Jesus said, “Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly.”
Evening, midnight, cockcrow, dawn: four watches in the night. We could also be a little old school and call them Vespers and Compline, Matins, Lauds, and Prime: five of the nine monastic times of prayer that carry a religious community through a night and a day. Jesus tells us to stay awake through these wee hours. And then he goes on to meet us in each of them.
Jesus meets us in the evening: soon after he gives us this warning about keeping awake, in the Good News according to Mark, Jesus gathers in the evening with his disciples, in a private room, and shares a meal with them. Then, as evening yields to night, he leads them to the garden, where he prays fervently, in agony, for the bitter cup to pass from him. And he tells his disciples, once again, to keep awake—but of course they don’t. They doze. Will we? Whatever we do, Jesus meets us in the evening: he meets us in our sundown gatherings, in our homecomings, in our slumbers, in our restlessness, in our private shadows, in our hauntings.
Then Jesus meets us at midnight. This is the dreadful hour of his betrayal and arrest, when Jesus enters the fray with us. He could have run from the garden before the betrayer approached: Jesus knows what is about to happen, what predicaments we face. But he stays with his beloved friends in the garden, and in staying, he is seized. He is indicted. He is in trouble. Jesus meets us at midnight: he meets us in our predicaments, in our deepest fears, in our traps and snares, in our jails and prisons—he meets us even in the anxious cages we construct for ourselves, the cages we lock from the inside. He steps into our crises, alongside us.
Then Jesus meets us at cockcrow, the bleary hour when the faintest gray is appearing along the eastern horizon, the hour when Peter denies his Lord—a desolate hour. Jesus meets us in our frailty, in our mistakes, and even in our worst offenses. Jesus meets us whenever we are discouraged by our faults or failures. And Jesus knows us in this awful hour: he is all too aware of our true story, the good with the bad, even as he meets us with mercy. Jesus meets us at cockcrow: he looks us in the eye, and we will endure his knowing gaze.
And then, finally, Jesus meets us at dawn. This is the hour when the authorities bring Jesus before Pilate: Jesus is our Victim, our Defendant, our Scapegoat, the one who bears away all our sins. “Jesus, Lamb of God,” we sing at dawn, “have mercy on us. Jesus, bearer of our sins, have mercy on us. Jesus, redeemer of the world, grant us your peace.” On Good Friday we ask God to set the cross between us and God’s judgment, between us and despair, between us and anything that separates us from God. Jesus meets us at dawn: he bears away every dreadful shadow.
But this disturbing dawn also foreshadows another dawn, a more triumphant dawn, a dawn that is just on the other side of the weekend: the dawn of Resurrection. And today, Sunday, the First Sunday of Advent—today is a dawning Feast of Resurrection, a morning celebration. Jesus does not remain a Victim forever, nor does our sleepiness endure the blaze of dawn: Jesus meets us at Easter dawn: Jesus is our Risen One.
Oh, how we need the Risen One to appear, at all hours of night and day. “Tear open the heavens and come down!” Isaiah pleads to Adonai, to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob:
O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,
so that the mountains would quake at your presence--
as when fire kindles brushwood
and the fire causes water to boil--
to make your name known to your adversaries,
so that the nations might tremble at your presence!
Isaiah pleads with God to tear open the heavens: when he cries out like this, Isaiah consciously nods to the biblical image of a remorseful person tearing their garments. Tear open the heavens, Holy One! we cry, the way biblical figures in anguish would tear our own clothes. Tear the heavens in sadness, in passion; tear the heavens because of all that has gone wrong in this realm of earth. Tear the heavens and bring down the Dominion of God. Tear the heavens and be here with us.
But God in Jesus does not tear the heavens as much as walk quietly into our gatherings, into our embraces, and into our crises. He meets us gently, then bravely, then unnervingly, then mercifully. Evening welcomes Jesus our gentle companion, breaking bread, and praying fervently; midnight welcomes Jesus our brave defender, entering the fray, entering our predicament; cockcrow welcomes Jesus our unnerving judge, our Righteous One, the One who knows us best; and dawn welcomes Jesus our Merciful Victim, the Risen One who sets himself between us and all that convicts us, all that defeats us, all that terrifies us.
And this is our Way. This is the Way of the Cross. This is how we cope with the world and all its grief, all its violence, all its despair. This is our Advent hope: Jesus, our nighttime companion.
Every Advent I sing in my private prayers an old Advent hymn written by Percy Dearmer, one of our grand Anglican hymn writers. It’s a good song for nighttime contemplations. I ask you to notice any resistance you might have to Dearmer’s old-school Jacobean English verse, writing as he did in the Victorian era, when that was in fashion. Let this Advent hymn guide you as you wait for the presence of Jesus in all times of day, but especially in the shadows of night. Here is Percy Dearmer’s hymn:
Ah! think not the Lord delayeth:
“I am with you,” still he sayeth,
“Do you yet not understand?”
Look not back, the past regretting;
on the dawn your hearts be setting;
rise and join the Lord’s command.
For e’en now the reign of heaven
spreads throughout the world like leaven,
unobserved, and very near,
like the seed when no [one] knoweth,
like the sheltering tree that groweth,
comes the life eternal here.
Not for us to find the reasons,
or to know the times and seasons,
comes the Lord when strikes the hour;
ours to bear the faithful witness
which can shape the world to fitness,
thine, O God, to give the power.
Preached on the First Sunday of Advent (Year B), December 3, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington.
Isaiah 64:1-9
Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Mark 13:24-37