"And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed."

 

         We begin this Advent with the shepherds praising God on the hillside, after they had seen the baby Jesus. This is a telling of the story from the end to the beginning.

         It seems like they had quite a night. Here they were, the most ordinary of ordinary people, tending to their business on a very ordinary night, watching sheep sleep, listening to the quiet snoring of sheep. And by the time they returned, perhaps by morning, they have heard an angel speak, they have listened to a choir of the heavenly host sing, they have seen the baby in Bethlehem and they have told their story to a variety of people. Then they go back to the sheep; and they do not go to bed, and they do not have breakfast and talk about what has happened, and they do not plan a speaking tour to talk about angels, nor do they make plans to write a book. They go back to the sheep and glorify and praise.

         Why do the shepherds praise God as their response to seeing the baby Jesus?

         And two related questions from our Scripture lessons:

•  Why does Isaiah have a vision of the last days where the warring nations come to Jerusalem to learn the ways of God and walk in his paths, and find their longstanding disputes settled by God so that they no longer have a need for swords?
•  Why does Paul believe that the present time indicates the nearness of salvation?

         All of these questions have to do with the future. God is shaping the view of the future held by the shepherds, Paul, and the prophet Isaiah, and Jesus Christ is central to each of their visions of the future.

         The shepherds were caught in a boring job of watching sheep sleep; they were going nowhere in life, and doing it in the context of Roman oppression with no signs of impending change. They were stuck in a dead-end life, and yet they found themselves praising God on the hillside.

         Isaiah experienced much more war than peace in his lifetime. If you read the whole of the prophet Isaiah in one sitting, what will strike you is not the triumph of the Messiah and the increase of peace. You will find it is mostly warnings of punishment and naming of sins and descriptions of waywardness and rebellion. The fabric of Isaiah is judgment, sprinkled with these bold, surprising visions of God's victory. Where do these hopeful visions come from? They certainly do not come from the circumstances surrounding Isaiah.

         With all the obstacles that Paul faced in bringing the Gospel to the Gentiles and the hardship he endured, what is it that makes him so confident of the nearness of salvation and the dawning of the day of the Lord?

         Since we are now 2000 years from the life of Jesus, why are we so confident of his return and the victory of God?

         We too feel at times bored, stuck, caught in circumstance. We too are aware of the sin and violence around us, and overwhelmed by the immorality portrayed in the popular culture. We too wonder where to find the victory of the Messiah.

         Sometimes we feel the insurmountable obstacles that we face in evangelism: the power of atheism and its attacks, the idolatrous allure of secularism, and the threat of a new paganism. We can wonder about the nearness of salvation.

         It is then in the season of Advent that we find our faith bearings again, and join honestly and thoroughly in the praise of God.

         We begin with our view of the future. In America we always talk about facing the future. If you have ever heard a graduation speech or a political campaign speech, you know that the future is full of possibility, that it is open-ended, that it gives to us a fresh start and a new day, that what with all the bright young people around us we can hardly help but be optimistic, and with Little Orphan Annie we can sing our hymn to the future, "Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I love you, Tomorrow. You're only a day away."

         The ancients viewed the future differently. John Oswalt explains that the Hebrews did not face the future as we do. "Rather, they faced the past and backed into the future. So the past was always before them and the future was behind them." They focused on the mighty acts of God, especially the Passover and the Exodus from slavery in Egypt. Because they knew the faithfulness and power of God from their past, they were confident of what was to come. The Exodus from Egypt leads to a future in which the nations stream to Zion to learn the ways of God. Along the way this comes to partial fulfillment at Pentecost, when people from all over the known world were gathered in Jerusalem and there received the Holy Spirit. Backing into the future, the people of the Bible know who God is and what he has done, and are filled with hope for the completion of God's will. We do the same when we place the cross and resurrection of Jesus in the center of our lives. Faith in Christ brings assurance of eternal life and the victory of God. Knowing God's past, we are confident of God's future.

         Paul looks ahead. He values the future, he strains to see it. He seems to be facing it. His life was so powerfully shaped by the resurrection of Jesus that he fully embraced the reality of resurrection as his future, and he fully accepted its claim upon his life. He writes in Romans 13, "and do this, understanding the present time." Leon Morris points out the phrase is somewhat simpler than that -- "knowing the time." Since Christ has come to make all things new, it is now the time of pre-dawn. Night is turning to day. In the night people indulge their passions. In the night thieves do their work. But the day of the Lord is about to dawn, so people ought to put on the clothing of the day and live as if it were light. It is time to behave decently, as in the daylight, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissention and jealousy. The day of the Lord is near, and we should live as if it were here.

         The theologian Emil Brunner wrote, "Faith is indeed nothing but living in the light of what is to come." I think that is what caused the shepherds to sing. Having seen the baby Jesus and heard the proclamation of the angel they lifted their hearts to God. They were no longer caught in their circumstance. They began to live in the light of what is to come.

         A pastor friend of mine wrote a bit about the meaning of Advent: "We are not determined by our past, but are formed by what we believe is coming." To me those two words, "determined" and "formed," say it most clearly. Our lives are not determined by what we may have suffered in the past. If we have been wronged, we do not need to live always for revenge, nor do we have to see ourselves as victims. If we have been raised with strong dictums and controlling rules we may believe our lives are determined by the need to honor our parents by trying to repeat their lives, holding tightly to tradition. We may also have been raised with powerful negative messages: "you are a failure," "you are flawed," and "you will not amount to anything." These messages can determine the course of your life.

         But we are not determined by our past. We are rather "formed" as soft clay in the potter's hands. We are formed by the will and faithfulness of God. We are formed by hope in what is yet to come. We are formed by the grace of Jesus Christ, who loved us and gave his life for us.

         We keep our focus on the mighty acts of God. We listen to the promise of what is to come. We receive the grace of Christ to live in each day, and we join in the song of praise to the God of our salvation.

         Amen.