The First Sunday of Advent, Year A            
November 30, 2025                                                                      

Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44

The First Sunday of Advent, Year A                                                           

November 30, 2025                                                                            

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“Keep Awake”                                                                             

Happy New Year. I say it every year, and every year it still sounds a little strange. But for the Church, today truly is the beginning of a new year. Advent arrives—not with a countdown or a ball drop, but with a voice calling across the centuries: “Keep awake.”

Advent does not begin with cozy manger scenes. It begins with urgency. It begins with Jesus asking us not to drift, not to grow numb, not to fall asleep to the world around us. Advent shakes us gently by the shoulders and says, Pay attention. God is drawing near.

And that is a very different message than the one we hear from the world as November turns to December. Many of us are already counting shopping days. We’re planning Christmas dinners and New Year’s gatherings. We’re thinking about Giving Tuesday and where our donations might make the most difference. December becomes a month of wrapping up—not only gifts but loose ends. We hurry to finish every project before the calendar turns.

But the Christian year does something else. It begins when things feel like they are ending. It begins when daylight shortens and shadows grow long. Advent starts not in the clarity of summer but in the deepening twilight of late fall. And Advent says: Start here. Start in the quiet. Start in the dark. Start in the longing.

Many people—even many Christians, though not us 😊—forget that the Christian year starts in this way. Advent’s opening notes are not sentimental. They are apocalyptic—not in the sense of catastrophe, but in the sense of unveiling, revealing what is real and what is needed.

Even as Advent begins a new year, it points toward an ending:
the end of oppression,
the end of violence,
the end of people living in fear,
the end of long waiting for God to show up.

The angels promise peace on earth. Mary carries a child who will turn the world upside down. The ancient promises of God are on the edge of fulfillment.

And yet—even after the angels sang and the child was born—the world continued to be bruised and broken. Jesus’ earliest followers felt that tension. They had witnessed his life and his rising. They had seen glimpses of God’s reign. But the suffering around them remained real. They began to ask: Is sacred time the same as human time? Maybe God’s commonwealth does not arrive all at once. Maybe it unfolds through time slowly, persistently, in moments small enough that we might miss them if we are not awake.

In time, the early Church spoke of two Advents: the birth that has already come, and the fulfillment still on its way.

And so Advent asks us to wait—but not passively. Waiting in Scripture is never about sitting back. Waiting is a spiritual discipline, a posture of attention. To wait is to stay awake to the world God loves. To stay awake is to refuse to look away from what is painful. To stay awake is to keep our hearts open in a world that prefers numbness.

When Jesus says “keep awake,” he means: See what is happening. Don’t turn away from the suffering of others. Don’t let fear eclipse compassion. Don’t glide through life without noticing the people God has placed in your path.

Because the world in which we wait is the same world God entered. The same world God loves enough to redeem.

So staying awake means telling the truth about the world as it is—its beauty and its brokenness. We see beauty every week in our parish. We see it in Emmanuel’s Table, feeding neighbors with dignity. We see it in people who show up to volunteer, to learn, to pray, to welcome. We see it in quiet acts of kindness that rarely make headlines but change someone’s whole day.

But we also see hardship. Advent will not let us pretend otherwise.

The collect for this Sunday asks God to help us “cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” That is Advent’s work in one sentence. The works of darkness are not theoretical. They take recognizable shape in the world around us.

Darkness looks like prejudice that denies the dignity of God’s children.
Darkness looks like economic pressures that leave families exhausted and anxious.
Darkness looks like violence—violence in homes, violence in communities, violence between nations.
Darkness looks like fear that turns neighbors into strangers.
Darkness looks like despair that convinces a person their life has no worth.

These things are not “politics.” They are spiritual realities that wound the image of God in human beings.

And the armor of light? It is made of something different entirely. It looks like courage born of compassion. It looks like standing with people who are pushed aside. It looks like generosity in a world obsessed with scarcity. It looks like truth-telling without cruelty. It looks like mercy that refuses to give up on anyone.

This is where Advent meets real life.

The Advent wreath gives us a pattern. Every candle we light is a small act of resistance, a quiet declaration that darkness does not have the final word:

Hope — trusting that no situation is beyond God’s healing.
Peace — honoring the sacred worth of every human life.
Joy — lifting up the dignity of those whose voices are too often ignored.
Love — welcoming the stranger, comforting the weary, caring for the vulnerable.

These candles are not decorations. They are practices. They shape how we live in the world. They teach us what it means to “keep awake.”

Advent is not the season of easy answers. It is the season of honest questions, small lights, and courageous waiting. It arrives in the longest nights of the year for a reason. We are wanderers in time, following a promise we cannot yet see fully.

But we walk with confidence, because God has already entered this world once, and God will do so again. Christ comes every time hope takes root, every time peace interrupts violence, every time joy lifts someone from despair, every time love restores dignity.

So this Advent, may we keep awake—not with anxiety, but with expectation. May we open our eyes to the suffering of the world and to the steady nearness of God. May we cling to hope. May we practice peace. May we choose joy. May we offer love.

And in doing these things, may we discover that Christ is already drawing near—already lighting the darkness with grace.

Blessed Advent.
And may we keep awake, together.