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Sermon for the First Sunday of Advent – November 30, 2025
Romans 13:11-14, Matthew 24:36-44
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Advent begins with an alarm clock. Alarm clocks are meant to startle. They emit loud noises that are meant to wake you up. In many cases, the sound of an alarm clock is unwelcome – especially when we are comfortable, especially when we open our eyes and it is still dark out, especially when we want to go back to sleep.
Advent begins with an alarm clock. Our readings are meant to startle. They are meant to wake us up. They are meant to rouse us out of our comfortable slumber and to draw us out of the darkness and into the light of day.
St. Paul sounds the first alarm. He says to us, “Now is the moment for you to wake from sleep!” Paul barks at our bedside like this because, he says, “Salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.” Paul then tells us to get dressed! He tells us to “lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” He calls us to strip off the things people wear in the dark – revelry and drunkenness and debauchery and licentiousness and quarreling and jealousy – and instead to put on the Lord Jesus Christ. “Let us live honorably, as in the day,” Paul says. The new day is dawning, so act like it! Wake up! Get dressed!
I wonder how many of you, upon hearing these words of St. Paul in our epistle reading, do what I do many mornings, which is to reach over and hit the snooze button. I wonder how many of you heard it, were mildly roused, and then mentally went back to sleep.
Well, not so fast, because the alarm when off again just moments later when we got to our gospel reading, and this time it comes from Jesus himself.
Jesus is talking about the final coming of his kingdom. He clearly says that about that day and hour no one knows. Then he goes on to emphasize the importance of being awake. He says that before the final coming of his kingdom it will be like the days of Noah. People were eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage. In other words, they were carrying on with their daily lives. They were carrying on with their comfortable routines. There’s nothing inherently wrong with eating or drinking or marrying, of course. The problem, if you remember the story, was that the people in Noah’s day were doing all of this while being completely asleep to the reality of God. There was no one who had faith in God except one man, Noah. Everyone else was sleepwalking through life. They were in the dark, completely oblivious to God.
This is what it will be like at the coming of the Son of Man, Jesus says. People will be busy with the day-to-day activities of their lives, but they will fall asleep to the presence of God. Jesus warns that some will be caught sleeping and miss the coming kingdom altogether. “Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming!”
Advent begins with an alarm clock, because this is a perennial problem. It begins with an alarm clock because human beings have spiritual narcolepsy – we are always nodding off. It begins with an alarm clock because we get so comfortable in our slumber, especially when it is still dark out.
Paul’s concerns are perennial. We can’t dismiss them. We shouldn’t hit the snooze button on them. They are not just Paul’s words, but, by the power of the Holy Spirit, they are God’s Word to us. And God sees how we prefer to stay in the dark. God sees how many people dedicate their lives to revelry, living solely for the pursuit of selfish pleasures, and only end up in the shadows of despair. God sees how many people cope with the dark by numbing themselves with alcohol and other substances. God sees how many people cast aside God’s good law, given for the sake of human flourishing, and instead make up their own rules and chase whatever feels good in the moment. God sees how many people are caught up in the quarrels and jealousies of the day, living as though the entire point of life is to dunk on your opponents. Wake up! God says. There are more important things for you to focus on. Now is the time for you to rise from this darkness. Now is the time for you to rise from sleep. The day of salvation is nearer than it has ever been, so act like it. Wake up and get dressed!
Jesus’ concerns are perennial too. Does it not seem like we are living in the days of Noah? Do we not see wickedness and violence and people doing what is right in their own eyes, ignoring God? Do we not see people sleepwalking through their lives, going about their routines while utterly in the dark about what God is up to? And we aren’t just talking about people outside the church. We aren’t just talking about those who don’t believe. Many Christians are sleepwalking through life too, living as functional atheists, going about their days without regard for what God is up to, getting so caught up in their daily activities that they fall asleep to the reality of God.
