This Advent season I have found a book entitled Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus: Advent and Christmas with Charles Wesley. As I work through it, I will probably post some of the lessons. This morning’s story and verse lines up with much that I preached on Sunday about and how the light of Jesus should change our life this Christmas season.
Charles Wesley preached a valedictory sermon to the Oxford University community entitled “Awake, Thou that Sleepest” at famous St. Mary’s Church in 1742. He admonished his hearers to awake from their lack of concern about spiritual needs, from satisfaction in their sin, from contentment in their brokenness, from arrogance and self-centered complacency. The sermon did not go over well, despite the fact that he encouraged the students to reclaim their true identity as God’s children and to receive God’s promise of light, liberation, and love to fill their lives. Charles lamented that so many seemed to prefer the darkness. If we have eyes to see, however, aroused by the light of Christ, we wake to an astonishing grace. God does not wait for us to make the first move. Even as we sleep, the Spirit works in our lives to arouse us from our slumber. Countless acts of mercy, love, and grace surround us day in and day out. God attempts to get our attention in events, through the influence of other people, in sign-acts of love in the church. But most importantly, God wakes us up by coming to us in the person of Jesus Christ. Like the first light of dawn, the beams of this marvelous Light dance around us. The light breaks into the darkness of our sleep and awakens us to a new reality in our lives.
Ephesians 5:8-10 says, “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord.”