November 29, 1998
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco.
Waking Up
Is there anything harder to do in November than to wake up on a dark, weekday morning to go to work? My GE alarm clock goes off at 6:15 with KCBS reporting on the commuters’ conditions coming into the city. I make my way to the front window that faces west, hoping to catch some evidence of the sun that might be rising behind our apartment building. Even though it’s pitch black outside, a starry sky suggests that soon the sun will come and it will be morning.
I love the morning. My best time of the day is the morning. And as you can guess, Joy is a night person! By nine o’clock, my body is winding down and I’m yawning while Joy is ready to go.
Having enough sunlight helps some people to become more positive and less depressed. I heard that the Russians have decided to do something about this bleak blackness in some of their northernest regions. They are planning to launch an enormous reflective dish into orbit. This humongous saucer will provide a few more rays of light everyday so that a few million people could crawl out of bed with a little less effort and a little more bounce.
Night and Day
Paul’s letter to the Romans was to instruct the Gentile Christians in Rome to display proper Christian behaviors and attitudes. These Christians were not from a Jewish background that stressed the importance of living a consistent lifestyle. But rather these were Christians from other backgrounds. They didn’t think that they should be set apart from what else was happening in society. They felt no cultural or theological compulsion to abide by the Jewish laws and rituals.
In Rome at this time, “night and day” didn’t just mean two very distinct and different things, but rather it describes two different kinds of behaviors and attitudes. When Paul was contrasting “night and day” and “darkness and light,” he was referring to the decadence in the Roman culture. Nighttime was the “right time” for behavior that would be forbidden during the daylight hours. Under the cover of darkness, the socially permissable and widely practiced behaviors were:
Reveling and drunkenness
This means carousing in a wild party and being stoned.
Debauchery and licentiousness
This means lacking any restraints in an orgy.
Quarreling and jealousy
This usually describes a Baptist church!
Paul was proclaiming that this night of deviant behavior is now “far gone” and that the day of the Lord’s return is near. They couldn’t continue to live inconsistent lifestyles of
sinning at night only to get up in the morning to seek forgiveness by offering gifts at the temple. When the sun comes up after a night of reveling and debauchery doesn’t mean that everything returns to being all right. Paul said they need to wake up to this attitude of delusion.
Waking Up to the Day
What do we need to wake up from? We may be finding it hard identifying with these nighttime behaviors of “reveling and drunkenness or debauchery and licentiousness,” but there are some things that we twenty-first century Christians do that distract from Christ’s coming. We put off the kinds of things that matters most hoping that there will be yet another opportunity, another chance to do the right thing in the morning or the next day. It may not be reveling and debauchery, but we too need to wake up to Christ’s coming.
Ann Wells tells a very poignant personal story about the need to wake up to the moment.
My brother-in-law opened the bottom drawer of my sister’s bureau and lifted
out a tissue-wrapped package.
“This,” he said, “is not a slip. This is lingerie.”
He discarded the tissue and handed me the slip. It was exquisite: silk, handmade and trimmed with a cobweb of lace. The price tag with an astronomical figure on it was still attached.
Ann Well’s brother-in-law said, “Jan bought this the first time we went to New York, at least eight or nine years ago. She never wore it. She was saving it for a special occasion. Well, I guess this is the occasion.”
He took the slip from me and put it on the bed with the other clothes we were taking to the funeral home. His hands lingered on the soft material for a moment, then he slammed the drawer shut and turned to me.
“Don’t ever save anything for a special occasion. Every day you’re alive is a special occasion.”
Ann Wells said that she remembered those words through the funeral and the many days that followed. She thought about all the things that her sister never did and all the places that she never saw. Her sister’s unexpected death and the words of her brother-in-law changed her life. For Ann Wells, she is reading more and dusting less. She can sit on her deck to admire the view without fussing about the weeds in the garden. She is not putting off doing the meaningful things in life hoping that there will be yet another morning to come.
When I read Ann Well’s story, I thought about clear plastic. I think that Chinese Americans must have invented clear plastic. Growing up in Boston, our sofas and couches were all wrapped up with plastic upholstery. Now the definition of “upholstery” is soft, padded fabric, not plastic. I was never able to curl up on our sofa! What are we saving the sofa for when you can’t enjoy sitting on it?
By the time I graduated from seminary 23 years ago, some personal family events have already affected my life to the point that I was awake to God’s call in my life. From some mysterious genetic heart condition that was unknown to us, I lost two brothers during their prime young adult years. For some reason, my life has been strong and healthy. I have been spared. I felt strongly that the purpose of my life was to help others believe that God loves them and he will bless them with meaning and purpose like I have experienced. While I have felt God’s calling in my life to full-time Christian service some time earlier, these life-changing events caused my commitment to become even stronger and clearer.
The words, “someday” and “one of these days” lost their grip on my life. Not that I only live life for the moment and that I became irresponsible with my resources, quite the contrary. What has happened is that I relish everyday of my life to do good things for God.
Last Sunday, I told you about the stranger who asked me for $15 because he lost his wallet. I confessed to you that my faith was wavering because everyday when I picked up the mail in the corner office, I didn’t find the loan I gave to this man. Besides feeling that I have been scammed, I was disappointed in myself for not believing what I was teaching the young people that every person is a child of God.
