Staying awake
Tony E Hansen
Sermon based upon Matthew 24:367-43; Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122
Opening Prayer
Happy Advent! First Sunday of Advent is typically associated with hope. (Then peace love and joy). We also enter the lectionary calendar year for Matthew.
Matthew’s Gospel offers us a fairly chilling warning, but the theme is clearly one that invokes staying awake. Why?
We don’t know the hour or the day “for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”
Are we supposed to stay up all day and night drinking every bit of caffeine to not fall asleep?
I challenge you to understand that is not what is in mind here.
For a long time, we have heard people talk about this word and idea of being “woke.”
That idea gets tossed around and bludgeoned by careless folks who don’t want to be “politically correct.” I can understand how use of different language to avoid being insensitive to people can be quite taxing. In some ways politically correct goes almost too far, but being sensitive to people should not be considered a crime or ridiculous.
George Carlin would call it euphemism, or euphemistic language, where people would change the words they used to describe something. By doing this, according to Carlin, people would be taking out the human aspects or some of the emotion that surround some terms like “shellshock” that over time turns into “post traumatic stress disorder.”
This very real condition of soldiers that changes a person due to their experiences in or near combat also applies to people who were never involved with a war but have experienced something traumatic.
The type of words can change how we feel about the condition and how someone might interpret what is happening to themselves even.
“When I see you time stands still” vs “your face could stop a clock.” The sentiment of these phrases is quite different.
Being woke has been given a bad rap and heavily politicized. Yet it is core to what Jesus says here - when hear “stay awake.”
What is it anyway?
Is it just changing the way we say things or being highly sensitive to what others say or avoiding people entirely?
No it is something entirely different than just language, although language is part of it.
There is something about what we say, the words we use, that say something about us as people and us as Christians.
If we are using hateful language, why? If you don’t want to respect someone, why? Rules don’t apply to you? How convenient. How do you want to earn respect from others? Respect and dignity are earned however easily lost when abused.
Then people will wear disrespect like a badge of honor; the so-called war on woke.
Where is the honor in belittling people and not caring for people?
Where is the justice when we let rights be ignored? Or whole swaths of the society get terrorized because they look different, speak differently, or dress differently? Where is honor in someone participating in that terrorism?
Jesus was executed because he spoke truth to power and sat with sinners from all walks of life because it isn’t just the 99 but 1 that needs to be found.
Jesus has a place for you - regardless of ethnicity or belief system.
Yes I submit this so-called war on woke is against what Jesus says here. Thus, are we against Jesus too? How Christian is that?
Being woke is not a crime and it is not weak or wrong. It is in fact what Christ calls us to be. Christ calls us to be the face of God to someone who might desperately need it - perhaps some suffering from PTSD or shellshock.
Like we read in Isaiah, Christ calls us to help the orphan, the widow - to care for people - with humility and generosity and without exception.
Christ wants us to go to worship, but do not leave the words in the books and pews. Let those lessons be manifested in our work, our words and our thoughts too.
Being woke - staying awake - then is doing what Christ teaches. Beating swords into plowshares - being the cause for peace - instead of endless and unnecessary violence.
We are not to be so concerned with piety that we forget to have humility and grace. We are generous not to expect rewards, but to give because God gives to us.
When someone is following the words of Isaiah , the words of Jesus, they are doing what Jesus teaches. They are being “woke” - they are “staying awake.” How awful is that?
If that is a crime to you, then I ask you to reread these texts a little more carefully.
Some might argue that woke causes people to pay too much to history and how people have been treated historically. Even there, recognizing that history has not always been kind helps us to conduct ourselves today. We know the price of ignorance is the cornerstone of injustice and stereotyping. It breeds fear and hate and makes grossly false claims.
Jesus wants you to believe in truth, have faith, have hope, and to love unconditionally.
You and I cannot do anything about the past, but we can be the source of love and grace today. We can be that today in our whole being and in our actions.
When we do that …when we “stay awake”
We can pray the words of Psalm 122. May they prosper who love you. Peace be within your walls and security within your towers and for the sake my relatives and friends, I say to you, Beloved, “Peace be within you.”
Thanks be to God
