The Debt That Wakes Us Up
Romans 13.8-12
A Sermon for the First Sunday of Advent
Grace and peace unto you from the one that is, was and will
always be.
Dear friends. The garland is here, the first purple candle
is waiting to be lit, and the air itself seems to shift. After a long season of
Ordinary Time, the Church calendar jolts us awake with a new beginning. Advent
is here.
And if we’re honest, we need that jolt. The world around us
has been celebrating Christmas since, well, before All Saints’ day. The songs,
the sales, the pressure to have everything perfectly curated by December 25th…
it can leave us feeling weary, not watchful. Burdened, not blessed.
It is into this very fatigue that the Apostle Paul speaks
with a voice that is both gentle and startlingly urgent. In the 13th chapter of
his letter to the Romans, he gives us our Advent marching orders. And they
might not be what we expect.
Listen again to his words: “Let no debt remain
outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another.”
A debt. Owe no one anything, Paul says, except this one
thing: a debt of love.
Now, a debt is something we understand. It’s a weight, an
obligation. It’s the mortgage, the car payment, the student loan. A debt is a
record of what we lack, what we have received but have not yet fully paid for.
It comes with a due date. It requires regular payments.
And Paul says this is the primary posture of the Christian
life: to be conscious of a debt we can never quite pay off. The continuing debt
to love.
This flips our entire understanding of love on its head. We
often think of love as a feeling that comes and goes, a commodity we dispense
when we have a surplus. We love when we’re in a good mood, when the person is
lovely, when it’s convenient. But Paul reframes it as a fundamental obligation,
a holy debt incurred not to a bank, but to every single person we meet.
Why? Because love is what we owe. Why do you pay your
mortgage? Because you live in the house. Why do we owe this debt of love?
Because we live in Christ. He has loved us with a love so profound, so costly,
so complete, that the only proper response is to become conduits of that same
love to the world. His love in us creates an eternal, overflowing debt-to-love
ratio.
And how do we make payments on this debt? Paul is
practical: “The one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The
commandments… are summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as
yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling
of the law.”
The payment isn’t a grand, dramatic gesture. It’s the daily,
sometimes difficult, choice to do no wrong. It’s patience with the slow
cashier. It’s kindness to the family member who gets on your nerves. It’s a
generous word instead of a cynical one. It’s refusing to gossip, to hold a
grudge, to prioritize my comfort over your need. Every small act of integrity,
mercy, and kindness is a payment on the infinite debt of love we owe.
But Paul doesn’t stop there. He connects this debt directly
to the season of Advent. He gives us the why now?
“Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come
for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we
first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand.”
This is the alarm clock of Advent. Wake up!
Paul isn’t writing to pagans; he’s writing to believers in
Rome who have fallen asleep at their posts. They’ve grown complacent. The
initial fire of their faith has cooled into a comfortable ember. The world’s
darkness has begun to feel normal.
Sound familiar? Have we, too, grown sleepy? Have we hit the
snooze button on our faith, content with a private, comfortable spirituality
that doesn’t disturb our routines? Have we let the darkness of worry, of
cynicism, of selfishness, feel like just the way things are?
Paul shouts into our slumber: Wake Up! The
night of fear, of sin, of death—it is far gone. It is in its final hours. The
day of Christ’s final victory is dawning. And with every passing moment, we are
closer to it.
This is the genius of Advent. It’s not just about preparing
for the baby in the manger. It is about living in the urgent, hopeful light of
the returning King.
So what does a woke, awake people look like? They are people
who pay their debts. They understand that time is short, and so they love with
urgency. They know that the light is coming, so they live like children of the
light right now.
This Advent, God is calling us to a spiritual awakening, and
it starts by settling our accounts.
Perhaps our first payment this Advent is to stop and confess
the places where our love account is in default. Where we have chosen judgment
over grace, isolation over community, bitterness over forgiveness.
Perhaps our first payment is to put on the “armor of light”
that Paul mentions. That starts by stepping into the light ourselves—being
honest with God, receiving his forgiveness, and asking for a fresh infusion of
his love, because we cannot pay a debt we have not first received.
The wreath before us is a powerful symbol. That first candle
we light today is often called the Prophet’s Candle, the candle of Hope. Our
hope is not a vague wish. It is the certain promise that the night is almost
over. The Day is coming. And because that Day is coming, we can get up, rub the
sleep from our eyes, and go into our homes, our workplaces, our schools, and
make a payment on the only debt that truly matters.
Let us live this Advent wide awake, owing nothing but love
to everyone, because we are people who know that our salvation is nearer than
ever before.
Amen.
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