Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night?
Needing to go to the bathroom, and you didn't
want to turn on the light You know that feeling
it's waking up at 2 30 in the morning making
a quiet deal with yourself I'm not turning on
the light because you know the rules If the light
goes on, your eyes sting, your brain kicks into
gear, your body thinks it's morning, and suddenly
you're awake. When all you wanted to do is just
stay half asleep and get the job done. So you
shuffle in the dark, eyes half closed, hand on
the wall like a sleepy zombie. You're trying
not to wake up, trying not to see too clearly.
trying to stay inside the comfort of drowsiness
where the dark lets you pretend you're still
asleep. You tiptoe through the dark, hoping the
night can just keep lulling you along and hoping
that you are not nearly as loud as Pastor Jason
stumbling in the dark. Sometimes we avoid light
on purpose because if we turned it on, if we
really saw things, we'd have to be awake. And
being awake It's inconvenient. It demands something.
It breaks the spell of comfortable sleep. Turning
on the light forces awareness. Once the light
is on, you must face the reality that the night
is over, that you're awake, and that you must
act. We live in a world that constantly lulls
us into sleep. Sometimes it's the literal sleep
of the night. But more often, it's the moral,
spiritual, and ethical sleep that quietly sets
over our hearts. We like it that way. Darkness
can be comfortable. It keeps us from having to
face truths that we'd rather ignore. It allows
us to postpone uncomfortable conversations with
ourselves, with others, with God. Darkness is
seductive. because it allows us to stay unexamined,
unchallenged, unaccountable, and the same is
true morally and spiritually. We can live, speak,
and act without fully seeing ourselves, without
being fully honest with God or our neighbors.
But the moment light shines, whether through
conscience, scripture, God directly, we can no
longer pretend. The night is over. The dawn is
near. Paul captures this urgency in Romans 13,
11 through 14. He writes, the night is far gone.
The day is at hand. So let us cast off the works
of darkness and put on the armor of light. We
cannot pretend that moral sleepiness is harmless.
The night is ending. The light is coming. We
often prefer spiritual drowsiness because if
the light comes on in our lives, we might have
to admit something. If Christ's truth shines
on our words, our habits, our excuses, our compromises,
we'd have to acknowledge what's really there.
If we step into the light, we can't keep pretending
that everything is fine. We don't want to see
the mess on the floor, the clutter in the corner,
the things that we've tripped over. a dozen times.
Darkness lets us stay numb. Light forces us awake.
And there are parts of us, the resentments, the
prejudices, the hidden sins, the comfortable
habits, that would rather we stay sleepy. Just
like that 2 30 a .m. bathroom trip when we sometimes
whisper to our souls, don't turn the light on.
Don't wake up. Don't look too closely. Let me
stay in the half darkness just a little longer,
but Advent says Wake up The dawn is here Christ
is shining the light has already risen. You've
just been keeping your eyes closed Consider the
darkness that grows when no one is paying attention
For years here in Houston it appeared executives
were running a perfectly successful business
climbing to unprecedented financial heights,
but behind the scenes, accounting tricks, manipulation,
and deception were running unchecked. They created
shell companies to hide losses. They shifted
debt off their books so it wouldn't be noticed.
They reported profits that weren't profits at
all. People trusted the numbers because they
wanted to believe everything was fine. Darkness
thrived because people didn't want to look too
closely. They didn't want to turn on the light.
The consequences were devastating, not just for
the Enron executives, but for the employees,
the retirees, the investors and the communities
who trusted the company. Jobs evaporated overnight.
Life savings disappeared. Families were uprooted.
Communities were shaken. The name Enron became
a bad word. all this because darkness had been
allowed to grow unchallenged, because people
had been lulled into ethical sleepiness. And
the strange thing was, many of the people involved
weren't villains in their own minds. They weren't
waking up each morning thinking, how can I be
evil today? Mwa ha ha. Most of them were simply
operating in what had become business as usual.
