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Food For Thought From Pastor Dwight

On the 2nd Sunday of Advent Jesus talks about staying awake in our lives and in the church. "So, how do you want to spend your life? We all know you can ruin it. But what is more important to recognize is that you can sleep through it."

The church new year, as always, begins with Advent and brings a new guide, Matthew.

But first Luke leaves us with a beautiful image of the heir to the royal house of David, whose ministry and fate is bound with that of the excluded: "For the Son of Man has come to seek and save what was lost" (Luke 19:10).

Faithful to his gospel's special focus on the poor, Luke's final image of Jesus is the suffering servant, the Messiah who saves by accepting in body and spirit the sum total of our hatred and fear, transforming it into new life.

Our introduction to Matthew and to the Advent season is as compelling as Luke's conclusion. "Stay awake!" he proclaims (Matthew 24:42); Jesus' predecessor, John, tells us to "Repent! For the kingdom of heaven is at hand!" (Matthew 3:2).

Matthew jolts us out of our complacency so that we will be prepared to recognize the incarnate God, for "at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come" (Matthew 24:44).

We as Christians ought to remember the importance of Matthew's sentiment, not just during Advent but also in the everyday world: "The worst danger is not pain or poverty. The worst danger is sleeping through the drama of life, the struggle for life and for community against the forces of death and despair."

Our faith is rooted in the assumption that we are an Advent people, ever alert to God's continuous attempts to be born in our lives and communities.

Fortunately, our history is filled with the examples of those who lived lives of vigilance. Their wakefulness gave them the freedom to act in partnership with God's work to build the kingdom of heaven on earth.

For each week of the Advent season a witness, a faithful servant who, tike the Baptist, shows us the way to the Messiah, will accompany us.

So, as I leave this place and move to a new call I hope and pray that everyone here is awake to new possibilities and change. You ought to be awake so that Zion can be prepared for the light of the world that comes to us in the form of a human being in the Christ child.

May the Lord continue to bless each and every one of you in the days, months and years ahead.

Pastor Dwight