1 Staying Awake (1 Thessalonians 5:1-11) One of the joys of living in a household which includes young adults is that it becomes easier to keep up, more or less, with what young people are thinking. The older I get, the more valuable this seems. This past week I saw a podcast by one young man which I found both discouraging and encouraging all at the same time. It was discouraging because I saw the truth in his words, and this truth warns of a potentially frightening future. And it was encouraging to hear someone thinking things through, and actually recognizing the danger that lies ahead. His analysis was deeply thought out and impeccably logical, which I found especially refreshing in this day and age. The talk I watched was about two dystopian novels with which many of you may be familiar: George Orwell s 1984, and Aldous Huxley s Brave New World. Both standard fare for high school English classes. The talk focused on how the authoritarian regimes in each novel accomplished mind control, keeping the populace in a basically powerless state, so that the state s power wasn t threatened. What really caught my attention was his description of Huxley s Brave New World, in which, through control of the media, people s attentions were completely diverted and manipulated with addictive entertainment, such as certain kinds of sports, pornography, casual sex, and drugs. In a sense they re time wasters designed to keep people so occupied as to prevent them from thinking too much, and especially to keep them from reading meaningful literature, which might inspire them to think deeply and develop empathy for others. They didn t want this, because it might threaten the status quo. You see, it was all a strategy. Now, let me stop here and ask you: Is any of this beginning to sound remotely familiar? When we think of modern day time wasters and manipulative media, to me, things like certain video games, social media, pornography, smart phones in general, and even (and I know I might be threatening some sacred cows here) sports, this starts hitting a little close to home. And the question is: Are we being manipulated, or distracted, or even sedated by some of these things? Are we reading less, thinking less, and becoming less responsive to the needs of others through this overwhelming sensory tsunami coming at us? Are we missing some terribly important things when we allow our attention to be so constantly diverted? These are some of the things that come to my mind when I hear Paul, in today s reading from his letter to the Thessalonians, say, Let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. Stay alert, with eyes wide open! Paul says, and, from his point of view, for very good reason. Jesus said something very similar in last week s Gospel text. He said, Keep awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour.
2 And if one hasn t heard the Gospel story, it s more than fair to ask, Why keep awake? What day, and what hour? So to fully appreciate this we need to remember the story of Jesus. It s a long and kind of dense story, but the basic bare bones are found within the Creed we ll be saying right after this talk. The people closest to those events 2000 years ago said that Jesus was the divine and only Son of God, that he became incarnate born of flesh, that he suffered death on the Cross, was buried, and then rose from the dead, that he later ascended into that other realm we call heaven, and that one day he ll come again to this earth to set everything right. And at the end Matthew s Gospel, Jesus himself lays out the most important thing we humans can do given all these facts, and that is to go out into the world, spread the good news of Jesus and his new, good kingdom, and make followers among all peoples of the earth. That s the Jesus story in a nutshell. And its importance is magnified by his promise to return to this earth very suddenly, like a thief in the night. He basically says Be ready! Don t be caught unawares, because I m coming to receive you into the great celebration for those who believe. He says, You don t want to be completely diverted, or anesthetized, or derailed by the distractions and addictions of this age. Stay awake! Let s look closer at this. What exactly do these words of caution mean for us in our own time and in our own context? What are some of the ways we can fall asleep and, in Paul s view, spiritually endanger ourselves? Because some of these snares can be pretty subtle. Well first, we can fade to lives of denial or passive unbelief. Even believers can be lulled into a false sense of security. I mean, who hasn t, at one time or another, thought, Well, it s been 2000 years. Are we really getting this thing right? I can t constantly walk on pins and needles; I ll just live my life and leave the heavy lifting of faith to someone else. A sense of denial can develop, and we find ourselves not living as if Jesus will one day return, but instead as if he s gone for good. We feel like we re on our own, and we live our life that way. I suspect that s what Paul means when he says that they, those who aren t living sober and watchful lives, they say (verse 3), There s peace and security. Okay? What, me worry? It s all good! Eat, drink and be merry! But Paul s saying, Hey, you guys are not living in darkness. You have the light of Christ! You re sons and daughters of the light! So don t allow yourselves to drift off into some kind of distracted reverie, or idle faith. When the horn blows, that s not where you want to be. And it certainly doesn t help those who look to you as an example. In other words, he s saying that this is a very serious matter. You must stay awake! So the first way we can fall asleep is simply by drifting away from intentional belief. The second way we can fall asleep is by becoming distracted, or addicted, or sedated by meaningless entertainment, just like Huxley s description in Brave New World. We
