“Sleepers Awake”
Romans 13:11-14
12/5/07 - Midweek Advent
I don’t know what you do in the morning when
you wake up, but I’d image that our daily routines are
similar. We wake up, we bathe, we get dressed, we eat, and then
we go to work. Taking Paul’s cue here as he talks about
sleeping, waking, and putting on Christ, we can see our daily routine
as an illustration of our life as the baptized.
First, sleeping: Most of us sleep at
night. Night in this text represents the darkness of uncertainty,
sin, death, and unbelief. To sleep is to give in to the night, to
live in sin, to walk according to the desires of the sinful
nature. Paul gives examples here of that kind of living, where he
lists things like orgies and drunkenness, sexual immorality and
sensuality, quarreling, and jealously. This is by no means an
exhaustive list. Elsewhere he writes that the works of the sinful
nature include idolatry and witchcraft, hatred, discord, fits of rage,
selfish ambition, factions, and envy. Again, by no means
exhaustive, but prime examples. Some people talk about being
“dead to the world,” when they talk about a deep
sleep. When we are asleep spiritually, we’re actually alive
to the world, but dead to God. This was our condition before the
Lord awakened us, and it is a condition to which we could return, if we
are not vigilantly persevering in the faith, fighting against the
desires of the sinful nature and walking according to the spirit.
Jesus says, “Be on guard, that your hearts may not be weighted
down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of life...
But keep on the alert at all times...” Some of you may be
saying to yourselves, “Well, I don’t even drink or do any
of these things,” to which the Apostle Paul would say, “Let
him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” Falling
asleep in the faith is an ever present possibility for us, just as it
was for the disciples as the Lord asked them to keep watch as He prayed
in the Garden of Gethsemane. The spirit is willing, but the flesh
is weak.
In fact, the flesh must not be awakened. It
must die while the spirit remains awake. But how are we
awakened? How were we awakened in the first place, as we slept
the sleep of death? Our catechism teaches us that the Holy Spirit
called us by the Gospel and enlightened us with His gifts. We
were awakened from our sleep of death by the Word of God. As
Jesus spoke to dead Lazarus saying, “Come forth,” so He
spoke to us while we were dead in our trespasses and sins saying,
“Come forth! Arise! Wake up!” Johann
Sebastian Bach wrote an organ piece entitled, “Wachet Auf,”
which means, “Wake up!” It’s based on Ephesians
5:14 which says, “Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and
Christ will shine on you.” The Gospel message that Jesus
Christ has overcome our sleep by dying on the cross for our sins and
arising from the sleep of death Himself is the healing medicine that He
applied to us to awaken us from our sleep and which He still applies to
us to keep us from falling into that death sleep again. When He
absolves us of our sins, He does the same thing to us as He did to
Jairus’ daughter, taking us by the hand and speaking to us the
word, “Arise!” and we awake.
Then He gives us a bath. The bath cannot be
separated from the Word; the two go together. Sometimes the
awakening comes through the Word and the bath together (as when you
were infants), sometimes the awakening comes first through the Word and
then the bath follows. Either way, the Lord bathes us. This
bath is, of course, the washing of water in the Word, the washing of
life and regeneration in the Holy Spirit, the washing of Baptism.
Through this washing the Lord works forgiveness of sins, delivers us
from the sleep of death and the devil, and gives us eternal
salvation. Though we need to be washed only once, Baptism’s
gifts daily have their way with us. Through it the Holy Spirit
works daily contrition and repentance in our hearts, putting the Old
Adam within us to death, while awakening the new man He has created in
us through this bath. The works of the flesh, or the deeds of
darkness as they are here called, must be put aside. Such things
were what we used to do while we slept in the night. But now
having been awakened by the Word and washed in the waters of Baptism,
we are sons of the light and sons of the day, as Paul writes in I
Thessalonians. “We are not of night or darkness; so then
let us not sleep as others do, but let us be alert and
self-controlled.” Daily showers and baths ought to remind
us of the Bath with which our Lord cleansed us from all unrighteousness
and through which He made us new creatures in Christ who with His help
walk by the spirit, not the flesh.
