Now in the Time of this Mortal Life

Now in the Time of this Mortal Life

First in Advent

Collect of the Day: Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.

The Collect for the first Sunday in Advent is from 1549 and was written by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer.

One year on Christmas Eve night, I went to Walmart to pick up something we needed for the next day. To my great surprise I found that the employees had begun putting the Valentine Day candy on the shelves.

The only sense of time commercial interests have is maximizing the time sell products. They begin the Christmas season as soon as they can clear the shelves of Halloween costumes and candy.

A lot of individuals have a similar sense of time. They start watching the holiday movies - all with the same plot - on the Hallmark Channel beginning November 1. They start listening to Christmas music about the same time. The consequence is that by the time Christmas Day arrives they are tired of Christmas and feel sick from engorging themselves on Christmas things for 2 months before Christmas arrives.

We as church observe Advent. That does not mean we ignore Christmas during this Season. Simultaneously we look backward, forward, and inward - backward to our Lord’s first coming, forward to his second coming, inward to our response to his first coming and readiness for his second coming.

The collect for the first Sunday in Advent teaches us there are two times - now and the last day; two comings - Christ’s first coming and his second coming; and two kinds of life - mortal and immortal.

1. Now. Our western calendar marks two great ages: B.C., the time from Adam till the coming Christ and A.D., the years our Lord, from his first coming and the establishment of his kingdom till his second coming which marks the end. But the Bible marks time in another way, too. There is the age of now, which began with the Fall of Adam and Eve and will continue till the end when Christ comes, and the age of the world to come.  

• The characteristic of the age of now is that life is mortal. We surely have been reminded of mortality this week. A young man for whom we had long prayed, Tyler Wiseman, died at the beginning of the week. Then we received word that our good and godly Presiding Bishop, the Most Reverend Royal Grote, had died. He went to bed Wednesday evening and was found the next morning to have passed away overnight.

God had warned Adam and Eve that, if they rebelled against him by eating the fruit of the tree of which he had commanded them not to eat, they would surely die. They disobeyed and ate the fruit. They did not die immediately after their sin, but they immediately became mortal, and not only they, but all of us who have descended from them. St. Paul wrote: “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned -- …(Romans 5:12). There is nothing more irrational than to deny the reality and certainty of death, but denial is characteristic of our culture. The truth is that life is fragile, unpredictable, and sure to end.

• It was now in the time of this mortal life that God’s Son Jesus Christ came to visit us. At Christmas we celebrate the story of Mary and Joseph, of Bethlehem’s stable, of Mary’s giving birth to her Son, of the Shepherds and Angels. But the point of it all is that the Son of God, Jesus Christ, came to visit us in great humility. The eternal Son became one of us. He condescended to be born of a woman, in humble circumstances, to share our weakness, particularly our mortality. He was like us in every way except for sin. He could die and did die. And the point of it all was to be our Savior from sin.

2. Grace.  And so we ask that God would give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness and put upon us the armor of light.

• That request is taken directly from today’s Epistle lesson:

Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires (Rom. 13:11-14).

• This time of our mortal life is time for Christians to wake up from spiritual sleep. This age is hurrying on towards its end, and the day of full and final salvation will soon arrive. So we should get rid of all the sinful works that belonged to our old life in the kingdom of darkness, all the sins. This is no time for such gross sins as drunkenness, orgies, sexual immorality, and indulgence in sinful sensuality. It is also time for us to get rid of sins we may not take so seriously - quarreling and jealousy. All these things belong equally to the kingdom of darkness. We should not make any provision for the sinful flesh in order to gratify its desires - whether those desires are indulging in bodily sins of sexual immorality or are indulging in inward sins of pride and selfishness which are manifested as jealousy and quarreling.  It is now time for us to put on the armor of the kingdom of light, to live consistently with the reality that we are united to Christ by faith.

St. Paul emphasizes repeatedly the contrast between the darkness of sin and the light of righteousness as he urges Christians to be and do what they are in Christ. He wrote to the Thessalonians:

For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night. 8 But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation (1 Thess. 5:5-8).

He wrote to the Ephesians:

...at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them (Eph.5:8-11).

• On the one hand Paul recognizes that Christians are capable of gross wickedness - such as drunkenness and sexual immorality. Christians are also capable of ugly inward sins such as pride and jealousy. We should not be terribly surprised when Christians fall into such sins. But St. Paul calls us to see these things for what they are - the works of Satan’s dark kingdom and a total contradiction to the life of Christ’s kingdom of light.

• It is not that we tear off the rags of the kingdom of darkness and put on the new clothes of the righteousness of light in order to  save ourselves so that we say to God, “Look, God, I used to be bad, but now I’m good. Now you can accept me.” No, but we see why Christ came to visit us in great humility. He came to save us from our sins. That means salvation from the guilt and condemnation of our sins. But Christ did not come to save us from our sins in order to leave us in our sins. He came to cleanse us from the dirt of sin and to clothe us inwardly and outwardly with the new, clean clothes of righteousness.

If we have received God’s grace, asked for and received the forgiveness of our sins because Jesus died for us, we now see sin as the greatest enemy of our happiness - not just of our eternal salvation but of our present, this-world happiness. So we earnestly ask our Lord to give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and to put upon us the armor of light.

3. Then. Our present lives are not ends in themselves. They are a prelude to the life to the come. We have looked back to Christ’s first coming. We have looked inward to our response to his coming. So now we look forward to the end of this present age of mortality. We joyfully anticipate the time when Christ, who came first in great humility and became one with us to gain our salvation, will come again in great majesty. Then he, who came to deliver us from judgment, will sit as Judge to judge all who have lived.

• And what do we look forward to? We will rise to life immortal. St. Paul explained:

For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.  When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.”

“O death, where is your victory?

    O death, where is your sting?”

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the

law.  But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory

through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15:53-57).

The blessing of life beyond the touch of mortality and death is ours through the work of Jesus Christ. He came in great humility to save us from sin, to enable to cast off the works of darkness and put on armor of light. He will come again in great majesty, and we will rise to immortal life. To Jesus Christ, along with the Father and the Holy Spirit be all honor, praise, and glory now and forever. Amen.