3 can lose track of our loved ones, we can lose track of God, and we may even lose track of ourselves. It s like that meme of the Norman Rockwell thanksgiving painting that was circulating last year about this time. Everything looked authentic and Rockwellian, except that, if you looked closely, you saw that everyone at the dinner table was holding a smart phone in their hand. The 21 st century idol. It s been said that the opposite of love isn t hate, but apathy. And it s possible to become so absorbed in our own comfort and entertainment that we become spiritually numb, and apathetic, and blind to the needs of others. I think this is an especially tricky one in our time. I daresay that a great many of us are living lives of increasing stress and anxiety. Around us we re seeing an accelerating whirlwind of situations we don t have any control over. We see darkness encroaching from unexpected places. So there s a strong temptation for many of us to engage in what psychotherapists call self-medication. You know, if God is a little too slow to respond to us in the way we d like, we take matters into our own hands, and we look for fast relief or instant gratification. Like in Brave New World it may take the form of everything from pornography, to drugs or alcohol, to sexual addiction or other highs. Or it might take the form of video gaming or social media. And eventually the very thing that gives us relief in the short run begins to control us, and even to supplant God in our lives. (It s often been said in 12-Step circles, the man takes a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes the man. Okay? The drink takes control. The same may be said for any type of addiction.) Now, so as not to sound like some kind of cosmic killjoy here, a disclaimer is in order. And that is that entertainment is not evil. It s not sinful. (Well, most kinds aren t ) But God created us with a playful side, and I m convinced he has a playful side as well. I mean, just look at the duck-billed platypus. And he wants us to have rest and recreation. It s how we re made. But like most good things, these can become addictions that fail to relieve the deepest hunger in our souls. Relief for that can only come from the Lord himself. It s the God-shaped void. So we can fall asleep by plunging ourselves too deeply into our distractions, and essentially turning them into idols. Finally, we can be lulled into sleep by what might reasonably be called the spirit of the age the spirit of our age, right now. And that is a contagious feeling of fear and pessimism which wastes energy that we could otherwise be using to actively make this world a better place. This, too, leads to apathy. I don t know about you, but I see this as pretty widespread right now. A lot of folks seem to be hunkering down and circling the wagons, and some are even immobilized by anxiety and depression. Some believers are losing their faith and their hope. Jesus actually prophesied this. He said that, as things get harder, and begin accelerate before
4 his own return, people s hearts will fail them because of fear, and even the elect will be deceived, and the love of many will grow cold. Do you see that happening? / Here s the problem: The opinions of large groups of people have a certain critical mass. When more people agree on a particular idea, the more confidence they have in that idea. Have you noticed that? There s strength in numbers. But unfortunately this isn t always a good kind of strength. More and more people are rejecting Christianity (and Christ) outright. In fact, more and more seem to be becoming less and less tolerant of those who do believe (which was also predicted by Jesus). So when Paul (and Jesus) warn us to stay awake, I think it s fair to say that he s warning us not to be seduced into the powerful, pessimistic groupthink of this age. Instead Paul exhorts us to lift up our heads and watch hopefully, because our redemption is drawing near. So how do we do all this? What are Paul s recommendations to the church in Thessalonica, and to us, about how to stay awake? Well, very quickly, I count at least four things. First, he exhorts us to live as children of light. And please note here that live is not a passive verb. Living isn t something that happens to us, but that we choose to do. Something that we lean into, and we press forward. And when we choose to live as children of light, we re making the decision to gratefully obey God s health-giving ways, and to daily allow ourselves to be transformed by the renewing of our minds through the holy scriptures and by the Holy Spirit who lives within us. It s the building process of eternal life. We re feeding ourselves spiritual health food instead of junk food. As Paul writes elsewhere, we re thinking on the things that are true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable and excellent: living in the light instead of existing timidly in the shadows. Second, as we ve been saying all along, Paul urges us to stay awake and sober. And of course by sober he doesn t mean somber. He s not browbeating us to be uberserious wet blankets or something. Instead, he s cautioning us to pay attention to what s really going on around us, and to forthrightly deal with it, not burying ourselves in fruitless diversions or passive denial. In a sense he s saying, Be the designated driver: the navigator, the one who knows the way home. Because that way is Jesus, and we know him. The third thing Paul encourages us to do is to put on the breastplate of faith and love. Have you ever noticed that when you re singing, it s hard to feel hopeless? The week before last we had a wonderful Diocesan Clergy Conference with the theme Sing to the Lord a New Song. We united our voices with the Spirit and learned a lot of new songs, and some old songs sung newly. I hope to introduce some of them to you before too long.
5 In the same vein, when you re busy loving God and your neighbor, it s pretty hard to stay hopeless, much less drift into a coma. Faith and love keep us alive and awake, especially when we join in worship with our believing sisters and brothers. Finally, Paul says to put on the helmet of Hope. Head protection. Regardless of the storms that swirl around us and the anxiety these may tempt us toward, our hope is based on the goodness of God, and his promise that his Son is on his way, to set things right on this earth by bringing it together with heaven into a new, imperishable creation. The entire New Testament sparkles with this promise. It s good to know that Paul wrote this letter less than 20 years after the resurrection. It was fresh off the presses and close to the source. And more than anything, he wanted his church in Thessalonica to understand and rejoice in their grounds for hope. He wanted them to feel authentic and well-grounded joy and courage for the journey. May these promises and encouragements be, for us, each and every morning, as fresh as they were for the believers in Thessalonica, whom we ll all have the chance to meet one day. And may our journey find us always alive, awake, hopeful, and savoring every moment. Amen.