WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.825 --> 00:00:05.625 Our text we are reading from Romans 13. Do this knowing the time that it 2 00:00:05.625 --> 00:00:10.225 is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep for now, salvation is 3 00:00:10.225 --> 00:00:14.225 nearer, than when we believed the night is almost gone. 4 00:00:14.825 --> 00:00:15.625 The day is near. 5 00:00:16.625 --> 00:00:17.625 This is our text. 6 00:00:20.025 --> 00:00:25.325 I've been thinking about it and have decided that I am rather fond of 7 00:00:25.325 --> 00:00:26.025 the night. 8 00:00:26.925 --> 00:00:32.625 It is after all part of the very fabric of creation itself, there was 9 00:00:32.625 --> 00:00:34.825 evening and morning a day. 10 00:00:35.525 --> 00:00:40.125 And so it seems that there's something intrinsically good about, both 11 00:00:40.125 --> 00:00:45.925 halves of the 24-hour rhythm of dark and night, night and day. 12 00:00:47.525 --> 00:00:52.325 And nights are quite essential for some rather extraordinary 13 00:00:52.625 --> 00:00:57.425 parts of life. Stargazing, admiring the neighborhood, Christmas 14 00:00:57.425 --> 00:01:02.225 display, chasing fireflies and marveling at the Northern Lights. 15 00:01:02.425 --> 00:01:05.125 Just don't work in the daylight. 16 00:01:06.225 --> 00:01:12.225 And nights are perfect for campfires the camaraderie, the conversation 17 00:01:12.225 --> 00:01:17.025 and the deep reflection of a campfire, whose life cycle seems to go 18 00:01:17.025 --> 00:01:22.525 from leaping crackling flames to steady easy warmth and then to gently 19 00:01:22.525 --> 00:01:27.625 dancing, dying embers, reflecting the mood and interaction and setting 20 00:01:27.625 --> 00:01:30.425 the pace for those who are encircling it. 21 00:01:31.625 --> 00:01:35.825 But perhaps best of all nights are for sleep. 22 00:01:36.625 --> 00:01:42.425 After a day jammed full with everything there is little that can 23 00:01:42.425 --> 00:01:48.925 rival, the sweet release of sleep. But my reverie and my delight in 24 00:01:48.925 --> 00:01:53.425 the wonders of the night is rudely and abruptly, interrupted and 25 00:01:53.425 --> 00:01:57.125 fundamentally challenged by the apostolic exhortation. 26 00:01:58.125 --> 00:02:02.425 Paul is rather insistent, and he sure that his readers will agree with 27 00:02:02.425 --> 00:02:02.725 him. 28 00:02:03.625 --> 00:02:05.125 You know, what time it is 29 00:02:06.125 --> 00:02:06.825 he writes. 30 00:02:07.425 --> 00:02:11.225 It's H hour time to be raised up from sleep. 31 00:02:12.825 --> 00:02:14.125 I hate that time. 32 00:02:16.925 --> 00:02:18.425 5:00 a.m. 33 00:02:18.425 --> 00:02:20.825 always comes far too soon. 34 00:02:21.825 --> 00:02:26.025 Most of the year it comes well before even the faintest hint of a new 35 00:02:26.025 --> 00:02:26.425 day. 36 00:02:27.725 --> 00:02:28.925 But there is no option. 37 00:02:29.425 --> 00:02:34.325 The rhythm of the day makes its demand, the comfort of the bed, must 38 00:02:34.325 --> 00:02:41.425 be abandoned and the tasks of the day confronted. Paul's point is clear 39 00:02:42.025 --> 00:02:47.525 and it resonates tempting as it is to linger in a state of checked out 40 00:02:47.525 --> 00:02:50.425 unthinking language sleepiness. 41 00:02:51.225 --> 00:02:53.525 The night must be left behind. 42 00:02:54.725 --> 00:02:57.025 The night is trouble. 43 00:02:58.425 --> 00:03:02.125 And Paul is not done with his diatribe against the night. 