After the washing comes the clothing. Already
in Baptism God clothes us with Jesus Christ. Just as Baptism
cannot be separated from God’s Word, so it cannot be separated
from Christ. Where He places His Name, there He Himself is, and
where He dwells, that is holy. That is what you are in
Christ. You are holy, because Christ is your righteousness and
your holiness. You were clothed with Him at Baptism. That
is justification. Before God you will always stand clothed with
Christ, unless you turn from Christ and fall away into unbelief,
falling asleep again as far as the faith is concerned, living as in the
night rather than in the day. But even though we perpetually
stand before God clothed with Christ, before our neighbor we must
continually be putting on Christ, so that our sinful nature
doesn’t show and we fail to behave decently or properly, as sons
of the day should. This is sanctification, and just as we daily
clothe ourselves, so we must daily put on Jesus Christ.
Putting on Christ is here equated with putting on
the armor of light. Putting on armor implies that we are in a
battle. The battle we fight is against the spiritual forces of
evil, the forces of darkness - the world, the devil, and our own sinful
flesh. These are constantly trying to put us to sleep again,
constantly trying to get us to walk by our sinful lusts. This
battle wearies us, and we want to fall asleep. It’s so much
easier to fall asleep than to stay awake. But our armor is also
of a spiritual kind. Our armor is Christ. In Him we have
the strength to stay awake and fight the good fight of the faith.
So how do we put on Christ? By letting Him who is our life, who
was given to us at Baptism, have His way in our lives. We put on
Christ by first believing that He is our righteousness and holiness
before God and then by following His example as we live before our
neighbors. The more we put on Christ, the more we will put off
the desires of the flesh.
This, of course, we cannot do on our own. We
can only do it by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit gives
us this power by providing us with the sustenance that we need through
His Word and Sacraments. So we need to eat. Eating keeps us
from falling asleep. Now, physical eating actually makes me
tired, and I often want to take a nap after a meal. But spiritual
eating does just the opposite; it keeps us awake. The food that
we are given to eat is Christ and His Word. We feed upon Him as
we hear His Word, believe it, meditate upon it, rejoice in it, confess
it, pray it, and do it. We also feed upon Him as we eat and drink
His body and blood which He gives us in His Supper. We feed upon
Him as we are absolved of our sins. No one can sleep and eat at
the same time. The more we continue to eat, the less we’ll
sleep, as the Holy Spirit enlivens us with His food and works within us
what He wills to do.
So finally, He puts us to work. Lutherans are
often criticized for not preaching enough about works. Well, our
works have nothing to do with our standing before God. We stand
before God clothed with Christ and His works. He alone is our
righteousness and holiness. But another way in which God keeps us
from the deeds of the darkness is by keeping us busy serving one
another. When you’re busy with a task, it’s harder to
get into trouble, and it’s easier to stay awake. It’s
when you’re idle that you want to sleep and get into all kinds of
mischief. So earlier in this chapter Paul talked about
love. He wrote that the commandments are summed up in this one
command: Love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no harm
to its neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfillment of the Law.
This is what we are to be doing now that we have been awakened, bathed,
dressed, and eaten. This is what we are to be doing until the
Lord comes back for us - living in love towards one another. The
night is over. The day has dawned. We who have been
awakened by Christ are to live by Christ towards one another.
Once, we were dead to God. Having been stung
by sin we slept the sleep of death. We lived as sons of the
night, carrying out the desires of our sinful nature, hating one
another, living for ourselves. But Jesus woke us from our death
sleep with His Gospel, bathed us in the waters of Baptism, clothed us
with His righteousness and holiness, and continues to feed us on His
Word and Sacraments and move us to works of love towards one another,
so that we might not fall asleep again, but be awake and alert when He
returns.
But what if we do fall asleep again, as we often
do? What if we have been involved in committing deeds that belong
to the darkness, walking by our sinful nature rather than by the
spirit? Is there forgiveness for us? Yes! Think about
your daily routine again. Just as waking, bathing, clothing,
eating, and working occurs day after day, so Jesus continues to awaken
us. He daily continues the cleansing He began in Baptism.
He daily continues to clothe and feed us with Himself and His Word and
Sacraments. And He daily continues to work the love in us for our
neighbor that He desires. Only He who has awakened us by His
grace can by His grace keep us from falling asleep and awaken us when
we do fall asleep by means of His Word and Sacraments. And we
have the promise that soon He will come for us and take us to be with
Himself forever, where we will never sleep again. “Wake up,
O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on
you.” Amen.