Christmas decorations are beginning to appear everywhere and the children are getting excited. Children love this time before Christmas because it gives them something for which to look forward. We all like to have something exciting and good for which to look forward, don't we? We enjoy expectancy. That is the great thing about the season of Advent. It is a season of expectancy. It is a season of looking forward expectantly to the celebration of the birth of the Savior. But it is even more than that. It is a time for entering into the expectancy that should be a part of the lives that Christians live every day of the year.
Our scripture lesson is full of expectancy. Paul is telling the Romans, and us, to look forward to something that God is going to do. "... you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first became believers" (Romans 13:11). What did Paul mean by that? Some of us are accustomed to looking back to the day on which we first believed, the day when we accepted the Christian faith, and calling that the day on which we were saved. But here is Paul, writing to believers and telling them that their salvation is still in the future. What did he mean by that?
One thing that Paul must have had in mind is the belief that there will be a coming "day of the Lord" when Jesus will return and all of God's loving purpose for the world will be accomplished. Paul believed that day would come during the lifetime of many of the people to whom he wrote. Obviously, that didn't happen. And yet, Paul's writings reflect the fact that there is a definite orientation toward some future fulfillment that is a part of our Christian faith. Paul believed that God is bringing in a new age of righteousness, a new day when all of God's loving purpose for us and for our world will be fulfilled and that we are living in the dawning of that new day.
That belief is reflected in what Paul wrote in Romans 8. In that pivotal chapter, he does indeed speak of salvation as something that has been given to believers. "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1). "When we cry, 'Abba! Father!' it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirits that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ ..." (Romans 8:15-17). And finally, nothing in the whole creation "will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:39).
But in that same chapter, he speaks of a yearning for and a movement toward a future salvation, "If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also ..." (Romans 8:11). And, "... we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies" (Romans 8:23). Clearly, our salvation is something that is still going on, something we can hope for and anticipate and reach out toward.
But our scripture lesson for today comes from a part of the letter in which Paul is not talking primarily about personal salvation but about the participation of the Christian community in the life of the larger community in which they lived. Also in Romans 8, Paul makes it clear that the movement toward the fulfillment of God's purpose has social dimensions. "For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning together in labor pains until now ..." (Romans 8:19-22). So God is at work in the whole creation to move it toward some future salvation.
I hope that you can catch enough of a vision of what Paul was trying to show us to get excited about it. That vision can help us understand what we are doing when we celebrate the season of Advent. Here we are, almost 2,000 years after the birth of Jesus, participating in an observance that has to do with looking forward to the coming of salvation. Yes, the Savior has come and the gift of salvation has been given. But the difference that gift is meant to make, both in our lives and in our world, is something that has yet to be brought to fulfillment. That fulfillment is something that we should hope for and look forward to expectantly. And we are called to participate in the work that God is doing to bring salvation to completion.
In our reading for today, Paul says, "Wake up. It's almost morning. Let's get ready to live a life that is appropriate for the new day. Let's lay aside the works of darkness. Let's put away things like reveling and drunkenness. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, put on new life in Christ like you would put on a new garment, and make no provision for the contrary way of life in the flesh."
What would it mean for us to live in that kind of active expectancy? Let's talk about that for a while. It may help us to get the picture of what Paul is trying to tell us.
What would it mean for us to live as if we believe that God is at work in our world to bring the whole world to some kind of new and better life? For one thing, it would mean taking a much more positive attitude toward the unfolding of human history than lots of us have. Do you remember the Y2K commotion? You have probably all but forgotten it now, but it caused quite a furor when it was going on. You will remember that, as our world approached the year 2000, someone realized that, through the short-sightedness of what is supposed to be one of our most future-oriented industries, all of the world's computers were expected to go haywire as the new millennium arrived. In a computer-dependent society, we thought that was going to throw the whole world into chaos. That anxiety, together with a re-emergence of some very primitive old superstitions about the coming of a new millennium, caused lots of people to go into a tizzy. Some were preparing for the year 2000 in a way that was reminiscent of the ways in which some people prepared for nuclear war, complete with hoarded food and water and weapons to shoot your neighbors if they tried to take any of your stuff. Looking back on it, it all seems very foolish. But it caused a lot of real consternation when it was happening. You know, lots of people always look forward to the coming of the future with a similar kind of dread. It is unknown and so they think of it as threatening.
