“Keep Awake”
As some of you may know, I walk a little over two miles every morning (except for Sundays when I’m preaching and need to be at church early for the first service). I get out of bed at 5:40ish. I start the coffee, take the dogs out, and sit in my chair in the living room for prayer and meditation. Then, about an hour or so after getting out of bed, I begin my walk.
I follow this routine religiously with one exception. Occasionally, I wake up significantly earlier than my alarm and can’t get back to sleep. After a few futile attempts at rolling over, I become impatient with lying in bed waiting for the day to start. So, I get up quietly to avoid disturbing Stephanie and the dogs. I change into my exercise clothes — which this time of the year include a headlamp and reflective vest — and then, prepared for whatever the weather conditions may be, I start my walk.
If you’d told me a few years ago that I would be out for a walk before sunrise, I would have said you were crazy. But over the past couple of years, these pre-dawn walks have become sacred opportunities to experience the awakening of a sleeping world. Though I seem at first to have the neighborhood all to myself, gradually I recognize that I am not alone. As the horizon in the east begins to brighten ever so slightly, a few neighbors turn on lamps inside their homes while others stumble out to get their newspapers. A neighbor jogs by, almost invisible in the dark as we greet each other with a simple, “Good morning.” Then I see a variety of wildlife, some emerging to start the day, others finishing a night of hunting and foraging.
In the northern hemisphere, the season of Advent arrives during the darkest time of the year, so light takes on added significance. During this season of waiting, we wait for Jesus, the Light of the World, to come. The “holiday season” swirls around us attempting to sugarcoat our waiting, promising us that all will be “merry and bright.” Advent, on the other hand, does not promise that our waiting will be easy. Instead, Advent appeals to our deepest yearnings and unmet hopes. “Come, Lord, come quickly,” we earnestly pray.
When life is at its darkest — when the unjust prevail, when the diagnosis we’ve received disrupts our sense of security, when grief overwhelms us — waiting for Christ’s justice, healing, and comfort can feel as interminable as laying awake in the dark waiting for the sun to rise.
But Advent waiting is not an invitation to passivity (Beth spoke of this in her excellent sermon this past Sunday). Jesus tells us to “keep awake” (Mark 13:35) not so we lie hopelessly in the bed but to encourage us to step out into the dark. Why? Because one of the paradoxes of our faith is that it is from the dark that we see Christ’s light emerging. Being awake and active in the dark allows us to participate in the emerging new dawn of God’s justice, peace, grace and healing.
In The Universal Christ, Richard Rohr writes, “Those who respond to the call and agree to carry and love what God loves — which is both the good and the bad — and to pay the price for its reconciliation within themselves, these are the followers of Jesus Christ. They are the leaven, the salt, the remnant, the mustard seed that God uses to transform the world. … Saints are those who wake up while in the world instead of waiting for the next one.”