Following the service last week, when Pastor James Chuck was leaving a book for me to read, he found this envelope that reads: “Pastor, Thank you for the loan. The Rev. from Denver” Inside was $15. This is truly a miracle! The miracle is not the envelope with the $15 inside. The miracle is God teaching me to have faith. To believe that when I am helping the least of these, I am helping Jesus Christ. The miracle is for me to trust you with the little faith that I have and then to have God shout out loudly that He is with us, Emmanuel, and he is also still coming.
Every day of our lives is an opportunity to participate with God in making miracles happen! According to Paul, when we “love one another” and “love your neighbor as yourself,” we put on the armor of light. This armor of light is putting on the Lord Jesus Christ. This armor of light is strong enough to live through both the nighttime and the daytime, both the darkness and the light. This armor of light of loving our neighbors as ourselves is on us when we minister on Friday nights at FCBC.
Let me tell you a story. Imagining this happening at Youth Camp.
The counselor sat around a blazing fire with a small number of campers late at night. Their meandering conversation was broken by periods of silence when they all gazed at the stars and the moon. Following one of the periods when no one spoke the counselor asked a question. “How can we know when the night has ended and the day has begun?”
Eagerly one youth answered, “You know the night is over and the day has begun when you can look off in the distance and determine which animal is your dog and which is a deer. Is that the right answer?
“It is a good answer,” the counselor said slowly, “but it is not the answer I would give,” he said.
After several minutes of discussion a second youth ventured a guess on behalf of the whole group. “You know the night is over and the day has begun when light falls on the leaves and you can tell whether it is a palm tree or a pine tree.”
Once again the counselor shook his head. “That was a fine answer, but it is not the answer I seek,” he said gently.
Immediately the youth began to argue with one another. Finally one of them begged the counselor, “Answer your own question, counselor, for we can not think of another response.”
The counselor looked intently at the eager young faces before he began to speak. “When you look into the eyes of a human being and see a brother or sister you know that it is morning. If you cannot see a sister or brother you will know that it will always be night.”
The armor of light is putting on the Lord Jesus Christ. We are able to see in the eyes of a human being and see that he or she is our brother or sister. We are to love one another as sisters and brothers. Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law.
Here Comes the Son
Paul’s message to the Christians in the church in Rome is: “It’s time to wake up. The Son is coming!” Paul was expecting an immediate return of the resurrected Christ. The early church assumed for this to happen. Time has proven this to not be the case.
Many Christians today interpret the “return of Christ” to be a spiritual truth rather than a physical truth. Time will tell about that, and theological arguments on Christ’s return rarely result in changing each other’s viewpoints. What can be said of this is that there is no way we can predict the time when we, as individuals, will meet Christ, whether in an important life experience or in our moment of death. In some ways, Ann Wells met Christ when her life changed after facing her sister’s death. In some ways, the youth around the campfire met Christ when they understood that they are all brothers and sisters. In some ways, we met Christ when the stranger asked for $15.
Perhaps the most important message about “Jesus’ Return” whether physically or spiritually is that it offers all of us the meaning of hope. Having the hope of Jesus’ return, awakens us to “owe no one anything, except to love one another.” We embrace all of life with the hope that in every relationship that we have, in everything that we do; we may find ourselves face to face with Christ. What a wonderful thought to have—Jesus Christ, the Son of God is present today and will come tomorrow on earth and in heaven!
Advent
This is the meaning of Advent. Observed first in the beginning of the sixth century, its purpose is to celebrate Jesus’ impending arrival. Advent combines the spirit of penitence with lifted spirits at the anticipation of the beginning of a new age, both now in the world, and in the hearts and lives of each one who calls Jesus “Christ.”
There are many of us who may have known once or are presently overwhelmed with daily problems, sometimes tragedies. All of us need to be reminded again and again that there is a Higher Power accessible to us because of the child which Advent foretells. I find in my own life that I need to continually renew my relationship with Christ. Advent means not only a time prior to Christ’s arrival, but an expectation based on hope that I do not face these trials alone, that prayer is promised a response, that surrounding love wishes to break through to me.
Some preachers make jokes about “Christmas and Easter Christians.” These are people who only come to church during Christmas and Easter. I want you to know that I love “Christmas and Easter Christians.” Not only that they are also God’s children, but particularly during this season of Christmas, they are seeking for more meaning and hope in their lives. And I am glad that we can be here to share meaning and hope with them. So I want you to tell all your family members and friends to come to church during this Christmas season. We want them to know that the Christ Child came into the world to bring them hope too.
Listen to the words of modern prophets:
A friend saw a bumper sticker that reads: “Jesus is coming—Look busy!”
The Beatles sang, “Here Comes the Sun.”
And Phillips Brooks in 1868 wrote:
O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie;
above thy deep and dreamless sleep
the silent stars go by.
Yet in the dark streets shineth the everlasting light;
the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.
Let us pray.
O God of hope and promise, awaken us to your love for us in Jesus Christ, our Lord. Remind us that to love our neighbor is to love you. In the name of the One who is hope to the world, we pray. Amen.