“Sleepers awake!” is the name of Bach’s popular cantata, originally sung during Advent. The title comes from the Holy Scriptures and forms part of the Church’s calling on our lives in this holy season of preparation for Christ’s coming: it recalls the parable of the wise Virgins, whose lamps where lit and ready to meet the Lord at His glorious Second Coming.
The early Orthodox Church lived in a constant state of alertness, readiness, to meet the Lord at His Second Coming, putting Christ first and before all things the world had on offer. Christ having ascended in glory, we now live in the last epoch, that is, “the last days.” We who are here today are even closer to that final day that will begin the day that has no end.
Indeed, this is the truth we commemorate every Vespers service as we sign the Gladsome Light. We are called to live with eternity before our eyes, to put away the temporal distractions that lull us into spiritual sleep and slothfulness so that we can be ready for the Day of Christ’s Judgment.
St. Paul urges us in today’s Epistle (as he does elsewhere in the Scriptures, e.g., I Thess. 5:1-11) to such vigilance. First off, he reminds us what should be the fruit of our life in Christ by the Holy Spirit: goodness, righteousness, truth—all of which is defined not by ourselves, not by our culture, but by God Himself who is the Truth and became incarnate to enlighten every human being with that Truth, life in and through Him.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned that we be watchful, “awake”, alert to the needs of our souls, of our need for life with Him, because He knows and reveals to us that this is the difference between true life and true death. Do we know and are we in communion with Him who is Life itself or do we preoccupy ourselves with the things of this world to the neglect and lethargy of our eternal souls? To do so would be death.
And so, during this Nativity Fast, Advent, we are called upon to heed the prophets’ warnings, to rouse ourselves from sleep and renew our zeal for life with God, the only true life there is. “Therefore He (Christ) says, “Awake, you who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.” This is the choice that is laid before us: life with God or death without God.
Modern man is particularly challenged to keep these words because we so easily live in the relative comforts and distractions of our work-a-day world, where we seek to surround ourselves with material safety. Most of the time, people don’t seem to ‘need’ God because their days are filled with distraction and their physical or material needs are met; they live in relative ease.
St. Paul calls on us with Christ’s Gospel to “redeem the time, because the days are evil.” People walk around, busy in their lives, and forget God. Evil ensues, by definition. Without God, evil will happen. Where God is, there is true love, light. Where He is forgotten, there is no accountability or bounds to human behavior. Humanism ensues: mankind deciding for himself what is good and what is evil. We’ve seen how this plays out writ large in the events of the 20th century and continuing to our own day.
Because God loves us to such a great extent: more than you and I are capable of loving, He warns us, beckons us, to redeem the time, that is, to learn to number our days, to make use of them for repentance, to become so Christ-minded, that we turn to Christ whenever we sin, and then, whenever we’re tempted, and then, whenever and at every time and season as we progress in the life of faith. It’s not man that saves man, but God who saves man and calls him back to His first beauty through the life in Christ and communion with the Holy Trinity.
The rich young man in today’s Gospel reflects one who, while outwardly keeping the commandments of God, neglects the conversion of the soul within. Christ God sees into his heart and for that reason, addresses the very thing that will keep this man from being able to follow Christ and be with Christ: his riches and the hold it has on him. Jesus Christ makes it clear to us here and elsewhere in the Gospel, as He does in the first of the Ten Commandments, that we can have “no other gods” but Him for He alone is God. We cannot embrace the life in Him, communion with Him, if our treasure is not in Him but in our possessions, in the world. If we prefer the things of the world and only give God “lip-service,” then we cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. This truth is behind the words of Christ when He says, “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!”
God knows how much of a hold our material well-being can have on us and how it can insulate us against the need to put our trust and our faith in Him, to awaken our souls to our need of Him who alone can save us, heal us, and grant us eternal life. In fact, the disciples go on to ask Jesus, “Who then can be saved?” Christ’s response? With God all things are possible.
But it takes doing what St. Paul is admonishing us to do in today’s Epistle, “Awake, you who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.” Redeem the time, love the people of this fallen culture and land enough to hold up to them the truth of Christ, to speak the truth in love and strive with all your heart to live out that truth of Christ in your own daily life. Model the faith humbly, vulnerably, to all those around you. Share with others who are fallen away, skeptics, who are following the way of the culture and its secularism, the truth of what Christ God is doing in your life, forgiving us, healing us, saving us, giving us joy not dependent on our material well-being, on our earthly treasure, but grounded in Him who is Eternal Life.
Pray, fast, redeem the time, make use of this holy season to prepare for Christ’s birth. As you do so, you are also doing what is necessary to prepare for Christ’s Second Coming as well, for, as St. Cyril of Jerusalem says, “we do not only proclaim one coming, but two, the second more glorious than the first!” Be generous to the Church and to those in need so that the ministries of Christ’s holy Church can be built up and prosper and its ministry in this culture expanded so that others can come with us to hope of healing, and salvation, eternal life with God the Holy Trinity while there is time.
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
Annapolis, Maryland
Sunday, 2 December 2012
