Wake Up!
Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44
November 28, 2010
Have you ever had the feeling that something was about to happen but you weren’t sure what it was? Weren’t even sure if it was going to be a good thing or a bad thing? Just the feeling that something was coming? Kind of like the feeling of electricity in the air when a summer storm is brewing, the air seems to come alive even as it falls strangely still. Something is in the air. Something is coming, but you don’t know what it is.
Paul’s entire correspondence – at least the letters that scholars agree Paul actually wrote – contain this feeling of anticipation, especially in passages like this one in the letter to the Romans. “You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers.”
Salvation is nearer to us now. Something is coming, but you don’t know what it is or where to look for it. Now is the time to wake up!
Having spent more than my fair share of time napping over the past week trying to beat back a cold, it’s particularly ironic to preach a sermon called, “Wake Up!”
Moreover, I’m better, I confess, at pointing out the places to avoid than the ones to seek out as you look for whatever this salvation is that is coming. You’re not going to find this salvation at the Best Buy. I promise you. It may be what you’re aiming for, but it’s not at the Target, even though you can get some bumper-sticker theology like this one I saw last week: lots of people who plan to turn to God at the 11th hour die at 10:30. That is a theology, though not one that offers much in the way of salvation – that is to say, much in the way of healing, wholeness, shalom right here, right now, near to us, where we desperately need it.
It’s not available on-line, either, not even at Christmas.com. There really is such a site. You can find everything there from pre-lit Christmas trees to Christmas traditions. I clicked on the latter and went to Christmas.shopzilla.com. True story. I searched for “Jesus” on the site and got “low prices on Jesus at Amazon.com.”
Somehow I just don’t think this is what Paul had in mind when he noted the closeness of salvation. I don’t think this is what Jesus meant when he said “the kingdom of God is near.” And if the author of Matthew could possibly have imagined our context I think he would have despaired over the possibility of anyone keeping awake through all of this.
And waking up is precisely what is so desperately needed at this historic moment. There’s a global economic crisis going on. We’re fighting two wars, and have been for the better part of a decade. We can argue about cause and effect till we’ve run out of breath for the argument, but the global climate is changing and our grandchildren, for better or for worse, will never see Disney World because it’s going to sink under the rising ocean water while we sleep. Meanwhile, we have allowed coal companies to rape mountains for a generation, scraping the tops off a thousand Appalachian peaks eons in the making. But it’s not in our backyard, so we can just roll over and go back to sleep.
Waking up is precisely what we so desperately need, but instead, we have political leaders, opinion shapers, talking heads, entertainers and all of the rest of us: sleepwalking through our own brief moment, our one small chance to make a difference – our time in history. So we get liberals triangulating themselves into thin air and blowing their chance to ban employment discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender workers because it might risk an election outcome that was inevitable anyway. We get conservatives so bent on denying the president any political victory that they’re willing to block arms control treaties begun by their sainted President Reagan. We get talking heads slamming an American-made car because it doesn’t fit their political narrative, even when it wins Motor Trend Magazine’s car of the year award. And we get the equal opportunity ignorance of on-line comments from what passes for an engaged citizenry: Pallin is an idiot; Obama is a socialist; and we’ll all get to Hitler within six comments or less no matter what the topic.
Meanwhile the Korean peninsula is on the verge of war, but all the TV news cares to show us is dressmaking for a royal wedding. Almost 15 percent of American households are “food insecure” – a wonderfully Orwellian phrase if ever there was one. It means this: 17.4 million American families face hunger as a regular part of life. And back on the news, everyone is all abuzz over Bristol Pallin dancing with the stars, at least, that is, until everyone gets all atwitter over the security theater of the TSA, happily ignoring the tens of millions of Americans who are out of work and can’t afford an airline ticket anway.
What passes for news is about the same as what passes for education, and most all of it is nothing more than infotainment designed to make good consumers of us all, and so it is no accident that every commercial is a 30-second salvation story. The closest we come to pondering infinity is in a car lot. Inspire is a perfume. Truth is a clothing line.
Meanwhile we’re all tinkering with our latest gadgets, and trying desperately to sleep through such things as reports that wi-fi signals are damaging trees; that talking on cell phones – with or without our hands – while we drive is as dangerous as driving while drunk; or that if we could put one year’s worth of thrown-away electronic gadgets into train cars the train would circle the globe. And still, I lust after the i-Phone and a new laptop.
