Wake up

To what do we need to wake up? 
As with all of Jesus’ teaching about the parousia, it is about waking up to love. Not, as many in the modern understanding of the second coming would have it, waking up to our dislike or hate of the behaviour of others. How does our behaviour need to be woken up, by our realization of the imminence of God of Christ?

So as we enter this season of Advent, this season during which more than any other we stand on tiptoes and crane our necks in an attempt to see over the horizon and speak of expectation and promise and hope, what do we have to say in the face of the gathering clouds of darkness? ( Environmental issues, War and violence, despair and meaninglessness, the death of the church as we know it!)
As people well trained in anaesthetising ourselves to our fears of the future, can we find something in the message of Jesus that speaks with genuine hope before the all too real and all too concrete perils bearing down on our generation? To say that the end is nigh is no longer seen as a sign of religious excess, just an unwelcome statement of the obvious. How then shall we live?


We need to be promoting a lifestyle for a new era not a harking back to lifestyle of 40 years ago. Community instead of competition. Shared belongings instead of over-consumption. That sounds like a lifestyle that could be light to the world’s dark fear. That sounds like a lifestyle that could prepare us for Christ’s return.

Where are the voices crying out in the wilderness calling us to repent and return to God? I speak of the God of justice and mercy: the God who calls us to love mercy, do justice and walk humbly with God. One of those voices is the poet who wrote Hymn 621. This hymn not heard often in our churches – at least I haven't heard it often – but it is a hymn that calls us to the world Isaiah and Dr. King and God envisioned:

O God of every nation, of every race and land,

redeem the whole creation with your almighty hand;

where hate and fear divide us and bitter threats are hurled,

in love and mercy guide us and heal our strife-torn world. 

http://www.laughingbird.net/SermonTexts/0087.html