​Waking Up Too Early or Right On Time? "Read Revelation 3:1-6"

As I was working on that sermon text for this past Sunday, I got to thinking about waking up as recurring theme in literature and film.  Washington Irving wrote a short story about Rip Van Winkle. And who can forget the Grimm Brothers’ tale about Sleeping Beauty?  This past Friday I watched the film Passengers, starring Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence.  They and several thousand others people had signed up to board a space ship, be placed into a 120-year hibernation, and travel to start a new colony on a new planet.  Talk about adventure! (SPOILER ALERT) But something went wrong and they woke up 90 years too early.  At first it seemed that they were doomed to live and die alone as their fellow-travelers slept on.  But as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that only they were awake to save the ship from certain disaster that would have taken all their lives – as they slept.
 
It seems we human beings have a fear about not waking up until it’s too late. 
 
Rip Van Winkle, Sleeping Beauty, and James & Aurora are fictional characters.  But you and I are very real.  Those stories are fiction, ours is not.  A very real Savior wrote a very real letter to real people living in a real city named Sardis because he really loved them.  His concern? – that they wake up before it was too late.  If they didn’t – well, even people who no longer give a thought about hell will actually end up there, so sleeping is not a good option.
 
Read Jesus’ words in that letter again.  Now ask yourself some questions:

• How’s my worship life?  Have I gotten a bit sleepy about that in my schedule?
• What’s my plan for growing in the Word?  Have I gotten lazy about that, content with what I already know of the Word?
• Do I know more about my Christian faith from the Bible now than I did, say, a few years ago?
• Have I slipped into the idea that I can sleep my way to heaven, because I keep hearing some folks say that we all eventually end up there anyway?

 
I don’t know the answers to any of those questions for you.  But I know that those are important questions that have answers – whether we are comfortable with them or not.  Jesus’ purpose in this little letter is clear and there is urgency about it: shake us to wake us.  There is no waking up too early in our story, but there is a too late. 
 
So, a Prince actually has come to wake us up to a new life that stretches into eternal happiness.  And from our waking up to our going home, he walks with us (think Word and Sacrament) and he clothes us in the white robes of his righteousness, made white in the blood of the Lamb.  Feel that nudge in your heart right now? That’s Jesus.  He’s right on time.  Wake up.