Staying awake on Christmas Eve is something that children have mastered. If I stayed awake for all of Advent until Christmas, and then until the Son of Man comes, I would be exhausted (and probably very grumpy). How on earth can I follow Jesus’s instruction and “go rejoicing to the house of the Lord”? Fortunately, Matthew used apocalyptic language in Chapter 24 therefore “staying awake” is a symbol for something else.
Today’s Gospel starts with Jesus speaking about the people who died in the great flood. They were ordinary people, like you and me, going about their everyday business. There is nothing inherently wrong with the way they behaved but Jesus believes they were asleep. What made Noah different? Genesis 6-9 shows that Noah was open to hearing the divine word and trusted God to the point that he could act upon the unusual and even unsettling instructions. Here, being awake is being able to discern God’s will and act upon it, even if it is surprising.
This idea is carried through the other readings. Isaiah prophesies a fresh direction for the wayward people described in the previous chapter. All the nations stream to God’s presence and turn their weapons into gardening tools. Their new use for the tools draws us back to the Garden of Eden where people lived in harmony with God, each other and all of creation (Gen 2:28-25). Division occurred in Genesis 3 when people followed the words of a creature, hid from God and blamed another (Gen 3:1-13). Through Isaiah, God invites people to “walk in the light of the Lord” by joyfully embracing the vision of the world portrayed in Genesis 2 and overcoming the division.
Like Jesus, Paul invites people to wake up. His positive references to light and day take us back to the Bible’s opening verses where God’s first act was to create light, which was good, separate light from the darkness that covered the earth then name the light “day” (Gen 1:3-5). In Genesis, light came from God. Paul was familiar with scripture and, for him, staying awake is to choose to live as people of daytime who are “in the light.”
The three readings show us that the same invitation to respond to God’s will has been repeated in time and space. It is no surprise that at the beginning of Advent and the new liturgical year we are invited to examine our lives, especially our relationship with God, and perform any necessary resets. How each one of us does this will differ, but as the psalmist reminds us, when we are open to acting in accord with God’s will, we can “go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.”
Happy Advent!