That's how darkness works. It doesn't show up
wearing a dastardly cape. It shows up disguised
as normal, maybe as smart. And because so many
people were spiritually and morally sleepy, because
they were used to the dark, they kept walking
forward without ever turning on the light. But
we don't have to look at corporate America to
see the same patterns. Think about churches,
communities, families, when trust is misused
when authority is wielded irresponsibly. When
darkness thrives in silence or in secrecy, the
damage is real. People are hurt, faith is shaken,
hope is diminished. Darkness thrives where no
one dares to look. Do we really think that the
things listed in Romans were things that people
went in thinking, I'm going to do something evil
today? Or was it in a world where slowly it became
comfortable, normal, and not really all that
bad? We've all seen the news lately about a large
prominent Houston congregation where leadership
structure was upended in a massive internal shift.
Decisions made behind closed doors, authority
redirected in ways that many members didn't fully
understand. and people suddenly feeling as though
trust had been broken because they discovered
they had no say in their own church. Even churches
can drift into a kind of organizational darkness.
Secrecy, power struggles, defensiveness, fear
of the light. And the damage always spreads.
People become disillusioned. Young adults walk
away. Members feel unseen or unheard. Communities
fracture. Darkness? even when it feels safe,
always costs more than we think. And Advent calls
us out of that. Do all prep businesses have to
act this way? No. There are examples of people
and groups who choose to walk in the light even
at great cost. Companies and leaders who refuse
to hide behind darkness and instead act with
integrity, honesty, transparency. Johnson & Johnson
in 1982. Seven people died after cyanide -laced
Tylenol capsules reached the market. The company
did not hesitate. They recalled every single
Tylenol bottle in the nation, over 31 million
bottles, at a staggering cost, before the government
demanded it. They acted transparently, sacrificially,
decisively. The light was turned on and they
chose not to hide from it. Or Patagonia. running
a full -page ad on Black Friday of all days saying,
do not buy this jacket because they realized
the manipulation, the guilt, the pressure that
is on us all during the season. They invited
customers to consider whether they truly needed
a product to act thoughtfully and if they chose
to buy to trust that their money would be used
responsibly. Like a church suggesting that people
give their tithes to other groups if so inclined.
Patagonia's model respected freedom, integrity,
and conscience. Or CVS, which stopped selling
all tobacco products in 2014. Because they wanted
to align themselves with healthcare rather than
addictive substances, they began losing $2 billion
in lost revenue every year, every single year.
And even now, they've had to close over a thousand
locations over the last few years. Ten percent.
of their locations, for the sake of continuing
a mission of doing what's right for the community.
There are plenty of large -scale examples of
countering the darkness with light, but Scripture
talks about darkness also not just in regard
to dramatic sins or obvious rebellions, but more
often with the stuff that we've stopped noticing,
the habits that we excuse. the patterns that
we justify, the sharp words that we shrug off,
the grudges we quietly feed, the sins that we
rename so we don't feel convicted, the things
we keep in the corner because we hope God doesn't
bring them into the center of the room. Darkness
allows us to say, I don't want to deal with that
yet. I don't want the light to expose that. Let
me stay comfortable. But the longer we stay asleep,
the more damage we do to ourselves, and to those
around us. Darkness may feel comfortable, but
it's not the same thing as truth. It's like when
having a terrible dream one night as a child,
I began screaming bloody murder to the point
where my dad jumped out of bed, ran down the
hallway, slipped on a dryer sheet, pinball bounced
around the hallway between the walls, and then
finally jumped up on my bed to protect me. I
didn't want the lights to come on because I didn't
want to know how beat up my dad really was. I
didn't want to see, but the only way that we
could put ice on his bruises and make sure he
didn't have anything broken was to bring up the
lights. Because you can't fix the brokenness
in the world or inside yourself without allowing
the light to come flooding in and show you what's
happening inside so you can change. Yet as Matthew
reminds us, better ethical behavior and vigilance
are not enough. The wake -up call is ultimately
about the Christ. Advent introduces us to a child,
a child who steps into the world when we are
unprepared, vulnerable, and still half asleep.
Children have a way of revealing what we would
rather hide. They ask questions we cannot ignore.
What's up with your hair today? Why is it that
you walk like that? Have you always had a stutter?
They notice, though, the inconsistencies in our
behavior, our speech, our ethics. They challenge
us with moral clarity that we often lose as adults.
