Romans13:8-14
My dad was an early riser. It seemed to be in his DNA. He liked to be at the job-site and on the bulldozer before 7am if at all possible.
Dad’s internal clock was programmed early in life. He grew up on a farm in Northern Michigan where barns bustled with feeding and milking activity long before the sun poked its nose above the cornfields. Utilizing those early morning hours to the fullest was critical to the ongoing success of any cattle or dairy farm in those days. Likely still is.
Knowing how much my dad enjoyed food, I sometimes try to imagine how he must have longed for that sliver of sunlight to cut through the darkness and crest the horizon. For with a hint of the light of day would come not only a brief rest from labor but also bacon and eggs and home-baked bread or biscuits, butter and jam made with farm-grown strawberries.
With the promise of a rising sun would come the life-nourishing goodness of some of the best things that labor-intensive farming had to offer. With the dawning day would come a time of refreshment. A time to gather around a table together to be strengthened and to give thanks to God before the day in its fullness arrived.
Perhaps you too, in some way, long for a new day.I know I do. The Apostle Paul did too.
A little background to Paul's words to us. You see in the first 11 Chapters of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, he lays out a grand theological foundation for Roman believers living with both national and internal challenges. Paul was anchoring their hope. In the early part of the letter he does a lot of macro-level thinking about God and Christ and the Spirit and faith and salvation.
He concludes his theological dissertation with words of awe and doxology at the end of Chapter 11. He declares the riches of the wisdom, and knowledge of God and says that from God and through God and to God are all things and all the glory belongs to God.
Then in Chapter 12, Paul shrinks his scope.He turns his gaze on us. His focus becomes - in light of who God is and what God has done- how then shall we live? How do we live in a way well suited to these hopeful,light-filled truths about God? And how do we carry the light of God into this dark world? Paul believes the central way we do that is to live a life of love. All the commandments are summed up in a single phrase says Paul and Jesus – Love your neighbor as yourself.
But then Paul adds – “do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over, the day is almost here.”
Wake up from your slumber! Do you hear Paul blaring an alarm?! We’re going to ask three questions to help us pay attention to that alarm this morning.
The first question is this: What time is it? It’s important to know because the answer to that question has everything to do with what you will do with the rest of this day as well as what you will do with the rest of your life. What time is it?
Paul says we live just before dawn. Though we’ve gathered here at Neland this morning in the bright light of day – in the biblical framework of time – it is still night. There is still darkness all around us. We know this well, don’t we?
We live in a time when anxiety, depression, mental illness, death by suicide – are all on the rise in our society, especially among young people, and particularly among those wrestling with questions of identity. My guess is we all have folks in our lives and circles - of all ages - carrying all kinds of emotional wounds and pain for a whole variety of reasons. And our own hearts - are understandably shadowed by such things.
We worry for those we love.
We worry for a globe that is both warming and warring,
We worry over our polarized nation and our fractured denomination.
I worry over darkness in my own heart
and my own seeming incapacity to love as I should - especially my enemies.
What it makes me realize is that Paul certainly locates us in the right place. It is clearly still night-time.
But, thanks be to God, friends, that is not the end of the story. Paul says more than that. He says that though we live in darkness - the night is nearly over; the day is almost here.
The Bible gives us some beautiful pictures of what a new day may look like. Scripture teaches that a day is coming when the dark cloud of Evil over our world will be destroyed. The prophet Isaiah says that in that day – no more will there be heard in the land the sound of weeping and the cry of distress. Children will grow up. The elderly will be cared for. People shall have houses to live in and gardens from which to gather food. There will be work to do and time for singing…. and none shall hurt or destroy in all God’s holy domain.
That day is not here but it is coming. We are moving toward it. And as we do, here’s the second question to ask ourselves– Why
is it so important that we pay attention to the time?
In ThorntonWilder’s play Our Town, a young woman named Emily dies at the age of 26. She asks the stage manager narrating the play if she can return for a brief visit with her family. He grants her the wish, advising her to choose the least important day in her life -- which "will be important enough," he says. She chooses to return on her 12th birthday, only to find her father obsessed with his business problems and her mother preoccupied with other duties. Emily eventually exclaims, "Oh Mama, just look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama, 14 years have gone by. I’m dead!" Unable to rouse her parents, Emily breaks down sobbing. "We don’t have time to even look at one another. . . Oh - do any human beings ever realize life while they live it -- every, every minute?"
