"Stay Woke"

Scripture:  Isaiah 2:1-5,  Psalm 122

        Romans 13:8-14,  Matthew 24:36-44  

Many of us remember the movie The Matrix, about a planet earth that has been devastated and nearly destroyed, run by machines who provide human beings with a world of fantasy while using their bodies as sources of energy.  The main character, Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, is given a choice – to take a blue pill which will return him to his world of computer-generated fantasy, or to take a red pill which will awaken him to reality.

Today is the First Sunday in Advent, and the beginning of a new liturgical year.  As often happens, the church is out of step with the world.  On one hand, the malls and radio stations are already celebrating Christmas with merchandise displays and Christmas music, while in the church we celebrate Advent – a season of waiting for the coming of the Christ Child.  On the other hand, in the church we are celebrating a new liturgical year, while on the secular calendar the new year doesn’t start for more than a month.

Another peculiarity – each  year, on the first Sunday of Advent, the Gospel reading is not about Christ’s first coming – not about the Christ child – but about the Second Coming, at the end of all things.  This reminds us that the story of Christ is not finished, that there is still much to anticipate.

Our reading picks up in the middle of an extended section of Jesus’ teaching his disciples, and his teaching is described as apocalyptic.  The word apocalyptic is commonly used to describe events that would be the end of the world as we know it – to use a quote from the movie Ghostbusters, “a disaster of biblical proportions, real wrath of God stuff….fire and brimstone coming down from the skies, rivers and seas boiling, forty years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria.”  But the word “apocalypse” really means “unveiling” – the revelation of truth to those within a community that is hidden from society at large – sort of like the red pill in the Matrix movie that would awaken Neo from fantasy to reality.  Earlier in this section of teaching, Jesus talked about societal upheavals, false prophets, persecution, suffering.  But in today’s reading Jesus talks as if, at least in for some, life would go on as always – as in the days of Noah, people eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage – and the Son of Man coming unexpectedly in the midst of it.  These people weren’t doing anything particularly bad….they were just living their lives, but they were unprepared for what was about to happen.

What are we to make of this?  On one hand, upheaval, persecution, suffering; on the other hand, life as usual.  Perhaps this has to do with peoples’ awareness, which is why Jesus used words like “keep awake” and “be ready”.  I’m reminded that in Nazi Germany, Jews, communists, gypsies, homosexuals, and others disfavored by Hitler experienced incredible and increasing persecution – and yet, for many if not most Germans, life went on much as always.   Perhaps their persecuted neighbors were being fired from their jobs, perhaps synagogues were being vandalized and destroyed, perhaps the display windows on their businesses were shattered, as on Kristalnacht, and these businesses were closed by the government, perhaps they were being arrested in the middle of the night, but this wasn’t enough to awaken the sleeping consciences of ordinary Germans, or shake ordinary Germans out of their routines.  Whatever was happening, wasn’t happening to them, and so they didn’t care.  Hitler’s propaganda slowly desensitized most of German society to the increasing persecution and suffering their neighbors were experiencing, to the point where ordinary Germans turned a blind eye as their neighbors were led off to die.  Many accepted official explanations that their neighbors were being relocated to the east, and thought no further about it; indeed, the reason we remember those Germans and others who resisted, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is that there were so few of them.  And as a reminder, from the moment Hitler took power, German law was adjusted, bit by bit, with the addition of emergency powers and such, so that all of this was legal under the German law of the time, and the police who should have been safeguarding life became accomplices in inflicting suffering and death.  And so, for some, persecution, suffering and upheaval, while for others, business as usual, life as usual. 