We know this from our own lives. When we were
children, someone taught us honesty, fairness,
compassion, justice. We were instructed not to
cheat, not to deceive, not to take shortcuts,
not to talk behind people's backs. But somewhere
along the way, adulthood gave us permission to
forget them. We rationalized compromises. We
found ways to hide darkness instead of shining
light on it. And then we look at the next generation
and wonder why they seem to prioritize career
advancement over integrity. Why ethical action
in these TikToks And every other video seems
optional, why the world feels so fractured. As
the words in Cats in the Cradle would remind
us, I'm gonna grow up to be just like you, Dad.
You know I'm gonna be like you. The children
imitate what they see. They learn from our actions,
our compromises, our attitudes, and yes, our
failures. The parent who works too hard often
has kids who work too hard. The parent who takes
the easy way out in life often has children who
cannot handle life either. The parent who has
habits that no one would want to know about has
children who follow the same habits. But here's
the good news. It's never too late to model the
right way. No matter our past missteps, we can
begin today. We can choose honesty, integrity,
light. The children will notice. We can choose
to live as children of the day and in doing so
give them a different example. But sometimes
the light comes in unexpected, almost inconvenient
ways. Whether tiptoeing through the dark and
stubbing our toes so many times because we cannot
see. Or when our dad is injured in the hallway,
keeping the darkness doesn't help him at all,
and only light shining on it can really help.
But you see, even at the times when it's unexpected,
the truth is always better than the fear that
we may imagine. The darkness can seem protective,
but the light, it ultimately restores trust,
safety, hope. The child of Advent, the Christ
child, works in the same way. He exposes darkness,
not to condemn us, but to redeem us. He illuminates
our shortcomings, our ethical lapses, our moral
sleepiness, and offers grace, forgiveness, the
opportunity to start anew. The light does not
shame, it heals. The light does not punish, it
restores. The child comes for sleepy, morally
tired, and ethically distracted people. Whether
we like it or not, the child comes for us. The
ethical life is not just about business or personal
morality. It's our community, our family, our
legacy. Our children, our nephews, our nieces,
our students, our neighbor's kids. paying attention
to whether ethics matter in real life, in our
life. If they only see compromise and self -interest,
they will follow. If they see integrity and courage,
they'll be inspired to walk in the light, because
they are inheritors of the world that we have
built. Advent invites us to give them a faith
that is awake, a church that is honest, community
that welcomes the light. Romans 13 urges us to
put on the armor of light and to live as children
of the day. This looks like truth -telling when
it's uncomfortable. Fair treatment of others
refusing to exploit or manipulate. Generosity
giving freely and honestly. Forgiveness and patience
both toward others but also toward ourselves
when we've fallen short. daily choices to resist
the darkness. See, Advent is the season when
the church stands between darkness and daylight.
The early morning rise, whenever the sky is starting
to turn blue, but the sky is not filled with
the sun yet. The thing about the sunrise though,
you can't stop it. You can't close the blinds.
You cannot bury your head under the pillow. You
can't pretend it's still the middle of the night.
The dawn keeps coming. Jesus says He will come
at an hour we do not expect, which is exactly
why we must be awake. But this is not to be harsh.
It's not meant to humiliate. It's not meant to
be a gotcha moment. The light comes so we can
finally see. so we can finally walk forward,
so we can finally be healed. Because the bruises
that keep coming in the darkness, they are avoided
when we become children of the day. And this
is what Advent invites us into. We do not wake
ourselves up by sheer moral effort. We don't
become spiritually alert by tightening our fists.
We wake up by turning toward Christ. the light,
the dawn. As when Jesus filled your vision, everything
else finally begins to fall into place. We can
offer forgiveness, correction, grace, a new beginning.
Just because we haven't always acted ethically
in the past, just because we're sitting here
this morning knowing which things that we are
avoiding thinking about. It doesn't mean we can't
start today. Just because we failed to model
integrity before doesn't mean we cannot begin
now. Because that forgiveness, grace, that new
beginning is ours today. So today, the alarm
is going off. The curtains are opening. The horizon
is glowing. The question of Advent is not, is
the light coming? We know that it is. The question
is, are we willing to wake up? Because the day
is at hand. The day of the Lord is here. The
light is shining. It's time for us to show the
ultimate light, Jesus Christ, the baby in the
manger, the Son of God, in our lives. in all
that we are. Thanks be to God.