44 00:03:03.225 --> 00:03:08.925 It is the inky darkness of night, that provides the ideal cover for 45 00:03:08.925 --> 00:03:10.925 the creeping, sneaking, 46 00:03:11.025 --> 00:03:17.025 shameful perversions of sinful, people. Drunken orgies, promiscuity, 47 00:03:17.025 --> 00:03:22.925 sensuality, envy, strife. Paul's list of the sins ofd the night is 48 00:03:22.925 --> 00:03:26.525 hardly exhaustive and being experts on sin 49 00:03:26.625 --> 00:03:28.625 we can easily add to the litany. 50 00:03:29.825 --> 00:03:33.425 The ideal setting for sin is night. 51 00:03:34.525 --> 00:03:36.625 The night is trouble. 52 00:03:37.725 --> 00:03:41.925 Indeed, as Paul sees it, the night is good for only two things. 53 00:03:42.025 --> 00:03:46.425 Both of which must be shunned sleeping and sinning. 54 00:03:48.325 --> 00:03:50.025 And of course, the Apostle is, right. 55 00:03:50.625 --> 00:03:55.725 He knows that the night with its darkness is a potent metaphor for a 56 00:03:55.725 --> 00:03:56.525 world 57 00:03:56.525 --> 00:04:02.225 overrun, with creatures hiding from God and living in self-consumed 58 00:04:02.325 --> 00:04:03.325 isolation. 59 00:04:04.125 --> 00:04:08.725 Just as he does with the flesh and the world. 60 00:04:09.125 --> 00:04:14.325 Paul makes a word, describing a good part of God's good creation and 61 00:04:14.325 --> 00:04:18.025 he takes that word and he sharpens it to use it as a 62 00:04:18.125 --> 00:04:23.725 term to capture and focus the horror and the shattering destruction 63 00:04:23.725 --> 00:04:29.625 imposed on God's masterwork by the arrogant rebellion of sinful, man. 64 00:04:30.825 --> 00:04:38.025 We all know that nights are not always blissful hours of quiet rest 65 00:04:38.525 --> 00:04:43.025 or pleasant passages of wholesome fellowship with kindred spirits. 66 00:04:43.925 --> 00:04:48.625 We too endure the ugly reality of sin. 67 00:04:49.325 --> 00:04:54.925 Not only that sin afflicted on us by others reveling in the dark, but 68 00:04:55.625 --> 00:04:59.525 also the sin manifest in our own yearning, 69 00:05:00.525 --> 00:05:02.825 plotting and doing 70 00:05:03.925 --> 00:05:04.625 in the dark. 71 00:05:06.225 --> 00:05:08.825 We know the sin of the night only too 72 00:05:08.825 --> 00:05:11.925 well. It defines our own lives. 73 00:05:13.125 --> 00:05:18.825 The night is a terror of sinful deeds of our own doing and in the dark 74 00:05:18.825 --> 00:05:19.825 night of sin. 75 00:05:19.925 --> 00:05:26.425 We long for daylight to come and drive away our own dark shadows of 76 00:05:26.425 --> 00:05:26.925 sin. 77 00:05:28.925 --> 00:05:33.325 You experience that same desperate desire for the dawn of the day 78 00:05:33.325 --> 00:05:37.625 during those nights when sleep, eludes you all together. 79 00:05:38.825 --> 00:05:41.725 And minutes drag into hours as you 80 00:05:41.725 --> 00:05:47.125 wait for each new number to appear on the clock. Or worse yet 81 00:05:47.625 --> 00:05:52.925 when the sleep that does come as a surreal slipping in and out of 82 00:05:53.025 --> 00:05:56.825 feverish consciousness fueled by dark desperate 83 00:05:56.825 --> 00:05:58.525 thoughts twisting into nightmares 84 00:05:58.725 --> 00:06:03.725 merging into half, waking hallucinations. On nights, like that 85 00:06:03.825 --> 00:06:09.125 you cannot wait for the day to come to free you from your 86 00:06:09.325 --> 00:06:12.825 sweat-drenched sheets and the torture of the night. 