What is the difference between the heroes of the Resistance, such as Bonhoeffer, and the ordinary good Germans who, when asked afterward to explain how they could allow millions of their neighbors to be killed, said they were “only following orders”.  It isn’t because Bonhoeffer was ten feet tall or had superpowers; indeed, he was pudgy, had a receding hairline, wore glasses, and looked more like a stereotypical librarian than a superhero.  It wasn’t because he had any unique kind of special theological training; he underwent the same seminary program as his other classmates who would go on to support Hitler, though it must be said that he took his studies very seriously.  Rather, it was because he took his faith with utmost seriousness, indeed, so seriously that he looked at all of life through the lens of his faith - and because his life experience awakened his conscience.  That is to say, for Bonhoeffer, faith wasn’t just something set aside in a special airtight compartment labeled Sunday morning; for Bonhoeffer, faith either connected to all of life, or it was worthless.  
 Specifically, it was the year Bonhoeffer spent in America, and how he viewed that year through the lens of his faith, that awakened Bonhoeffer’s conscience.  When he graduated from seminary in Germany at age 24, by the customs of that day, he was too young to be ordained to ministry in Germany – and under Hitler, conditions in Germany were already starting to become oppressive - and so after graduation, in 1930, he went to Union Theological Seminary in New York City for additional studies.  An African-American classmate, Frank Fisher. introduced Bonhoeffer to life in Harlem, specifically the Abyssinian Baptist Church, a leading African American congregation in Harlem.  His conscience was awakened to the injustice and oppression suffered by the African Americans he met – and to the wider church’s failures to bring justice.[1]  He could no longer read Scripture from a detached, academic standpoint – the words of Christ about bringing good news to the poor, release to the captive, sight to the blind were coming to life in Bonhoeffer’s experiences in Harlem.  And Bonhoeffer’s conscience wouldn’t let him live safely in America while Hitler was clamping down in his home country. When Bonhoeffer returned to Germany, his experience of injustice in America awakened him to the injustice occurring all around him in Germany – and, being awakened, he acted, ultimately at the cost of his life.  But again, Bonhoeffer’s classmates at Union Seminary, just as Bonhoeffer’s seminary classmates in Germany, had many of these same experiences – but their consciences were asleep, and so they did nothing.

It was Bonhoeffer’s experience of seeing injustice in Harlem through the lens of his faith that awakened his conscience.  While our society has changed greatly since Bonhoeffer’s 1930 visit to America, there is still great injustice, great suffering, extremes of wealth and poverty.  We see increasing environmental damage.  In North Dakota, right now, as I’m preaching, there are hundreds of Indian tribes and their allies trying to prevent the destruction of their land and the pollution of their water, and law enforcement declaring war on them to help an oil company run a pipeline – and this is only one of many struggles. But are we awake? Are we aware?  Are our consciences awakened enough for us to be disturbed by what we see around us?  If, God help us, registries or deportations or internment comes to our neighbors, will we be aware, and will we act?  Or will we sleepwalk past the suffering of our neighbors, turning on the TV to watch the antics of “Real Housewives of New Jersey” while ignoring the suffering of the real housewives of Bridesburg, or Port Richmond, or Frankford, or Kensington, or Mayfair, or Lawncrest, flipping the channel to watch “The Walking Dead” on TV while ignoring the walking dead OD’ing in Kensington, in Camden…and out in the ‘burbs as well – or ignoring those who may come to be treated as dead men and women walking because of their race or national origin or religion or sexual identity.

The early Christians, those who heard Jesus’ message and those who followed, had a choice between listening to the familiar, comforting message of the Roman empire – Hail Caesar, Caesar is Lord, Caesar has everything under control, just pay your taxes to Caesar and obey Caesar’s laws, enjoy the bread and circuses Caesar provides for your entertainment, and leave everything else up to us - or breaking away from all of that to act on the disturbing message of Jesus.  It was the choice faced by Neo in the Matrix movie – blue pill or red pill? The same choice faced Bonhoeffer – the comforting message of culture or the disturbing message of Christ – blue pill or red pill – and the same choice faces us.

Among people of all faiths working for social justice, there’s a saying:  “Stay woke”.  Stay woke, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer became awakened during his time in Harlem.  Be aware of the suffering of our neighbors.  Don’t let the store displays and blinking lights send us off to sleep.