When Karl Barth remarked that one should preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other I don’t think he had the Black Friday ad pages in mind.
And don’t even get me started on what we do in the church, on how we domesticate Jesus and reduce his radical call to love to Hallmark card sentimentalism, how we decent-and-in-order ourselves right out of inspiration, and narrow our field of vision and of mission to avoid offence to others and inconvenience to ourselves. Meanwhile the rich get richer and the poor get “we’re praying for you,” and the gap between the two grows to a gapping scar on the commonweal.
Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ. Jesus, the Christ.
Oh, yeah. That guy.
The one whose coming threatened an empire. The one whose coming again – here and now – could turn upside down the empire of anesthesia in which we all doze, and, if we let it, the empire of real violence that props up all of the rest of this litany I’ve named this morning.
To be wide awake to the coming of Christ in the midst of the empire is the greatest act of resistance to the violence of empire.
When Jesus, at the far end of his life, stood before the Roman prelate, Pontius Pilate, he said to him, “Your Roman Empire, Pilate, is based on the injustice of violence, but my divine kingdom is based on the justice of non-violence.”
Jesus would say the same thing to us, today. The empire – our empire – is based on the injustice of violence, but the kingdom of God, the commonwealth of the beloved, is based on the justice of nonviolence. If you want to be there for the coming again of Christ in the world, then go to those places where the spirit of the living God is most palpably at work: the barrios, the soup lines, the Ninth Ward, the day laborer lines, hospitals and hospices, A-SPAN, AFAC, the places of creative nonviolence and resistance. Those are the places of Advent.
This is not some “God damn America” sermon, but it is also not some “God bless America” sermon either. It is an Advent sermon, and therefore it is a “God, wake up America” sermon. Wake us up. For to sleep at such a time as this is to bless the injustice of the status quo. Wake us up now, before the hour grows too late. Grant us the clear vision to discern the reality of the present moment, before it slips away. Grant us the strength to carry on in wakefulness though the culture would lull us to sleep. Grant us the courage to change the things that should be changed, now, before it grows too late.
Besides all this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for us to wake from sleep. The night is far gone, the day is near, and salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. Something is in the air, for Christ is coming close. Wake us up to your presence, O Lord of all. Amen.
November 28, 2010
Have you ever had the feeling that something was about to happen but you weren’t sure what it was? Weren’t even sure if it was going to be a good thing or a bad thing? Just the feeling that something was coming? Kind of like the feeling of electricity in the air when a summer storm is brewing, the air seems to come alive even as it falls strangely still. Something is in the air. Something is coming, but you don’t know what it is.
Paul’s entire correspondence – at least the letters that scholars agree Paul actually wrote – contain this feeling of anticipation, especially in passages like this one in the letter to the Romans. “You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers.”
Salvation is nearer to us now. Something is coming, but you don’t know what it is or where to look for it. Now is the time to wake up!
Having spent more than my fair share of time napping over the past week trying to beat back a cold, it’s particularly ironic to preach a sermon called, “Wake Up!”
Moreover, I’m better, I confess, at pointing out the places to avoid than the ones to seek out as you look for whatever this salvation is that is coming. You’re not going to find this salvation at the Best Buy. I promise you. It may be what you’re aiming for, but it’s not at the Target, even though you can get some bumper-sticker theology like this one I saw last week: lots of people who plan to turn to God at the 11th hour die at 10:30. That is a theology, though not one that offers much in the way of salvation – that is to say, much in the way of healing, wholeness, shalom right here, right now, near to us, where we desperately need it.
It’s not available on-line, either, not even at Christmas.com. There really is such a site. You can find everything there from pre-lit Christmas trees to Christmas traditions. I clicked on the latter and went to Christmas.shopzilla.com. True story. I searched for “Jesus” on the site and got “low prices on Jesus at Amazon.com.”
Somehow I just don’t think this is what Paul had in mind when he noted the closeness of salvation. I don’t think this is what Jesus meant when he said “the kingdom of God is near.” And if the author of Matthew could possibly have imagined our context I think he would have despaired over the possibility of anyone keeping awake through all of this.
And waking up is precisely what is so desperately needed at this historic moment. There’s a global economic crisis going on. We’re fighting two wars, and have been for the better part of a decade. We can argue about cause and effect till we’ve run out of breath for the argument, but the global climate is changing and our grandchildren, for better or for worse, will never see Disney World because it’s going to sink under the rising ocean water while we sleep. Meanwhile, we have allowed coal companies to rape mountains for a generation, scraping the tops off a thousand Appalachian peaks eons in the making. But it’s not in our backyard, so we can just roll over and go back to sleep.