But Christian people should look forward to the future with a confidence that comes from knowing that the future is in God's hands and that God will be at work for our salvation in the future as in the past.
That is not to say that the future can always be counted to bring only good things to us. As we look at the things that have happened since Y2K, we will see that some of them have been good and some have been bad. We have endured September 11. That was about as bad as it gets short of a nuclear war. And we have seen the Holy Land enveloped in a heartbreaking conflict that has given new meaning to the psalmist's admonition to "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem" (Psalm 122). We have experienced the anguish of our country's involvement in Iraq. But in all of these things, we can be confident that God is still at work to bring good out of evil and new life out of chaos and death -- and we can also be confident that God has some things for us to do so that we can participate in God's saving work.
We can take a similar attitude toward our own lives. When we are very young, it is easy to stay excited about the future because every new day seems to bring some new experience and some bright new possibility. At least that is true for the most fortunate young people. It was true for lots of us. But sometimes, as life goes on, things slow down. Life may seem to stagnate into the "same old same old." The burdens and the threats of it may make us stop looking forward to the future with much happy anticipation. We may have a hard time finding any reason to get excited about the future.
But so long as we know that God is at work in our lives leading us toward the fulfillment of our best possibilities, we can know to approach each new day ready to discover what surprise we will find there. Many people have found that it works that way. When the adventure that is our youth is over, when we realize that we have climbed about as far up our career ladder as we are going, when some limitation forces us to realize that some door we had always hoped would open never will, then many have learned to stop and look around and explore other dimensions of life, to take adventures into beauty or meaning or relationship of service. Many who have done that have found God at work there; opening unexpected new vistas and possibilities to them.
Many have discovered that when they had gone as far as they could in the pursuit of what Paul would have called "the life of the flesh" and reached a point of success -- or limitation -- or disillusionment -- then God is there to lead us into a new adventure that Paul would have called "the life of the spirit." God always has more to offer to us as soon as we are ready to receive it -- and as soon as we are ready to work with God to reach out for it. There is a kind of spiritual retreat that is called a Crusseo or a Walk to Emmaus that has been a very meaningful experience to many people. At the end of those retreats, the participants are invited to share any reflections they may want to share with the group. Quite often, people in that situation tell of experiences of renewal in which the religious faith they had professed all of their lives has taken on new meaning for them and given the whole adventure of life a new freshness.
The promise that God will be there in our future to carry on the work of our salvation extends even into those conditions of life that most people think are completely empty of possibility. An alcoholic who bottoms out may think he or she has reached the end of his or her rope. But then, with the help of a spiritual program, he or she may discover not only the way to sobriety and sanity, but also the way to a new spiritual aliveness that he or she never knew was possible. More than a few people who have dealt with cancer, sometimes even with terminal cancer, have caught a new vision of the real meaning of life that has enabled them to make the last of life much better than the first.
In fact, the promise extends even beyond this life. God is not limited by our deaths. We can dare even to approach the ends of our lives in faithful expectancy. A Texas pastor was talking with an older member of his church when the conversation shifted to a certain family whose young daughter had been injured in an accident and was apparently brain-dead. They had felt compelled to terminate her life support. The situation had been a burden on the hearts of all who knew them. When the subject came up, the older man looked off into the distance and said, "You know, preacher, I used to work in the oil fields." At first the pastor thought the man had found the subject too hard to talk about and had changed the subject. He soon found out that was not so. The man went on. "I was always a boomer. I liked to be where things were coming on. Once I was working in an oil field that had 23 rigs pumping. But they began to shut rigs down. I transferred to another oil field that only had eight rigs working, but they were drilling new wells and making new explorations. I like to be where things are booming. That is the way I feel about life. As long as things are booming here, I am ready to stay and make the most of it. But when things start to running down in this life, I will be ready to go on to the next place because I believe God will have something exciting going on there." He had learned the secret of expectancy.
When we are able to believe that God is alive and at work to save in this life and beyond it, we will soon discover that we have received the gift of expectancy -- and that can make a great big difference in our lives.