Awake, O Sleeper!
“It’s true—no one is perfect. But we are Christians, so we’re not content to remain imperfect.” —Father Andrew Stephen Damick
St. Paul, apparently quoting a hymn or poem well-known to his first readers (but not to us), exhorts us in this Sunday’s Ephesians lesson (5:14):
“Awake, you who sleep,
Arise from the dead,
And Christ will give you light.”
It is not a surprise that Christ is identified with light, nor even that the light of Christ works the resurrection from the dead. What might be a bit surprising is that Paul feels the need to tell this to us! Clearly, in chapter 5, he is addressing Christian men and women, the saints! “For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light” (5:8). Notice: not “were in darkness,” but “were darkness.” Not, “are in light,” but “are light.”
Still, we who are light because we are of Christ, need to be reminded to abstain from both the trivially inappropriate (crude jokes) and the unspeakably shameful and blasphemous. The quoted line of poetry has a pleasing rhyme between “asleep” and “dead,” in the original. It poetically links the two.
It’s almost as if there are two “realities.” The imagined “reality” of dead sin, which has its own nightmarish logic, agreed on by sleeping sinners, and the true reality, things as they actually are, when seen in the brilliant glory of Christ’s light.
Children of, and in, the light can see both sin for what it is, and righteousness for what it is. Children sleeping in darkness have no knowledge of righteousness, and assent to false conclusions about how to live, and what to do with others and with God. In their dream state, it all makes sense.
Wake up, and none of it makes sense!
Staying awake takes more than will power. It requires drawing near to Jesus Christ. Effort spent trying to be good in our own understanding, our own light and strength, is a fool’s errand. What we need is Jesus.
Christ will give you light.
—Fr. Eric
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