies.
You are an attractive female in your 50's. Your first husband has died, but you still have lots of life left.  You meet another man, a widower.  You fall in love and marry.  Life is terrific, until after only a couple of years, he starts to forget things.  Where are the keys?  What did I just say?  You go to all of the doctors.  There cannot be a definitive diagnosis, but they say, "It appears to be Alzheirmer's."  You cry......but you don't give up on the marriage.  You said, "For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health."  You hold up your light.

You are a man at a business conference.  You are at the table with several persons from around the country.  She's there at your side during the day, at your table.  There's joking....brushes of the hand...it feels like flirting.  At the end of the day at this convention center, she mentions that she has no dinner plans.  It is innocent enough; you go to dinner together.  She asks you to walk her to her room.  You are a gentleman and do so.  There at the door she has a line that means more than the mere words. She asks, "Would you like to come in?"  And you have a wedding ring on, and here you draw the line, and you politely decline, "I need to get back to my room."  And you hold up your light.

You are parents of grown children.  You have brought them up well.  You have brought them up in the Christian faith.   These adult children have drifted away from that faith.  In fact, they don't want to talk about that subject.  When you bring it up, they get quite exercised in reaction to it. "We don't want to go there."  You love them.  You pray for them, by day and by night.  You wait for them.  You make every possible invitation to relationship.  You hold up your light.

You are a student a school, middle school.  And there's the kid the others like to pick on.  You know the one.  And most of the kids are pretty good, most of the time, but sometimes they can be mean, can be cruel.  So this one day, when they are picking on the kid, you know the one, you stand beside the one being picked on and say, "Enough.  He's my friend.  Stop it."  And you hold up your light.

You are here today.  It's not Christmas eve; it's the fourth Sunday of Advent.  School's out and you're here.  It's cold outside and you're here.  The Austin allergies are raging, and you're here.  And you hold up your light.

Christ is coming.  The day, His day is dawning.  We are one day closer to the second coming.  Life is not a series of random events, but moving towards His light.

The verse underlying this whole Advent series has been from the first chapter of John, talking about Jesus, "the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it."

Keep holding up your light until the light of Christ fully comes.