NRS Matthew 24
36 "But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37 For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, 39 and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. 41 Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. 42 Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. 43 But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

It's March 28, 1983, and just as you're settling in to watch some Monday Night Football, up pops this little commercial from Dunkin' Donuts.

( Run commercial: "It's Time to Make the Donuts" 0:34 )

That was Michael Vale in the character of Fred the Baker launching one of the most successful ad campaigns in the history of television. It was successful for selling lots and lots of donuts, but it was, I think, even more successful at capturing a major slice of life.

Everybody knows what it feels like when "it's time to make the donuts." Everybody knows the slog of daily routine. Everybody knows how we can get so caught up in our work, our school, our family that we don't even know whether we're coming or going, whether "it's time to make the donuts," or we've "already made the donuts." The days, weeks, and months run into each other to the point that we lose track of time. We have watches and wall calendars and g.p.s. devices, and still we find ourselves not knowing what time it is, not knowing where we are in life or where we're going. The epic poet Dante began his Divine Comedy with the words,
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
That's how 14th century Italian poetry for, "It's time to make the donuts."

It doesn't take much, and it doesn't take long, to find yourself sleep-walking through life, going through the motions, putting in the time, living in a kind of suspended animation. And that explains, I think, St. Paul's exhortation in today's Second Lesson that "now is the moment for you to wake from sleep" (Romans 13:11). Now is the moment for you to engage life. Now is the moment for you to seize the day. For now is the moment that Jesus Christ is present for you to embrace as your Lord, your King, your Light.

Ask someone how they envision time, and there's a good chance you'll hear time described time as a kind of river. It begins in some unseeable past and flows into some unknowable future. In his great hymn "O God, Our Help in Ages Past," Isaac Watt imaged time as "an ever-rolling stream" that "bears all our years away" (ELW #632, v. 5). For many other people, especially of the Buddhist persuasion, time is more like a wheel. It spins around and around and around, cycling through all the stages and ages of earth, sea, and sky, and then starts all over again. But in today's Gospel, Jesus understands time in a way that really explains the urgency in St. Paul's command to wake from sleep.

Remember how your geometry teacher defined a straight line? That's right; it's the shortest distance between two points. So taking his cue from the prophets before him, Jesus understands time as a straight line, with an absolute beginning and an absolute end. And here's one point where the Big Bang theory and the Book of Genesis agree: that the universe as we know it had an absolute beginning beyond which we cannot see, know, or look. Likewise, in the tradition of the prophets, Jesus also teaches that time will come to an absolute and decisive end. But by end, Jesus doesn't mean that the universe will suddenly go poof and creation will be no more. Rather, Jesus means that God will bring all time to a once and for all culmination. In dramatic terms, we might say that God is directing time to a big finish, a finale in which God will tie up all of history's loose ends and bring creation's story to one, great climactic conclusion.

The kicker is that no one knows when God is going to draw the curtain on time as we know it. Jesus says that he doesn't know; the angels in heaven don't know; only the Father knows and he's not telling. So the only responsible way to live, says Jesus, is alive and awake to the possibility that this could be the day. This could be the Day of the Lord. This could be the time that ends all time. This could be the moment that the clouds are rolled back like a scroll and the trumpet sounds and the Lord descends. Or in other words, there is no dead time. There is no time without meaning or significance. On the contrary, every second, every minute of time is invested with supreme meaning and ultimate significance, because this could be the day.

But because we don't know for sure when God's great day will arrive, we have to work to stay awake and alert to the possibility each day holds. Really, there's so much in life that puts us to sleep, that deadens our hearts and dulls our minds. And quite frankly, there's so much in life that we'd prefer to sleep through that we sedate ourselves, and not just with drugs and alcohol. I hear people complain all the time about how busy they are, but I know from my own life that busy-ness is one way we can insulate ourselves from life and live in our own little time bubbles, detached and unaware of what's really going on around us, in a "forest dark." And of course, there are terrible consequences to living your life in that kind of fog.

The first, and possibly worst, is that you would miss the great, glorious end that God is bringing to creation. I mean, you wouldn't go to a movie and right at the very end, when the mystery is about to be revealed, head to the concession stand for more popcorn. You want to see, you want to know, you want to be there at the big finish. So how terrible would it be for the Day of the Lord to come while your head is in the sand? And second, when the Son of Man arrives at that unexpected hour, don't you want the Lord to find you doing the things he set you here to do in the first place? Do you really want to explain to God how you slept your way through life? Or how you wasted vast stretches of your short life's span in things that God could care less about? And in Jesus, of course, we see exactly what God cares about and what God will bring to completion at the end of time: love, compassion, forgiveness, peace, justice, when "nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore" (Isaiah 2:5).

Day after day after day, the world drones on, "It's time to make the donuts." But even amid the world's droning, in every moment of every day, the Word of God stirs us to the assurance that now is "the moment for you to wake from sleep."

In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.