Yes, faith in Christ, following in the way of Jesus, will ultimately bring us to a place of great comfort – ultimate comfort even.  Jesus promised that we would have life abundantly in this world, and eternally in the world to come.  But the comfort promised by Jesus isn’t just rainbows and unicorns – isn’t fantasy, isn’t something like cotton candy that tastes good for a minute and then leaves us with a sugar crash and a headache half an hour later, isn’t a bedtime story to send us to sleep – even though religion has often been misused in that way.  Jesus isn’t calling us to go back to sleep and dream sweet dreams.  Rather, Jesus is calling us to wake up from the lies and false dreams our culture peddles to us – lies that tell us the more we have, the happier we are, lies that tell us that might makes right, lies that tell us that we can look out for ourselves without considering how we are connected to one another and to the environment, to the planet we live on.  Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel reading grab us by the shoulders and shake us and yell at us to wake up from the easy but wrong answers, the false but fleeting comfort, offered by our society, and to embrace the initially unsettling but ultimately comforting reality that comes from following in the way of Jesus, loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves – the real and lasting comfort that comes from living as we were intended to live, in relationship with God and neighbor – in the words from Isaiah that we heard earlier today,

“[T]hey shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

From our reading in Matthew: “Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming….therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”  From our reading from Romans:  “You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep.”   So yes, let’s keep awake.  “Stay woke.”  May we live as those who are fully awake and fully alive to follow where God leads.  Amen.

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer

Powerful

Scriptures:       Jeremiah 23:1-6,  Psalm 46

                        Colossians 1:11-20,  Luke 23:33-43

Today is Christ the King Sunday, or in inclusive language, Reign of Christ Sunday.   On this Sunday, the last of the liturgical year, we recognize that as Christians, Jesus Christ not only saves us but also rules over us – and, we believe, will at the end of time be recognized as the ruler of the universe. 

But the readings for this Sunday reveal a Christ as a king who doesn’t act much like our idea of a king.   On one hand, Paul in his letter to the Colossians writes, of Jesus, that all things were created in him and through him and for him; that he is before all things and that in him all things hold together.  Paul says that he is the head of the church, the firstborn from the dead, the one who is to have first place in everything, the one through whose blood on the cross all things in heaven and on earth are to be reconciled to God.   Simply put, Paul is saying that Jesus is the center of the universe, a sort of spiritual center of gravity around whom everyone and everything else revolves.  And this sits well with our notions of an all-powerful God.

On the other hand, in our reading from Luke’s gospel, we are presented the image of Jesus on the Cross, sentenced as a troublemaker and a traitor to the Roman empire, nailed to a cross outside the city wall, forgiving those who were killing him, promising one of those crucified with him a place in paradise.   Not our conventional image of royal power; indeed, it was an emissary of the Roman empire, a representative of the Roman ruler, who sentenced the ruler of the universe to death.  In the three-year cycle of readings, the gospel readings for the other two years also present unconventional images of Jesus as ruler.  In two years, we’ll read John’s account of Pilate’s interrogation of Jesus, to which Jesus responded that his kingdom is not from this world.  Next year we’ll read Matthew’s account of the ruler at the end of the age, judging the sheep and the goats on whether they helped or failed to help the least of Jesus’ sisters and brothers, telling them, however you treated them is how you treated the king.  And so our Gospel readings for this Sunday reinforce the image of Jesus as a king who acts nothing like our notion of how a king should act.

Returning to today’s readings, we’re given two wildly contrasting images of Jesus, a Jesus who is both powerless and all-powerful, a Jesus who is central to human existence in a cosmic sense, yet in his time on earth was treated as a criminal outcast.

Maybe part of why we struggle with these contrasting images is our sense of what it means to have power and to use power.   Normally, powerful people use their power to benefit themselves.  If they have financial power, they use it to get more wealth for themselves.  If they have political power, they use it to amass more power for themselves, often by stepping over those with less power.  Countries with military power, such as our own, use it to dominate countries with less military power.  In our experience, the powerful use their power to increase their own comfort and to reduce their own pain.  More than that, they distance themselves from the pain and struggle of others.  And it’s for this reason that we often think of the powerful as out of touch, whether it be a candidate for political office or a leader in industry or finance – we expect them to take care of themselves and their own kind, and abandon everyone else – unless that strategy is bad for business.  The powerful live in their gated communities and are never seen in the ‘hood – except, if they’re politicians, perhaps at election time to get votes.  And then there are those persons with personality disorders who use their power to make themselves feel better by making other people feel worse, who try to relieve their own inner pain by inflicting pain on others.  Even those powerful people who are not sociopaths often use their power to keep their opposition divided and fighting among themselves.  Divide and conquer, as the saying goes.