Waking up is precisely what we so desperately need, but instead, we have political leaders, opinion shapers, talking heads, entertainers and all of the rest of us: sleepwalking through our own brief moment, our one small chance to make a difference – our time in history. So we get liberals triangulating themselves into thin air and blowing their chance to ban employment discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender workers because it might risk an election outcome that was inevitable anyway. We get conservatives so bent on denying the president any political victory that they’re willing to block arms control treaties begun by their sainted President Reagan. We get talking heads slamming an American-made car because it doesn’t fit their political narrative, even when it wins Motor Trend Magazine’s car of the year award. And we get the equal opportunity ignorance of on-line comments from what passes for an engaged citizenry: Pallin is an idiot; Obama is a socialist; and we’ll all get to Hitler within six comments or less no matter what the topic.
Meanwhile the Korean peninsula is on the verge of war, but all the TV news cares to show us is dressmaking for a royal wedding. Almost 15 percent of American households are “food insecure” – a wonderfully Orwellian phrase if ever there was one. It means this: 17.4 million American families face hunger as a regular part of life. And back on the news, everyone is all abuzz over Bristol Pallin dancing with the stars, at least, that is, until everyone gets all atwitter over the security theater of the TSA, happily ignoring the tens of millions of Americans who are out of work and can’t afford an airline ticket anway.
What passes for news is about the same as what passes for education, and most all of it is nothing more than infotainment designed to make good consumers of us all, and so it is no accident that every commercial is a 30-second salvation story. The closest we come to pondering infinity is in a car lot. Inspire is a perfume. Truth is a clothing line.
Meanwhile we’re all tinkering with our latest gadgets, and trying desperately to sleep through such things as reports that wi-fi signals are damaging trees; that talking on cell phones – with or without our hands – while we drive is as dangerous as driving while drunk; or that if we could put one year’s worth of thrown-away electronic gadgets into train cars the train would circle the globe. And still, I lust after the i-Phone and a new laptop.
When Karl Barth remarked that one should preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other I don’t think he had the Black Friday ad pages in mind.
And don’t even get me started on what we do in the church, on how we domesticate Jesus and reduce his radical call to love to Hallmark card sentimentalism, how we decent-and-in-order ourselves right out of inspiration, and narrow our field of vision and of mission to avoid offence to others and inconvenience to ourselves. Meanwhile the rich get richer and the poor get “we’re praying for you,” and the gap between the two grows to a gapping scar on the commonweal.
Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ. Jesus, the Christ.
Oh, yeah. That guy.
The one whose coming threatened an empire. The one whose coming again – here and now – could turn upside down the empire of anesthesia in which we all doze, and, if we let it, the empire of real violence that props up all of the rest of this litany I’ve named this morning.
To be wide awake to the coming of Christ in the midst of the empire is the greatest act of resistance to the violence of empire.
When Jesus, at the far end of his life, stood before the Roman prelate, Pontius Pilate, he said to him, “Your Roman Empire, Pilate, is based on the injustice of violence, but my divine kingdom is based on the justice of non-violence.”
Jesus would say the same thing to us, today. The empire – our empire – is based on the injustice of violence, but the kingdom of God, the commonwealth of the beloved, is based on the justice of nonviolence. If you want to be there for the coming again of Christ in the world, then go to those places where the spirit of the living God is most palpably at work: the barrios, the soup lines, the Ninth Ward, the day laborer lines, hospitals and hospices, A-SPAN, AFAC, the places of creative nonviolence and resistance. Those are the places of Advent.
This is not some “God damn America” sermon, but it is also not some “God bless America” sermon either. It is an Advent sermon, and therefore it is a “God, wake up America” sermon. Wake us up. For to sleep at such a time as this is to bless the injustice of the status quo. Wake us up now, before the hour grows too late. Grant us the clear vision to discern the reality of the present moment, before it slips away. Grant us the strength to carry on in wakefulness though the culture would lull us to sleep. Grant us the courage to change the things that should be changed, now, before it grows too late.
Besides all this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for us to wake from sleep. The night is far gone, the day is near, and salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. Something is in the air, for Christ is coming close. Wake us up to your presence, O Lord of all. Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
6:25 AM
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