Lent 4 (3/2/08) “Awake, O Sleeper”

Text: Ephesians 5.8-14

Awake, O sleeper, arise from death,

and Christ will give you light!!

Spring is almost here, and the sun rises earlier and earlier each day. I don’t know about you, but in the dead of winter, when it stays dark so long, I have a heck of a time waking up—like the little boy in Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem who complains that “in winter I get up at night and dress by yellow candlelight.” There’s something about the darkness that makes waking up hard to do. But as the dawn comes sooner and sooner, I find myself restless at about five o’clock, and by the time the alarm goes off I am wide awake.

So St. Paul’s image of “waking up” speaks to me, at least at this time of year. In our lessons this morning, there are several examples of what it means to “awake” to the light of Christ; and here, in the absolute middle of Lent, it will be good for us to observe them and to reflect on our awaking to Christ.

Let’s start with the story of the man born blind. Except for the Palm Sunday passion story, it is the longest gospel lesson we ever hear in church—but one that cannot really be abbreviated because it is so intricately and masterfully told. I want you to notice one moment particularly in the story. This man born blind has been healed by Jesus, and he is catching all kinds of grief from the Pharisees who want to entrap Jesus. They try to get the man to say something that will help them bring charges against Jesus, so they ask him all kinds of questions. Finally, in exasperation, he says to them, “I don’t know about all these things you’re asking; one thing I know, that though I was blind, now I see.” The man, we might say, has awakened to what Christ has done for him and in him.

Now waking up is a strange process, isn’t it? We are completely unconscious. There are no thoughts in our mind, no sensations, we’re aware of nothing. Then, gradually, we awaken. We become aware of ourselves, of our bodies. Thoughts form in our minds. We think of what day it is, and what we must do today. Perhaps we become aware again of some sorrow or joy from yesterday. But we move, in the space of a few minutes or even seconds, from being completely oblivious to being fully aware.

In a way, that is what this man has experienced. When Jesus first encounters him, he is completely blind—blind since birth. He has no sense, no memory of what the world looks like. But as Jesus touches him, that begins to change. He begins to see. He starts to try to make sense of a world that is suddenly new to him. In the beginning, he seems a little confused, and not quite sure what has happened or why. But as his mind and heart begin to focus, he makes this wonderful claim: “One thing I know: that though I was blind, now I see.”

And so it is with us. When we begin to awake from the sleep of our human nature, we become increasingly aware of what Christ has done for us. We begin to see his hand in every turn of our lives, to notice his grace in each day’s journey. Perhaps no one ever captured that quite as eloquently as St. Patrick, whose day, I understand, has been moved by the Vatican to March 15 this year because the usual date falls during Holy Week. Good luck with that! But whenever his day is celebrated, Patrick wrote a beautiful morning prayer, that is, a prayer of awakening, facing the day with a marvelous awareness of Christ in every piece of life:

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,

Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ on my right, Christ on my left,

Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,

Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,

Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,

Christ in every eye that sees me,

Christ in every ear that hears me.

How blest are they who awake to the understanding that Christ is indeed with us, every moment, in every encounter, through every day!

Awake, O sleeper, arise from death,

and Christ will give you light!!

Then there is our wonderful lesson from 1 Samuel, the story of the anointing of David. Can you imagine what it must have been like to be David, the shepherd boy? He is the youngest of eight sons, and he is forgotten by almost everyone. His older brothers are fine, courageous, good-looking men, clearly leadership material. When the aged and holy Samuel comes to anoint a new King, he sees these older sons and thinks that surely one of them will be the one God has chosen. But then we learn that “the Lord does not see as mortals see.” The Lord has chosen young David.

Now at this point in his life, I doubt David has ever thought of himself as anything more than a child, with chores to do and the obligation to yield to all his brothers. But when Samuel comes and anoints him with oil, he awakens to an understanding of what God will be asking of him. “And the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward.”

We might again cite St. Patrick as an example of awakening to God’s call. Patrick was born in Great Britain back in the time of the Roman Empire. That was a dangerous century, especially if you lived on the periphery of civilization.Young Patrick was kidnapped one day by barbarians, pirates from the uncivilized island later known as Ireland. They carried him back there and sold him into slavery. For six years he toiled, and then was able to escape. But during those years of captivity, he became convinced that God had a mission for him—to bring the gospel to these Irish heathen. So once he was free, he set about to follow that mission. He was ordained, and eventually became the missionary who brought the light of Christ to Ireland.

In Holy Baptism, God anointed you, chose you, claimed you—not because you are so great, but because God is so great. Now this has all kinds of implications for us. In the first place, it means that we can never offer excuses for why we cannot do the tasks God calls us to do. We often try to do that, don’t we? “I’m not good enough for that,” we say, “I can’t do that!” But God didn’t choose you because of your abilities or your gifts or your strengths. He chose you because he loves you, and because he can willingly give you whatever you may be lacking to do the tasks he sets before you. He calls you now to awaken to that mission he has for you!

Awake, O sleeper, arise from death,

and Christ will give you light!!

Then Christ also calls us to awaken to an understanding of how we are to live for him. “Try to find out,” Paul writes, “what is pleasing to the Lord.” Once a pastor asked a young confirmand what it meant to live for Christ. Having thoroughly memorized her catechism, she replied, “Don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t commit adultery, don’t bear false witness.” Not wrong answers, in a way, but the pastor wasn’t satisfied. “You need to learn,” he said, “that following Christ means a lot more than ‘don’t, don’t, don’t’!”

Well, that’s something we all need to learn. Memorizing the “don’t’s” is not what God wants. Rather God wants us to awaken to what is pleasing to him—to understand that serving him means abundant life, a life of joy and peace and confidence! It is not a life of restriction, but a life of grace, of thankfulness, of giving. I have always loved the way it was expressed by the Irish priest G. A. Studdert-Kennedy:

Awake, awake to love and work!

The lark is in the sky,

the fields are wet with diamond dew,

the worlds awake to cry

their blessings on the Lord of life, as he goes meekly by. Come, let thy voice be one with theirs,

shout with their shout of praise;

see how the giant sun soars up,

great lord of years and days!

So let the love of Jesus come and set thy soul ablaze,

to give and give, and give again,

what God hath given thee;

to spend thyself nor count the cost;

to serve right gloriously

the God who gave all worlds that are

and all that are to be!

Yes, awake! Awake to the wonderful presence of Christ in your life! Awake to the purpose and mission he so graciously gives you! Awake to a life of giving and serving in his name.

Awake, O sleeper, arise from death,

and Christ will give you light!!