But in the Summer of 1969, far from the ebb and flow of these cultural seachanges, a young doctor named Oliver Sacks was experimenting with the use of the drug L-Dopa on patients who suffered from a post-encephalitic condition known popularly as "sleeping sickness." Those with this "sleeping sickness" existed in a catatonic state. They were not comatose. They might respond to certain stimuli, but they never fully awakened. At best they were like sleepwalkers--if they walked at all. Dr. Sacks' trial use of this medication yielded such dramatic results that he wrote a book about it. His book was later dramatized in the film "Awakenings," starring Robin Williams as the doctor and Robert DeNiro as "Leonard Lowe," the first of the doctor's patients to be "awakened."

After thirty years of existing in a sleep-like state, Leonard suddenly regains his ability to walk and talk and enjoy life. In one scene in the movie, he is so excited by his new life that he calls the doctor in the middle of the night saying he must talk. The doctor comes over and Leonard says: "...sit down, sit down. We've got to tell everybody, we've, we've got to remind them, we've got to remind them how good it is."

"How good what is, Leonard?" the doctor asks. Leonard picks up a newspaper and hands it to the doctor: "Read the newspaper. See what they say, all bad, it's all bad. People have forgotten what life is all about, they've forgotten what it is to be alive, they need to be reminded, they need to be reminded about what they have and what they can lose. And what I feel is the joy of life, the gift of life, the freedom of life, the wonderment of life!"

Having been so dramatically awakened from his catatonic state, Leonard is also awakened to the fact that most people in the world are just as asleep to the joy and wonder of the world, if not more so, than he was in the deepest trance of his illness. Having been resurrected from the death of his illness, Leonard feels a passionate desire to shake the world awake as well, to call them back to life. Leonard wants to ask people, as Jesuit scholar Dean Brackley asks, "How do you want to spend your life? We all know you can ruin it. But what is more important to recognize is that you can sleep through it."

"The worst danger," Brackley claims, "is not pain or poverty. The worst danger is sleeping through the drama of life, the struggle for life and for community against the forces of death and despair." Michaela Bruzzese, reflecting on this claim, writes, "Our faith presupposes that we are an Advent people, ever alert to God's continuous attempts to be born in our lives and communities." Leonard Lowe in the movie "Awakenings," though not expressing this truth in explicitly Christian terms, lives it in expressly human terms.

So too, St. Benedict, quoting from the same passage of Paul's Epistle to the Romans as we heard this morning, writes in the Prologue to his Rule for monks:

Let us arise, then, at last, for the Scripture stirs us up, saying, "Now is the hour for us to rise from sleep." Let us open our eyes to the deifying light, let us hear with attentive ears the warning which the divine voice cries daily to us, "Today if you hear His voice, harden not your hearts." And again, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches." And what dos He say? "Come, My children, listen to Me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Run while you have the light of life, lest the darkness of death overtake you."

Today we have entered the season of Advent, of awaiting the coming of Christ, not just as the babe in a manger, but as the judge of the living and the dead, who will bring justice to a terror-stricken world. And both the letter to the Romans and the gospel according to Matthew point out the obvious fact that in order to await Christ's coming, we must stay awake.

But what does it mean for us, here, to be awake? And once we know what it means to awaken and to stay awake, how do we even know for certain that we are awake? For we probably have all had the experience of dreaming we are awake, only to awaken and find we had been dreaming.

If you're at all like me, you probably need a little help getting up in the morning. For many people nowadays that help comes in the form of an alarm clock, either with a fingernails-on-chalkboard screech, or the radio--music or a morning talk show. Perhaps you still rely on a rooster to rally you from sleep, or the cat's purr, or a dog's wet nose. Or your husband's wet nose. But whether it's a machine, or an animal, or your mother yelling at you for the third time that it's time to get up and get ready for church, we all need a little help, at least some of the time, in order to wake up and stay awake.

All these reminders of wakefulness form the necessary precondition to basic community. For without being awake, the only interaction we can hope to have with other human beings is through sleeptalking or sleepwalking, both of which happen only when we are blissfully--or nightmarishly--ignorant of what is happening all around us. A thief could be breaking into your house, but if you're merely sleepwalking, you're unlikely to dial 911. The thief will need to trip on the cat and rouse you from sleep before you're able to chase the thief away.

One could say a primary function of living in community is to nudge others awake and to be nudged awake ourselves. For instance, if you hear your neighbor snoring softly during this sermon, now would be a good time to poke 'em.

In Romans, Paul links the idea of wakefulness to love of neighbor: "for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments...are summed up in this word, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep."

It is impossible to love your neighbor while sleeping your life away. Like Leonard in "Awakenings," the more we become aware of our own tendency to sleepwalk through life, the more excited we become about lovingly waking our neighbor, not only to the joy of life already here, but also to the joy that is coming when Christ shall appear.

"Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming." Like soldiers who have "put on the armor of light" and share in the sentry duty, as a community we must be on guard, not for the threats that haunt our sleeping nightmares, but the dreams that enliven our wakeful hours.

Of course, it is not possible to be awake all of the time. In fact, I rather treasure my naps. But in community, we can take turns being wakeful for each other. For instance, how many times has it happened that in telling a story to a friend, your friend has made you aware that God was in that story? And suddenly, you are awake! More awake than you were before you told your story, for now you have been given the opportunity to remember the experience (much as we remember our calling into community in the Eucharist). In awakening and remembering, we are made watchful, aware that God could pop into our lives at any moment--in fact, that God does pop in, like a cuckoo, calling us to wake! In community, we can listen to each others' stories, and in turn tell our own. We can watch out for each other, as well as watching out for the coming of Christ.

This past week, I have been thinking about three kinds of awakenings: False awakenings, when we dream we are awake but aren't, rude awakenings, when a threat or terror makes us more aware of evil in our lives, and new awakenings, when our focus shifts from fearing the coming of pain to heralding the coming of peace.

A rude awakening, whether individual or collective, can set the stage for either a false awakening or a new awakening. Sometimes, the rude awakening that accompanies tragedy increases our appreciation for life and compels us to be reconciled with our neighbors. These are new awakenings. But just as easily, a rude awakening can lead us to lash out at the people we love, or to turn inward in fearfulness, or to grow weary of life and wary of others. These are false awakenings.

The readings this morning call us to new awakenings; they call us to expect the Prince of Peace, not the Prince of Darkness, they call us to love our neighbor, not hate our enemies. They call us to "lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light," the armor not of a warrior, but rather of a herald of peace, who runs ahead to proclaim the victory of Christ over sin and death.

Friends, let us be heralds to each other, people who shake awake the world-weary world. "Let us open our eyes to the deifying light" and "Run while [we] have the light of life, lest the darkness of death overtake [us]." Perhaps all it will take is a simple nudge from your neighbor. Perhaps you know a neighbor who could use a little nudge, a reminder to stay awake--not just during the sermon.

O.K. You can wake up now.