Romans 13:11-14
This is one of those Sundays when we are trying to squeeze a lot into a short time, so I am going to take advantage of that to split my sermon into two sections for two groups and make each of them short.
First, here’s a message for the younger folks.
The Bible reading we heard earlier talks about what it’s like “the moment for you to wake from sleep” [Romans 13:11]. A lot of the time you probably depend on your parents to wake you up, and tell you it’s time to get up and get ready. Most of the time you probably grumble a little, and some days you take your time to the point where you’re trying to finish your breakfast but the adults are saying, “Come on! We have to get going!” and they’re standing by the closet door with your jacket and telling you to put your shoes on and grab your bookbag or your backpack.
The worst part of it can be when you do try to rush, and they get annoyed and tell you that you should have had everything in place before you went to bed, or you should have gotten up without being called three times and you would have had more time. But the fact is that right then the time you have is the time you have and you’re doing what you can to keep up or to catch up.
What this Bible message tells us, though, is something like that. Jesus loves us very much, and wants us to be ready for a lot of the good things he has for us to do, and to spend time with us like our friends spend time with us. That means that it’s not good to get too wrapped up in other things that aren’t as important in the long run as he is.
Now, here’s the message for the older folks.
Paul talks in Romans about how we very often want to remain in the dark, but how faith works to make us people of the light instead. There are things that he identifies as “the works of darkness” and gives a list of some of them: “reveling and drunkenness, debauchery and licentiousness, quarreling and jealousy”. They’re the sort of things that make someone want to pull the covers over their heads and say, “No, I didn’t do that, did I? I didn’t say that. Really?”
He urges us to live our lives in such a way that when we wake up we welcome today instead of regretting yesterday. In fact, he tells us that we should live with expectation that Jesus will show us something good with each new day, “For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers.” [Romans 13:11]
Here’s a good exercise to recapture that feeling if it has faded. Try to remember when Christmas morning was not a time that you wanted to sleep in. Try to remember when the most difficult part of the day was staying in bed until you were supposed to get up, wondering what was downstairs in the living room that wasn’t there the night before, and if the milk and cookies that you left out had been eaten.
If one little sparkle of that feeling is something you remember, then realize that it is not just the celebration and the tinsel and the gifts that once were all that you knew, but it is the presence of Christ among us and in your life every single day year round that lies at the source of that kind of joy.
Then light can shine when things get really dark, and the sun can come up when night seems deepest around you. Then the people who dwell in darkness see a great light, and it’s not the light of candles and electric bulbs and storefront or neighborhood displays. It doesn’t need carols and cookies to flip the switch. It’s the real thing, the light of Christ. That light “shines in the darkness and the darkness has never overcome it.” [John 1:5]
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