Ready for a New Day

Ready for a New Day--September 28, 2016

"So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober; for those who sleep sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night.  But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation." [1 Thessalonians 5:6-8]

Most people I know who are coffee drinkers reach a point in their day when they stop drinking regular coffee and will only have something decaffeinated if they drink anything else, so that they are not kept up late into the night.  They are mindful enough of what the caffeine will do to them and of what time it is that they make different choices:  "Oh, it's past 7:00pm already?  No, I'd better have decaf."  It's a common enough response.

And on the other end of the day, the choices we make are even more obvious.  People who are coffee drinkers--and who can have caffeine--will pass on the decaf when they first wake up and drink "the real stuff" to help them get energized and face the day.  And pretty much, working people know not to start the day with a beer or a glass of wine, because they know, too, that the alcohol will slow their brains rather than activate their brains.  It has to do with knowing what time it is, and what is appropriate to each time.  If you are really trying to get ready for a new day--and not to get away from or out of a new day--you will make certain choices because you know that you are at the beginning of something, rather than watching yourself unwind at the end of the workday.

The early Christians had a deep conviction that they were at the beginning of something, too, and that, if you can believe it, we are still at the beginning of it.  We are on the verge of a new day beginning--at the leading edge of the Reign of God, which is just on the verge of breaking loose.  We live--and in fact, we have spent the last 2,000 years--in that moment before the dawn where the sky just begins to lighten in the east, and where, if you are facing the west, it still looks like the middle of the night.  This is the way that Paul talks about our waiting for the coming of Jesus--like people who are just on the verge of a new day, the day of the Lord, and who have the choice either to cover their eyes with a pillow and deny it, or to wake up and get ourselves dressed for the day ahead and all that will unfold in it.

And if you really did see yourself at the start of a whole new 'age' like it was the beginning of a new day--as Paul sometimes talks about it--you really would ask some questions about what choices make sense to prepare for it.  If you know not to start a work day in your regular weekly routine by drinking a couple of beers and a shot of whiskey before driving off to work, well, then, by analogy, what are some things that would make us less ready than more ready for the coming of Jesus and the breaking in of the Kingdom of God?  It's all about analogy--if there are some choices that make sense at the start of a literal work day (like getting dressed, rather than lounging in your pajamas or sweatpants, for one, or drinking coffee rather than Coors), then what are the choices that make sense at the start of the day of the Lord, even if it feels like it's only just the edge of dawn right now?

Hopefully, this helps us understand what Paul's saying about drunkenness and soberness, too--while Paul is never in favor of excess, this passage isn't so much about actual alcohol as it is about the analogy between getting ready for a new day in your regular routine and getting ready for the new Day that begins when Jesus comes.  If you know enough not to let your senses be dulled and your thinking distracted by drunkenness when you're starting a work day, well, then we should not let ourselves be dulled, distracted, or numb by anything that would impede our ability to step into the new Day of the Lord ready to live in it full and deep.  Paul isn't arguing against literal alcohol any more than he is arguing against literal sleep--Paul's point is not to say that Christians should not literally go to bed at night because Jesus is coming.  He is using both sleep and drunkenness as metaphors for being distracted and numb to the coming of Jesus.  Just like you are missing out on the good things of a new day if you hide yourself under the covers or crawl into a bottle and waste the daylight, Paul calls us not to let ourselves be distracted or slumbering our lives away as we look ahead to Jesus' coming.  

So it comes down to this.  This morning is the start of an ordinary Wednesday--your clock told you, the morning news told you, and eventually the light in the sky told you, that a new day was beginning.  So what choices did you make to get ready to face this ordinary Wednesday?  Well, if we dare to believe what the Scriptures tell us, we are on the verge of a new day, too, as creation groans for the coming of Jesus:  so what choices will we make to live in anticipation of that new Day?  How will we treat each other in the fullness of the Kingdom?  With jealousy or generosity?  With selfishness or self-giving?  With apathy or with love?  Well, if you can imagine what it will be like in the full sunlight (or Son-light, if you like) of that Day, Paul says to us, "Go ahead and live like that now--after all, that's the kind of Day that is just about to dawn among us."  Today, let us begin to live like that Day for which we have been waiting really is dawning among us.

Lord God, open our eyes today, and give us the faith to believe you really are bringing about a new Day in Jesus.