Once I was given tickets to the Russian Ballets’ performance of the Nut Cracker.
I was really excited.
But, I couldn’t stay awake. My head was nodding and snapping back. I desperately tried to keep my eyes open, I simply couldn’t. I missed most of the show. I embarrassed my date.
Or the time I drove eight hours to finally meet and listen to my favorite theologian, and I slept through most of the lecture.
Then there are all those times of driving late at night, trying to stay awake, windows open, radio blaring, slapping and pinching myself over and over, remembering all those stories of people falling asleep at the wheel and dying in a car wreck.
Children trying to stay awake for Saint Nicolas.
Sleeping through life? Never really attending to the mystery and wonder that surrounds us.
Missing out. Missing it.
Advent, the advent of the kingdom of God, the arrival, the renewal of creation, we don’t want to miss it. Stay awake!
How could we miss it? It’s a pretty dramatic thing. I’ve wondered about that, how could we miss something like that? Why are we told to keep awake?
Like the surprise of Noah’s flood, like a thief in the night, something that is sudden.
Keeping awake is hard. Most of the time there isn’t a whole lot of choice in the matter. There are lots of ways to help us stay awake, but they ultimately only work for a little while.
What does it mean to stay awake and to be watchful for the Advent of God? To expect the unexpected? To be ready to be surprised? Is there some sort of spiritual Red Bull energy drink, sacramental caffeine?
Or perhaps this is more like detective work, looking for signs, for clues, paying attention to everything, looking for how God is made present, to have eyes and ears that see and hear, following leads, finding evidence.
Today we begin the Christian year, with watchfulness and waiting, waking up from our sleepy ways, right here, right now something is going on that we don’t want to miss.
But, what is it?
How do we recognize the Advent of God’s Way into the world?
Isaiah has a wonderful vision of the arrival of peace, of swords remade into plowshares, of spears being turned into pruning hooks, of not studying war no more, of walking in the light of the Lord.
Perhaps that is what we are looking for, for where peace is breaking out, where weapons are being tuned into instruments of life, where the ways of war are being forsaken, where people are no longer learning how to dominate and destroy.
Perhaps that is what we attend to.
Is my life a weapon?
Is my life an instrument of peace?
Am I just sleepy as war and peace are being made all around?
The Advent of the way of God, the season of letting go of all in our lives that is not of God, and taking on Christ as our new life.
Letting go and taking on.
Watching and waiting.
Awake and ready.
Swords into plowshares.
Surprising and suddenly.
Advent begins.
Happy new year.