Why is it so important to know the time? Well because we are not always so good at attending to the important things in life. Paul knows how easily distracted we are and how quickly we can get caught up in a life of majoring in the minors instead of using our hearts and souls and minds and time to love. To lean into and love toward Isaiah’s vision of healing and hope for all people. The vision of light shining in darkness and of an invitation to a table with plenty of food and singing.
I used to complain to a friend of mine about how busy I was. She gave me a book to read called“The Tyranny of the Urgent.” She said it had helped her – to be more aware of the many things in her life that wore the façade of being urgent and then stole her focus away from what was most important. I’m embarrassed to say – I still haven’t read it.
Why is it important to know what time it is? Because life is so very precious and also stunningly fleeting.
And here's another reason – when we know the dawn is near we search earnestly for it. And when we see signs of the coming light – it gives us hope.
God, in grace, has already given us a sign, a glimpse of the day that is coming. Isaiah declared that people walking in darkness have seen a great light.” That light came into the world wearing our flesh and demonstrated a cross-shaped, relentless, pursuing love that found out you and me. It’s a love stronger than any power - even death. It’s a love that takes hold of you and will not let you go. It’s the love of God – shown to you, given to you, instilled in you – through Jesus Christ. Notice, Paul does not say – grit your teeth and love. No, Paul says this how you love – you put on Christ’s
armor of light. The light and love of Christ are given to you as gifts to cherish in your own heart and to carry into this world – with the time you’re given here on earth.
Bishop Michael Curry, in his sermon at Harry and Meghan’s royal wedding in 2018, challenged the listeners to use their imagination when it came to bearing light to our world.
He said in part – imagine our homes and families where love is the way. Imagine neighborhoods and communities where love is the way.
Imagine governments and nations where love is the way. Imagine business and commerce where love is the way.
When love is the way poverty will become history. When love is the way, the earth will be a sanctuary.
When love is the way we will lay down our swords and shields, down by the riverside, to study war no more.
When love is the way, there’s plenty good room – plenty good room – for all of God’s children.
I read something recently about the German theologian Jurgen Moltmann, who died earlier this summer. Moltman had fought as a soldier for Germany in WW II. But when the moral rot of the Third Reich was exposed and he saw it for what it was, Moltmann
felt inconsolable grief. He surrendered immediately and spent the next three years in prison camps in Belgium, Scotland, and England.
Moltmann had no religious background. He had brought two books with him into battle – a collection of poems and the works of Nietzsche – neither of which nourished much hope. But an American chaplain gave him an army-issue New Testament and
Psalms. “If I make my bed in the depths, behold thou art there,” the prisoner read. Could God be present in that dark place? As he read on, Moltmann found words that perfectly captured his feelings of desolation. Had not Jesus himself cried out, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” He became convinced that God
“was present even behind the barbed wire – no, most of all behind the barbed wire.”
Upon release, Moltmann began to articulate his famous theology of hope. Humanity exists, he concluded, in a state of contradiction between the cross and the resurrection. Surrounded by evil and decay, we nonetheless hope for restoration, a hope illuminated by the foreglow of Christ’s resurrection. Moltmann famously said: “God weeps with us so that we may someday laugh with him.”
So friends, finally, how do we love well in the time we have?
Moltmann mentioned three things that lifted the darkness and shined the light of hope: a cherry tree blossoming in the prison camp, the humanity and kindness of Scottish prison camp workers, and the Bible he received from the chaplain. “These three things, he said, convinced me to love life again.”
Maybe those three things could help us, too. Perhaps we may be inspired to love well while we have the time by:
First –by appreciating and giving thanks for the beauty and variety and creativity with which God has created this amazing world.
Second – by paying good attention to the image of God in others, no matter who they are – with kindness, mercy, and generosity.
Finally –let’s keep the Gospel’s main thing the main thing.
And the main thing is love!
For the night is nearly over, the day is almost here.
Thanks be to God.