A good example of this is seen in the way worship attendance has dropped off in the last several years – a phenomenon which has been seen across the church, in nearly all denominations. It was thought that after the pandemic, everyone would flock back to church. But instead, it seems, a lot of people fell asleep, and a lot of them haven’t woken back up yet. Studies have shown that even those who were eager to come back are far less frequent worshippers than they once were. This doesn’t make me mad so much as it makes me sad. And it makes me sad not only for us, who miss their voices and their presence in the pews here in-person, it makes me even more sad for them, for what they are missing.
It makes me think of the time a few years ago when the Washington Post conducted a little experiment. They had the world-renowned violinist Joshua Bell play his violin in a subway station in New York. He was playing one of the finest instruments in the world, a Stradivarius violin worth 3.5 million dollars. He played some of the most exquisite music ever written for 45 minutes. Hundreds and hundreds of people were coming and going, and almost no one stopped. He had a hat out for tips and received 30 dollars over those 45 minutes. Just days before he sold out two shows in Boston with tickets averaging 100 dollars a seat, but there in that New York subway, people were just too busy to notice. Most just walked right past him.
The experiment was conducted to study the role of perception and context in the appreciation of art, but I think it is a powerful illustration of this spiritual slumber we are being warned about today. It is so easy for people to get so busy with their daily lives that they miss the beautiful things God is doing right under their noses in the church. The church is our ark. In fact, many sanctuaries are built to look like the ribs of a large boat for just this reason. The church is the ark where God saves his people. The ark is where the beautiful music of the gospel is played. Too many people, though, can’t be bothered to stop and come in and hear it.
In his preface to the Small Catechism Martin Luther wrote that if people really believed that Jesus Christ was truly present in the Lord’s Supper, they would come running to receive him every Sunday. If they really believed he was there in, with, and under the bread and wine forgiving their sins and giving them a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, you wouldn’t be able to keep them away! The problem is, they don’t. Or they do, but they forget. They start sleepwalking through their lives, asleep to the reality of what God is up to.
Do you see why Advent begins with an alarm clock? Our faith needs to be roused, lest we fall asleep. For those who are awake, who are here to hear the beautiful music of the gospel, we need to be encouraged to keep awake. Don’t you fall asleep too! And not only that, but perhaps we need to take a cue from St. Paul and think about rousing our brothers and sisters in Christ who might be sleepwalking a bit. We don’t need to be a buzzer in their ears, but we can perhaps rouse them awake with a phone call and an invitation: “Hey, we miss you. Come and hear the beautiful music of the gospel. It’s worth waking up for. It’s worth stopping to listen to.”
Not all alarm clocks have a grating, alarming sound. Sometimes we need that, but that isn’t the only way to wake up. My wife works in the high school library and needs to be over there bright and early every school day. A few years ago, she got an alarm clock that is actually a light. It wakes her up by slowly getting brighter and brighter, mimicking the sunrise. It is just as effective as one that rings or buzzes, but it rouses her by light, by telling her that a new day is dawning.
This is what Advent is about too. The color for Advent used to be purple – it still is in some churches. The purple comes from the understanding that Advent is a sort of a mini-Lent. It is still technically a penitential season in preparation for the celebration of the festival of Christmas, but in recent decades the color has more and more been changed to deep blue. This blue is intended to lift up themes of hope, themes of anticipation. It has been said that this deep blue is meant to represent the color of the sky just before dawn.
Sometimes we need a buzz in our ears to wake us up. But God sends his light to do it too.
The light of his promise shines through Paul’s words as he tells us that salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers. This is what we’re waking up to, to salvation! We’re waking up to the healing and wholeness Jesus has won for us, which we begin to receive even now. We are waking up to hope, to peace, to faith in God’s promises. We wake up to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, leaving behind the darkness and living a new life through faith in him.
The light of his promise shines through Jesus’ words as he speaks of his coming again. This is why we want to keep awake, because it is our gracious Lord and savior who is coming.
Even now we can hear the beautiful music of his saving grace. This beautiful music of his redeeming love has called us into the ark, which will deliver us into the new day he has in store for us.
So keep awake.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church