Wide Awake
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11[1]
We have all kinds of
ways of avoiding the hard truths that beg for our attention. We lose ourselves in the images that play out
on our television screens or in the world of social media. We distract ourselves by overusing alcohol or
caffeine to get through the day. Or we
become workaholics, keeping busy every waking minute. Or we just go shopping. Somehow spending money on something, on
anything, seems to make us feel like everything’s really just fine. Anything
not to have to pay too much attention to what’s really going on in our world,
in our nation, in our State, and in our town.
We use these and many
other distractions to keep from having to face many painful truths. Children
are abused, and their lives are put in danger. Girls and young women are at
risk of being “trafficked” like consumer goods. People live on the edge of
literally losing everything, clinging to jobs that have little or no future. Families
are coming apart at the seams. Morality seems to be a quaint relic of a by-gone
era. And when widen our gaze, we find that there are wars raging all over the
world, wars that spread violence like an epidemic and leave in its wake
thousands of victims, mostly innocent, left to fend for themselves in refugee
camps that are bursting at the seams.
I think St. Paul knew
how hard life can be. He had been through countless hardships, mostly because
of his commitment to follow Christ and to proclaim the good news. Part of the
message he proclaimed was the promise that one day Christ would return and
finish the work of redemption. One day he would set right all the wrongs in
this world. One day he would make all creation new again, as it was at the
beginning. As you can imagine, that hope was something the early Christians
clung to for dear life. In fact, they held onto it so tightly, some of them got
their priorities confused and became almost obsessed with the idea that Jesus
would return any day.
Paul reminded them, as
Jesus had said before him, that their attitude toward that great day of
restoration was to be one of watchfulness. He contrasts that with the
observation that most of the people in his world were living as if they were
either asleep or drunk. They had no sense that their life choices were
self-destructive. They had no awareness whatsoever that there could be anything
different or better than the life of satisfying their own selfish desires. When
you think about it, it doesn’t sound like much has changed. It seems like many
people in our world today are simply hurtling head-long from one day to the
next, hardly giving any thought to what they’re doing or where they’re headed
or what their future may be. And as a result, their lives consist of one tragic
misstep after another. And they go on living that way, seeming not to notice
the warning signs on the path they’ve chosen.
The Apostle calls
those of us who follow Christ to wake up from the fog and the haze of living
like that, a life that he says is lived essentially in darkness. He says it
this way, “for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are
not of the night or of darkness. So then let us not fall asleep as others do,
but let us keep awake and be sober” (1 Thess 5:5-6). The challenge here is for
us to forego the approach of going through life with “eyes wide shut.” Instead
we are to “wake up.” Essentially, I think, what it takes for us to wake up and
be watchful is to pay attention. We are
called to live intentionally.
That means that we
have to approach the challenges of life in a different way than most people do.
We seem to prefer the fine art of distraction, avoidance and denial to facing
the truths about modern life. Paul had a different idea about all that. He
called the believers of his day action. He told them to “put on the breastplate
of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation” (1 Thess. 5:8). Here
he returns to the foundation for all Christian living: faith, hope, and love.
We can open our eyes to the pain in this world and invest our efforts for God’s
purposes only as we have the faith to trust that God has something better in
store for us. We can “wake up” to the
harsh realities all around us only as we hold onto the hope that God’s new
world is dawning in our lives today. When
we can approach life with this kind of faith and hope, then we can we take the
risk of loving those around us, all those around us, even those who are
difficult to love, especially those who are seemingly “unlovable.”
When we neglect to
live out the faith we profess, we’re living like we’re asleep. There are plenty
of times when I’d much rather just close my eyes to the truth that can be
painful. But our Scripture lesson reminds us that we are called to something
different. We can no longer afford to linger in the various distractions that allow
us to turn a blind eye to the hurts and injustices in our world. We cannot continue to blame those who are
different from us simply because it’s easy.
We cannot continue to ignore the suffering around us because it is too
painful to watch. We cannot continue to
indulge our selfishness just because it feels good. To do so is to go through life as if we’re
walking in our sleep. But the faith, and hope, and love that Jesus Christ
inspires in us has the effect of calling us to serve, “wide awake” to the
realities of our world.
[1] ©2017
Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 11/19/2017 at Hickman
Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
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