Awake, my soul, and with the sun thy daily course of duty run. Cast off dull sloth, and joyful rise to pay thy morning sacrifice. All praise to thee, who safe hast kept and hast refreshed me while I slept! Grant, Lord, when I from death shall wake, I may of endless life partake.

Good morning everyone and Happy Advent! Yes, the Macy's star is shining, the Christmas shoppers are all abuzz, and the muzak version of Silent Night can be heard playing softly in the background at the local grocery store. Secular Christmas is upon us - out there in the world. In here in the Church it's a quite different atmosphere because we counter- cultural Christians don't celebrate Christmas until Christmas comes. We celebrate Advent. We keep intentionally four Sundays before Christmas as a time of reflection on God's coming into our world. It's not really a little Lent before Christmas, but Advent does have a rather somber quality. I like what our Bishop wrote recently about how he and his family have a tradition of having all Christmas shopping done before Advent so that they can let Advent be Advent. How would you characterize Advent?

A time of hope? Yes, certainly it is a time in which we focus on hope as one of the theological virtues, along with faith and love. Hope is the supreme virtue of Advent, is it not? Hope in God's future for us, in which all things will be made new and fresh and wonderful. Throughout Advent we will hear readings from the prophet Isaiah, often called the Fifth Gospel. Walter Brueggemann, eminent Old Testament scholar, has called the poetry of Isaiah "buoyant literature of hope exquisitely expressed." And throughout Advent Libby Goldstein will explore the writings of Isaiah with us in the Forums. Today's reading from Isaiah ends with those hopeful words about beating swords into ploughshares, speers into pruning hooks, words of hope in the end of all wars, a hope shared by all believers in all the world's religions, a hope also taken up by and enshrined in chiseled granite at the United Nations.

But Advent is also about the prerequisite of hope: being awake. In the Epistle today Paul has a sense of urgency: "You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep." In the Gospel the same sense of urgency comes across in Jesus' words, "Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming." Every year we get stirred up as it were by God's wake up call : Get up, sleepy-head! (The voice seems to say.) You've lulled yourself into a complacency, which has so dulled your senses that you wouldn't even be able to recognize God in a new Advent even if he were wearing a nametag. Advent, dear friends, is our yearly December alarm clock which signals us to dis-anaesthetize ourselves, to give ourselves an invigorating cold shower, to put aside those things which hinder us from seeing God's presence, God's coming into our world in new and surprising ways. Advent is a yearly call to go beyond BAU - business as usual - truly to see around us, to perceive and appreciate those many hints of God's ineffable transcendence and glory right under our noses. This is no bad-mouthing of sleep. Sleep is good; sleep refreshes us, sleep renews our spirits and energies. Sleep "knits up the raveled sleeve of care," as our wisest poet, Shakespeare, knows. And yet: too much sleep is not good. Too much sleep makes us groggy, doesn't it? Have you noticed how a short nap sometimes is just the right thing, but a longer nap just does us in for the rest of the day and we don't want to get up at all? Advent is our collective yearly effort to allow ourselves to be gently or sometimes not so gently nudged out of sleep, out of complacency. It is a time to be recharged with the adrenalin of God's grace, sharpening our senses and challenging us to hear anew God's word to us: "Behold, I come to you, to you, sleepy-head. See all the ways I am present." The divine extraordinary is all around us and yearns to enter our time and space. God, it seems, wants to be manifest - again and again, God wants to take up space in our hearts and minds, in hands that reach out to others in love, in legs that run to help those in need. That's the Good News inherent in Advent, friends, a time of heightened alert. God is "breaking out all over" and we don't want to be asleep. Amen.