"Wakey, Wakey"

Rev. Matthew Miller

FROM THE GOSPELS Matthew 24:36-44 click here to watch the sermon "Wakey ,wakey"

Every year in late September or early October, the Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska sponsors what it calls Fat Bear Week. It’s a tournament that allows folks to vote online for their favorite fat bear. Some of the largest brown bears in the world (otherwise known as Gizzlies), make their home near the Brooks River in the park. And each fall they camp out along the bank of the river for the salmon run to fatten up before they hibernate for the winter. Because during hibernation these bears don’t eat or drink  at all and usually lose up to a third of their body weight. Hibernation can last anywhere from five to eight months, which means by now, many of those fattened bears have retired to their dens until Spring.  That is the way of things. As winter approaches, the daylight recedes, the temperatures drop and life goes still and dormant. 

The other night I was awakened from a deep sleep by a phone call from one of our kids. They were getting home late and the door was locked. They had forgotten their key. It took me a second to register what was happening. I felt like I’d been asleep for hours, but in truth it hadn’t been that long at all. Looking at the sleep data from my watch, I realized that the deepest sleep happens within the first few hours of the night. It can be pretty jarring to be woken up like that when you’re dead asleep whether you’re a person, or a bear. 

Almost as jarring as coming to church on this Sunday after Thanksgiving, hot on the heels of Black Friday with a month filled with parties, gifts, shopping, lights, cards, and other assorted holiday events barreling straight at us, our bellies still full from feasting and we just want to drift off to visions of sugarplums dancing in our heads, only to met by these words of Jesus that wake us with a start. It can be a little disorienting. Out there it’s Christmastime, I mean Santa arrived at the end of the Macy’s parade and everything. But in here it is the first Sunday in Advent and the contrast could not be clearer.  

While it may bear the name of Christ, the feasting traditions around the on-set of winter go back much farther than the name we’ve attached to them. When the newly imperialized church gained sanction and standing within the fourth-century Roman world of Emperor Constantine, the seasonal celebrations of Saturnalia and Kalends got re-branded for the sake of Christendom. But in truth, the celebration of Christ’s birth that we associate with Christmas would have been completely unfamiliar to the faithful of the first, second, and third centuries. They were far more interested in the second coming of Christ than the first. If what Christmas is really supposed to be about is the birth narrative that Charlie Brown’s friend Linus recites from Luke’s gospel. What Advent is really about isn’t a chocolate calendar countdown to a babe in a manger, but these words of warning from Jesus about the arrival of something akin to a thief in the night. 

I know. I get it. We would much rather hear the sweet lullaby to a baby that sends us off for a long winter’s nap. What we get instead are words about a day and an hour that no one can see coming. What we get instead is a wake-up call. I can’t count the number of times I told myself as a child that I would stay up on Christmas Eve to see Santa break into our house, only to fall asleep. But then the stakes of this wake-up call that Jesus issues are a little more high stake. What’s breaking into our lives isn’t always a bag full of gifts. In fact, if anything, it promises to take something from us, re-arrange the furniture, and turn our lives completely upside down. No wonder we prefer lights and greens and making merry. No wonder we prefer Jesus when he’s a helpless baby who can’t yet say of word of this to us. Because I’m not sure I want things to come to an end. I’m not sure that I’m all that keen on being awakened from my slumber and a dream world of no consequence.  

Because make no mistake, these words of Jesus come not at the beginning of his life, but at the end. He is already in Jerusalem. Events have been set in motion that will not be stopped. Maybe Jesus can feel it. Maybe he knows what’s coming. Not the details, perhaps, not the names of the friends who will betray him, deny him, and abandon him. But he knows that something like the end is coming. Something that will change everything. 

And that’s just it. The changes that come without warning, the things that take us by surprise and send our lives in a whole new direction, they are as unpredictable as the wind that blows one way and then another; the wind that can send ships around the world and power windmills, and the wind that can transform into a funnel that tears up the landscape and blows down houses. Now some folks remain vigilant to change because it feels like the end of the world. It’s no coincidence that the rise of rapture theology and the wish to be taken into the clouds away from a violent and corrupt world came as the industrial revolution of the 19^th century upended everything. It’s no surprise that the breakneck speed of the digital revolution has people praying and preparing for that same rapture. Change is scary. Change, and war, and disease absolutely disrupt everything familiar and feel like the end of the world. Whenever I think of this, I find myself humming that old R.E.M. song to myself. It’s the end of the world as we know it/ and I feel fine. Because that’s just it isn’t it. It isn’t the end of the world. It’s the end of the world as we know it. The world as we’ve known it is always changing, always shifting. Not just in the pace of technology. Babies grow into toddlers, who become schoolchildren, who grow into teenagers, who eventually (I’m told) leave home. Bodies that were once healthy and strong age and weaken. Minds that were sharp suddenly can’t remember like they used to. Careers change, or are retired. That’s just in our lives. In the world around us the shifts can be profound like they were for largely agrarian societies that became industrialized. Lately, the systemic injustices that have persisted for centuries due to patriarchy and racism have begun to change and be challenged. In African American communities the watchword for paying attention to the deeply etched and often unconscious bias that continues to be experienced by non-white people in this country was to “stay woke.”  Eventually, the word woke found its way into mainstream use by those working to eliminate historic inequities, working to understand the concealed histories of oppression that excluded whole groups of people, working for the kind of biblical justice that the prophets spoke about. Like liberality before it, which comes from the word liberate, meaning to set free; woke has been turned by those who oppose its goals into a kind of slur said with a sneer. That’s seems strange seeing as how Jesus tells his disciples here at the end of the line to stay awake, stay woke to the disruptive movement of the Spirit who is always in pursuit of God’s justice that brings the world as we know it to an end, that righteousness might have a new beginning. Contrary to internet memes stating otherwise the new pope, Leo XIV, did not say, “to be called woke in a world that sleeps through injustice is no insult.” It nevertheless remains true. Jesus calls us to stay awake. Stay awake to the power of God as it breaks into our world, stay awake as it rearranges the furniture, and upends every practice in which power is pursued at the expense of those who have no say because they have been silenced and given no voice in the matter. Stay awake to the judgment of God that prefers mercy to sacrifice and reconciliation over retribution. Stay awake to a season of anticipation that looks for something so much more meaningful than holiday festivities to come into the world.  

Advent is an invitation to redirect our attention over the coming four weeks. That doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t enjoy the joy of gathering with friends, or walking along the River of Lights, or giving gifts to our friends and families as well as to those in need. But it does offer us some protection from the relentless barrage that would have all of that become the only thing we are looking for. Advent is about hoping for something more. We hope for something that only God can bring into the world through the Spirit of Christ that continues to come to us, disrupt our lives, and offer us the wake up call we need. Waking up to injustice and the need to speak out. Waking up to the plight of the stranger in our midst. Waking up to the love of God in Jesus Christ that brings an end to the world as we’ve known it and makes all things new. That would feel more than fine to me.