Consider how different – and yet how powerful – Jesus is.  Nailed to a cross, Jesus has the power to forgive the criminal next to him and welcome him to paradise.  Standing before Pilate, it is Pilate who has the power of Rome behind him, and yet Jesus knows Pilate is essentially a puppet, nothing more.   And in Matthew’s gospel, the king has power over peoples’ eternal destiny, and yet is so close to the powerless poor that anything done to them, good or bad, he treats as having been done to him.

Most powerful people use their power to avoid pain for themselves.  Jesus uses his power to rescue others, even when it brings pain or even death onto himself.  Most powerful people use their power to lift themselves up and put others down.  Jesus uses his power to lift up all of humanity and all of creation.   As Paul wrote to the early church at Philippi, concerning Jesus:

[T]hough he was in the form of God,

[Jesus] did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form, he humbled himself
   and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him
   and gave him the name that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend,
   in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:6-11)

In Colossians, Paul writes of several things that God does through Jesus.  According to Paul, God rescues us from the power of darkness.  God rescues.  We’re told that God transfers us into the kingdom of Jesus.  And as Paul writes, Jesus used his power to reconcile – our reading from Colossians says that through Jesus, God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven.  To reconcile. To bring together. To make peace where there was hostility.  To allow God and humanity and the creation to work together, where before they had been at cross-purposes. 

We live in divisive, angry times, and in days and weeks and months and years ahead, I fear we will be bombarded with examples of power used to degrade and debase others, power used to harass, to injure, even to kill.  Those in power may use their power to keep society divided against itself, labeling certain groups – Muslims, immigrants, racial minorities, LGBT persons – as unworthy of citizenship, as unworthy of protection.  As followers of Jesus, we cannot participate in this kind of power.  Those who use power in this way cannot be our heroes.  We cannot invite our children and grandchildren to imitate such persons.  Rather, we’re called to use our power as Jesus did –  to reconcile, not to alienate, to bring together, not to divide, to lift up, not to crush down, to heal, not to kill, to give life, not to destroy it, to protect the planet, not to plunder it.  And to say we are powerless is a cop-out; we all have some degree of power.  Let me say it again: every single one of us has some amount of power.  Even if we have nothing in the way of financial or political power, we have the powers of our bodies, physical and mental, we have the power of our own life experience, the power of our connections with friends and neighbors, the power of the gathered community of faith, indeed, the power with which God blesses the powerless who call on God’s name.  At Emanuel, we have our community of faith – and we also have our property, such as it is – aging, worn, but still there, still usable – and our property gives us power to help those who are vulnerable, if we choose to use it in that way. Our challenge will be to use whatever power we have wisely, creatively, generously.  We can be guided by our baptismal vows – to renounce the powers of evil and seek the freedom of life in Christ, to profess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, to be Christ’s disciple, follow in the way of our Savior, resist oppression and evil, to show love and justice, to witness to the work and word of Jesus Christ as best we’re able, and according to the grace given us, to grow in the Christian faith and to be a faithful member of the church of Jesus Christ, celebrating Christ’s presence and furthering Christ’s mission in the world.

We live in dangerous times, and these baptismal vows are not just soft words.  Living out his baptismal vows led Dietrich Bonhoeffer to his execution during the time of the Third Reich, led Archbishop Romero to his assassination, while he was celebrating Mass, in El Salvador.   Living out their baptismal vows led to multiple arrests and prison time for Dorothy Day, for the Berrigan brothers, and for others less widely known who were faithful to their vows even unto death.  If we live out our baptismal vows, truly honor them with our lives and not only with our lips, our lives may become very challenging.  We may find ourselves in danger.  But we will not face danger alone; we’re promised that God will be with us.  And our words and our actions will show the world to whom we belong, will prove to the world that indeed Christ is our King, that indeed Jesus is our Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Amen.