Day 6—Friday, December 5

Do this, knowing the time, that it is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep; for now salvation is nearer to us than when we believed. The night is almost gone, and the day is near. Therefore let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.
Romans 13: 11-14

AWAKE, SLEEPERS
Paul’s admonition to “lay aside the deeds of darkness” might seem like unusual Advent reading.  His tone seems discordant with the celebration in today’s song, “Awake My Soul, Awake My Tongue.”  The second verse begins: “O happy night that brought forth light / which makes the blind to see.”  Light promised lasting peace and salvation; a promise whose fulfillment Paul anticipates in Christ’s imminent return.  Yet his audience seems to be living in the shadows, afraid that the light might reveal too much.  He has to remind them to live faithfully according to their Christian call. “Let us behave properly as in the day.”

In Patty Wickman’s piece, Passion Painting, we perhaps see something of what Paul saw in the Romans’ spiritual lethargy.  Set in suburbia, a woman hunches over a table and clutches a blanket against the morning chill, suspended between sleeping and waking; between shadow and light.  She knows that day approaches, yet the fact that she’s brought a pillow outside signals an unwillingness to meet it.  This in spite of the rooster, whose song must have announced with shrill clarity the end of night, and the German Shepherd, clearly alert to the fact of dawn.

It’s an unwelcome thought to identify with this woman, whose posture and inertia suggest an unflattering spiritual allegory.  Equally unwelcome, perhaps, are Paul’s injunctions, which we might be tempted to classify as “for other people.”  His enjoinder to holiness enumerates sins and attitudes to which, during the Christmas season, one might wish to imagine himself immune.  If familiarity with Christmas celebration does not breed contempt, it might yet breed self-deception.  In the midst of all the beautiful art, ceremony, and story with which we attend Christmas, it’s easy to imagine that I’m doing all right; that there’s no darkness from which to call me.

Much of this has to do with the calendar and our experience of time in cycles.  I “feel” Christmas most on the actual day—“feel” the most determined to live a life that honors the phenomenon of the Incarnation.  But what about July?  What about those “common” days seemingly removed from the symbolism and communal celebration?  In her book, For the Time Being, Annie Dillard reminds us, “There is no less holiness at this time—as you are reading this—than there was on the day the Red Sea parted, or that day in the 30th year, in the 4th month, on the 5th day of the month as Ezekiel was a captive by the river Cheban, when the heavens opened and he saw visions of God.”

Christ came to redeem for all times and seasons.  Only my flagging, drowsy devotion relegates his influence to an annual holiday.  But every day, I get to try it again.  I try to awake to the truth that every day is as sacred as the next, and that God’s invitation to salvation, holiness, and hope shimmers just as brightly as the magis’ star if I manage to open my eyes and wake up.

Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when He shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. 
Amen.
(From the Book of Common Prayer)

Phillip Aijian, Doctoral Candidate at UCI