87 00:06:15.225 --> 00:06:21.525 It has been night for a long, long, long time. 88 00:06:23.425 --> 00:06:25.025 But again, Paul was right. 89 00:06:25.825 --> 00:06:28.525 The night is now far spent 90 00:06:29.525 --> 00:06:30.825 it's almost over. 91 00:06:31.925 --> 00:06:34.325 The reign of terror is nearing 92 00:06:34.325 --> 00:06:35.025 its end. 93 00:06:36.025 --> 00:06:39.325 The affliction of sin will soon be done. 94 00:06:40.425 --> 00:06:44.625 D-Day is at hand, H-Hour is waiting at the corner. 95 00:06:45.225 --> 00:06:49.625 The dawn, is hovering just over the horizon. 96 00:06:50.625 --> 00:06:58.025 It will be here before you know it. Even more certain than the dawn 97 00:06:58.025 --> 00:06:59.925 of a fresh day that cast 98 00:06:59.925 --> 00:07:04.925 it's clean, bright lights on the dark suffering and the filthy shame 99 00:07:04.925 --> 00:07:05.725 of the night. 100 00:07:06.025 --> 00:07:10.125 Jesus will soon dawn on this world 101 00:07:10.425 --> 00:07:13.525 and reclaim it fully as his own. 102 00:07:14.925 --> 00:07:22.025 Whether it happens today or another two millennia from today, it will 103 00:07:22.325 --> 00:07:22.925 happen. 104 00:07:24.025 --> 00:07:29.525 And that Holy certainty makes it a present reality 105 00:07:29.625 --> 00:07:31.125 tThat is perpetually 106 00:07:31.425 --> 00:07:33.925 just a moment away. 107 00:07:35.725 --> 00:07:36.225 C.S. 108 00:07:36.225 --> 00:07:39.825 Lewis captured this so well. Our world 109 00:07:39.825 --> 00:07:44.225 he recognized lives constantly, in a suspended reality. 110 00:07:44.525 --> 00:07:52.025 That is at once a heavy weary waiting and tingling electric 111 00:07:52.025 --> 00:07:53.025 anticipation. 112 00:07:54.125 --> 00:07:55.525 It's just there. 113 00:07:55.525 --> 00:07:58.225 Right at the cusp of the dawn. Right 114 00:07:58.225 --> 00:08:01.025 at the brink of the brilliant new day. 115 00:08:01.025 --> 00:08:08.125 Jesus is right there and ready, and at a single word from the father. 116 00:08:08.125 --> 00:08:13.025 He will come in spectacular, streaming, glory, and grace 117 00:08:13.125 --> 00:08:15.925 and the night will be over forever. 118 00:08:17.225 --> 00:08:19.525 You know, this. 119 00:08:21.225 --> 00:08:25.325 And knowing this you live, this. 120 00:08:27.025 --> 00:08:33.225 You see for you, the hour has already come right now. 121 00:08:33.625 --> 00:08:40.325 You live awake and jubilant and even giddy in the ebullient 122 00:08:40.325 --> 00:08:41.125 confidence 123 00:08:41.125 --> 00:08:42.725 you have in the promise. 124 00:08:43.525 --> 00:08:48.925 After all the coming of Jesus is not just a promise, it is your 125 00:08:49.325 --> 00:08:50.625 present reality. 126 00:08:52.025 --> 00:08:52.925 He is here. 127 00:08:54.025 --> 00:08:55.225 He is with you. 128 00:08:56.225 --> 00:09:03.225 He is present now just as he promised in word and Sacrament and in the 129 00:09:03.225 --> 00:09:06.525 lived reality, that is his church. 130 00:09:07.925 --> 00:09:10.025 And so you live today 131 00:09:11.425 --> 00:09:12.325 and tonight 132 00:09:13.725 --> 00:09:14.425 in the light. 133 00:09:15.625 --> 00:09:19.425 Darkness is done, you sleep. 134 00:09:20.225 --> 00:09:25.725 You wake, you serve you live in Jesus. 135 00:09:26.625 --> 00:09:31.825 The one who raises you up from your sleep each day 136 00:09:33.325 --> 00:09:34.625 and on the last day. 137 00:09:36.025 --> 00:09:36.525 Amen. 138 00:09:39.025 --> 00:09:39.525 The continue with the hymn.