An Advent state of mind
[video link] [lectionary readings]
St. Paul says, “You know what time it is... it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep.... The night is far gone, the day is near; let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.”
Yes, Paul, I know what time it is. It’s 9:30 in the morning on the 6th of September in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty-six. It’s almost a hundred degrees outside (or at least it will be in a few hours). Labor Day isn’t until tomorrow. I know what time it is.
And I also know this reading. “Lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” But don’t those words belong to the season of Advent? We say them every year just after Thanksgiving, when we’re looking ahead towards Christmas, in a time of cold weather and growing darkness, in a season when the Church’s calendar draws our focus to the coming of Christ and the beginning of a new year. So why are we hearing these words today? Aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves?
On the other hand, if Advent is a season of new beginnings, September is too. A new school year has already begun. Our program year starts next week, when we’ll go back to two services and welcome back our choir. It may not feel much like fall outside, but the peculiar excitements and anxieties of autumn are in full swing.
So maybe today actually is a good time for an Advent state of mind. A time for awareness. A time for wakefulness. A time to notice that something new is arriving and we’d best not sleep through it.
And maybe we can also learn something new if we listen to Paul’s words with the ears of ordinary time.
In Advent, we tend to focus on the dramatic language of darkness and armor and light, on the warnings about self-control and wakefulness. But that isn’t where Paul starts. He begins this morning’s passage by telling us to love one another. He echoes the Ten Commandments, and then he gathers them together: all commandments “are summed up in this word, Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Only then does Paul turn to the approaching day. It’s time to wake up and get dressed, he says. “The night is far gone, the day is near.” It’s time to lay aside the works of darkness, and to put on the armor of light. Time to leave behind quarreling and jealousy. And time to put on the Lord Jesus Christ.
This September, I hear in Paul’s words a reminder of what it is that we’re waking up to do. Paul says that our call is simple: To love your neighbor as yourself. For love is the fulfilling of the law.
It’s easy to hear today’s scripture readings and get wrapped up in judging ourselves or in judging others. The readings are full of warnings against reveling and drunkenness, debauchery and licentiousness, quarreling and jealousy, and the Gospel lays out a process for calling out those who sin against you.
But Paul’s reminder of the summary of the law brings us back to why the way we treat each other matters. Love your neighbor as yourself. For love is the fulfilling of the law.
But what does it mean to wake up and to live into that sort of love in ordinary time, in the middle of a September heat wave?
It might begin with listening to our neighbors, and listening to what they tell us about their lives. We might discover that something we’ve barely noticed is causing them harm. And we might begin to ask what we can do about it together.
This morning, we’ll commission a group of leaders who are beginning a new justice ministry in central Kansas. They’ll be working with others from churches in eight counties, listening and identifying problems we can all address together. People with different experiences, backgrounds, and a wide spectrum of political and theological convictions will all work together to try to figure out what loving our neighbors might actually look like in practice.
This will be slow and patient work of love. It will take time to learn what’s happening in our communities, to understand what needs to change, and to build relationships that make change possible. There will be frustrations along the way. But the work will begin with a conviction that loving our neighbors includes caring about the conditions in which they live. That loving our neighbors includes asking why the same hardships arise again and again. And that loving our neighbors includes working for change.
There is urgency in Paul’s words. Now is the moment to wake from sleep. Sometimes the work of love comes at you fast and furious. More often, it takes time and patience and enduring commitment. But even in the slow times, the urgency remains.
Whatever you’re beginning this September, look at it with an Advent state of mind. With urgency, and with the patience of love. Wake from sleep. Put on the armor of light. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ. And love your neighbor as yourself. For the night is far gone, and the day is near.
Cover image: Light for Others, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt University Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://act.library.vanderbilt.edu/artworks/55830 [retrieved September 7, 2026]. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/paullew/5421034602.