November 28, 2010 1st Sunday of Advent Isaiah 2:1-5

Romans
13:11-14
“Living
Honorably”
Dr. Ted H. Sandberg

In 1969, the rock group Chicago Transit Authority recorded Robert Willia Lamm’s song, “Does
Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?”1 It begins: “As I was walking down the street one day, A
man came up to me and asked me what the time was that was on my watch/ And I said, “Does
anybody really know what time it is, I don’t./ Does anybody really care? If so I can’t imagine why
about time. We’ve all got time enough to cry.”
Lamm suggests that we don’t need to know the exact time. He talks about “walking down the street
one day and being pushed and shoved by people trying to beat the clock.” These people don’t have
time to think, don’t have time to look around. They need to slow down and not worry so much about
time.
Lamm’s look at time certainly applies to our world today. As I prepared to write this sermon
yesterday, I thought first that I’d install a couple of updates on my computer. Turns out, those updates
took what seemed like forever to install. I found it very ironic that I was going to begin this sermon
talking about time as I sat there and watched time slip by as I waited for the updates to load. Time.
“Does anybody really know what time it is?”
The apostle Paul, in writing to the Romans, says that “Yes, people know what time it is, or at least
Christians know what time it is.” “Besides this, you know what time it is,” he writes, “how it is now
the moment for you to wake from sleep.” Paul tells us that we should know it’s time to wake-up, get
dressed, and get moving, because salvation is closer now than it ever has been.
Clearly, Robert Lamm and the Apostle Paul aren’t talking about the same kind of time. Lamm is
talking about earthly time, the time we measure with a watch, or even the time we guess at by
watching the sun. “It’s getting dark, we see, so we know it’s after 4 pm.” Lamm is talking about the
same time of which Lord Chesterfield spoke back on December 26, 1797, when he wrote a letter: “No
idleness, no laziness, no procrastination; never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.” 2 That’s
earthly time, though it applies to Paul’s time as well. It’s advice that many may feel comes straight
from the Bible itself. Earthly fortunes and reputations have been made doing today rather than waiting
for tomorrow. There have been those sceptics, such as William Brighty Rands, a 19th Century
children’s book author, who said in his “Lilliput Levee”, “Never do today what you can put off till
tomorrow.”3 But Rands’ advice is almost guaranteed to bring about failure, whether it’s with students
in their preparation for a test or term paper, with business in calling on clients or prospects, or whether

1 1. Lamm, Robert Willia, “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?”,
©Lamminations, 1969.

2 2. Lord Chesterfield, Letters [December 26, 1749], Familiar Quotations by John

Bartlett, Emily Morison Beck, editor, Fourteenth Edition, Little, Brown and Company,
Boston, 1968, p. 719.

3 3. Rands, William Brighty from Lilliput Levee in Familiar Quotations, p. 719.

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it’s with one’s family in apologizing for what one has said today, rather than waiting until tomorrow.
Too many times, people have said to me, “If only I’d known he was going to die, I’d have told him
how much I loved him.” “If only I’d known she was having trouble, I’d have done something instead
of waiting.” “If only...” are the words of those who too often put off until tomorrow, the things that
should be done today.
Because we know it’s important to do the things of today, today, it’s surprising then that the one area
where many people are very content to put the task off until tomorrow is in the spiritual realm. People
today are very willing to wait until they see the shadow of the Grim Reaper before they begin to think
about things religious. Even many committed Christians have fallen into the trap of thinking there’s
lot’s of time to get their houses in order, to use an old cliche.
Paul tells us that’s not the case. Paul firmly believed that Christ was almost ready to return to earth.
He was excited about what he believed was Christ’s rapidly approaching return. He worried about
those who weren’t going to know the joy of Jesus Christ when Christ returned, and he celebrated with
those who’d come to the faith, who’d gained the peace that’s possible only through God’s forgiveness.
Paul was sure that the darkness of this world; the pain and sickness and grief and heartache, the sorrow
and misery and suffering and death, all the trials and difficulties that can make the world so
devastating, Paul believed that darkness was about to give way to the day, the day of the Lord, the day
when Jesus Christ would return triumphantly to earth.
And Paul acted out of that anticipation, and wanted all who followed Jesus Christ to act with that same
anticipation of Christ’s return. So he says, “Let us conduct ourselves properly, as people who live in
the light of day – no orgies or drunkenness, no immorality or indecency, no fighting or jealousy. But
take up the weapons of the Lord Jesus Christ, and stop paying attention to your sinful nature and
satisfying its desires.” Paul is saying, “This is how we’re to live today in order to be prepared for
tomorrow. We’re to stop paying attention to our worldly desires, but instead take up the weapons of
the Lord Jesus Christ, the primary weapon which is love.
In the preceding verses Paul has told the Romans, “Be under obligation to no one – the only obligation
you have is to love one another. Whoever does this has obeyed the Law. The commandments, ‘Do not
commit adultery; do not commit murder; do not steal; do not desire what belongs to someone else’– all
these, and any others besides, are summed up in the one command, ‘Love your neighbor as you love
yourself.’ If you love others, you will never do them wrong; to love, then, is to obey the whole Law.”
Paul is saying that if we want to be prepared for whatever tomorrow brings, whether good news or
bad, the return of Christ or the return of life’s problems, then we’ll love one another today. Our task
as Christians today is to love one another. Only by loving each other can we do what the Lord
requires of us. Only by loving one another can we be ready when the day of Christ’s return comes,
whenever that day is for us or the world.
The purpose of the Advent season is to remind us again that Christ will return. It’s also to remind us
that we can’t afford to put off until tomorrow what we should be doing today, even preparing
ourselves for Christ’s return by loving one another. Paul tells us this means that we are to lay aside
the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; we are to live honorably as in the day – which I
take to mean that we’re to live openly as if those around us can see what we’re doing and not doing.
Another way of saying this is that we’re to wake up and put on the clothes of this new day, the new
clothes of Jesus Christ.

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Paul tells us we’re to live honorably. “We’re not to delight in reveling and drunkenness, not in
debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy.” Put another way, we’re to take care of
others and take care of ourselves as well. We’re to love others, but we’re to love ourselves also. I
believe that’s what it means to live honorably.
I think we begin to do this by simply being polite to one another. Personally, I feel that common
courtesy is no longer common – if it ever was. People our just plain rude today in how we treat one
another. Not only do we not respect our elders, we don’t respect anyone else either.
A common example is the number of people I see driving through red lights, or blowing through
STOP signs. I’m not talking about going through the light when it’s yellow and then turns to red. I’m
talking about blowing through a light that’s already red when the car starts through the intersection.
More and more drivers seem to be doing this. It’s a sign of disrespect for other drivers.
There are any number of other indications of rudeness today. The language that so many people use is
just plain rude and vulgar. How many people do we talk to who don’t listen at all to what we have to
say? That, at the very least, is impolite. Our politicians today seem to disrespect everyone in the
opposing party, frequently calling their opponents foul names. The list goes on and on.
This Advent season I’m going to work on living honorably, and I invite you to do the same. I invite
you to put on the new clothes of Jesus Christ. I invite you to be polite to those who cut you off either
on the streets of Chico, or in the shopping line. I invite you to love one another as Jesus himself
teaches us.
And I invite you this Advent season to remember that we are to be prepared for Christ’s return
whenever that may be. Jesus himself said, “No one knows...when that day and hour will
come--neither the angels in heaven nor the Son; the Father alone knows.” Because we can’t know if
Christ will come this afternoon, or tomorrow or in a hundred or in a thousand years, we are to be ready
always. This begins by living honorably with one another.