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 became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. (Epistle reading for Advent 1, 2022.)

Have you ever noticed that we always seem to talk about time as if it were a commodity? “buying time…” “saving time…” “quality time…” “spending time…” “wasting time…” Our readings today are all about time—specifically the end time and how we should be spending this in-between time. In our calendar, this is the first Sunday of Advent, and Advent is the beginning of the new church year…and the church year is all about time—all about the sanctification of time. That might seem like a strange phrase, the sanctification of time, the “making-holy” of time, but it’s one of the most important aspects of our faith. To better understand what it means, it might be helpful to think about what unsanctified time is like.
How many of us have felt so focused on the destination of the current leg of life’s journey that you feel like you’ve missed all the sights along the way? This can be especially true of young families: Life can seem like a blur with no details but the exhaustion that you feel when you finally crawl into bed at night, and then you suddenly find that in the blink of an eye your children are in college and are moving out and away.

How many of us have the memory of pain or loss that happened in the past that we just can’t get over? Our days and our thoughts can be possessed by ghosts and demons that pull us away from the tasks and joys of the present and drag us down into the darkness of their haunted passageways, lost in depression or loneliness or self-pity.

How many of us are so bored with, or feel so hopeless about, life’s demands and the news of the day that we escape into the mindlessness of video games or social media doomscrolling or alcohol or drugs, numbing ourselves with one desperate form of self-medication or another?
How many of us lose ourselves in the obsessive-compulsive beauty of a never-quite-precise enough to-do list, stuck in a do-loop of desperation as we miss opportunities for connection and beauty and love in the word around us?

These are all example of unsanctified time. What do we mean by sanctified time?
Creighton University professor and author Wendy Wright in The Rising: Living the Mysteries of Lent, Easter and Pentecost says:

Not all time is the same. It can be heavy enough to be a burden or so light it flies by. It is configured with peaks and valleys and long stretches of flatland between. Time can be bitter or sweet, free or constraining, endless in rapture, tedium or terror, or so elusive there never seems to be enough of it. Time, like space, has texture, density, and character…. Deep in the religious instinct of humankind there is the desire to order time so that the invisible, sacred dimension of life can be apprehended… The liturgical year is the medium through which the Christian community sanctifies time—makes it holy. Liturgical time also sanctifies those who enter into it. To venture into the movement of the church calendar is to risk transformation through the divine touch. It is to be ushered into the dynamics of incarnation, death, resurrection, and [the movement of the Holy Spirit].

Advent, at the beginning of the church year, is our invitation to focus anew on the sanctification of our hours and days. This first Sunday we heard Paul tell the Romans “Wake up! The night is far gone! Lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light!” We started lighting the Advent wreath today, and as the light grows brighter each week, we are reminded of the longing of the Jews for a Messiah, and are pushed to think of how much we ourselves–and our world–need that same Messiah. “For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.” Jesus, the light of the world, grows nearer each week, and He invites us to look forward to his second coming as we anticipate the celebration of his first coming, when Advent is done and Christmas arrives.

The Advent theme of in-breaking light is a symbol of God’s breaking into our lives, and the Advent and Christmas Bible readings speak the Word that God is always breaking into our world and our lives–in the past, in the future, and especially in the present—breaking into our lives to sanctify every moment, every day, every passing week and month.

The reading from Matthew about two working in the field and one being taken might sound at first like a good premise for a series of 16 books selling 80 million copies, four movies, and five blockbuster video games—but if you read the entire passage, chapters 24 and 25 of Matthew that we call the “little apocalypse,” you’ll see that Jesus is not talking about the dangers of being left behind—Jesus is talking about the importance of sanctifying the time we all have while we’re here. In these two chapters, Jesus talks about the faithful and wise slave who maintains the house and feeds the other slaves while the master’s return is delayed. Jesus tells the story of the five wise bridesmaids who brought extra oil with them so they could greet the late-arriving bridegroom—and the five foolish ones who were not prepared and missed out on the banquet. Jesus tells the story of the wise servant who invested the master’s money and gave it back ten- and five-fold when he returned, and the lazy servant who hid it in the ground and kept it safe but unused and unproductive. And finally, Jesus says the end of days will be like a shepherd separating sheep and goats, who says to the surprise of the sheep who are welcomed into the kingdom, “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”

All of these readings about the end of time during Advent are given to us not to frighten us about some potential fiery future, but to wake us to today, to wake us to the truth that time is not a commodity to be used or an enemy to be overcome, but the sacred dimension of our lives in which we can plant and grow and heal and build and share and love. On my office wall hangs a drawing my daughter Maggie made as an ordination present. It is of the old wise turtle from the movie Kung Fu Panda, and has this quote from him: “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why we call it the present.” This is what Advent is here for—to call us to make today sacred, and in that way to sanctify all of our days.

My prayer this week is that we’ll hear not so much the endless droning repetition of the same 35 Christmas songs on the radio, but instead we’ll hear the call of Advent reminding us that “Now is the moment for us to wake from sleep…the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.”