In looking back through my unfinished blog posts from the past few months, I found this sermon I preached during advent, but failed to post at that time. It draws on the lectionary texts and the advent theme of waiting to see what God will do, but it also takes inspiration from the rising voices of young people who are no longer waiting for their elders to do the work needed to reverse the tide of injustice sweeping our neighborhoods, transferring of money from the mass of poor and middle classes to the 1%, destroying the lives of minorities through mass incarceration and shoot-first interdiction, and rising up in resentment against a perceived loss of power and privilege in white communities. The twitter label #StayWokeAdvent got me thinking, and the Prophet Zephaniah provided the inspiration for my reflections.
Zephaniah 3:14-20
Zephaniah 3:14-20
3:14 Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O
Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!
3:15 The LORD has taken away the judgments
against you, he has turned away your enemies. The king of Israel, the LORD, is
in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more.
3:16 On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem:
Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak.
3:17 The LORD, your God, is in your midst, a
warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will
renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing
3:18 as on a day of festival. I will remove
disaster from you, so that you will not bear reproach for it.
3:19 I will deal with all your oppressors at that
time. And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their
shame into praise and renown in all the earth.
3:20 At that time I will bring you home, at the
time when I gather you; for I will make you renowned and praised among all the
peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the
LORD.
Luke 3:7-18
3:7 John said to the crowds that came out to be
baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the
wrath to come?
3:8 Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not
begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you,
God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.
3:9 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the
trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and
thrown into the fire."
3:10 And the crowds asked him, "What then
should we do?"
3:11 In reply he said to them, "Whoever has
two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do
likewise."
3:12 Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and
they asked him, "Teacher, what should we do?"
3:13 He said to them, "Collect no more than
the amount prescribed for you."
3:14 Soldiers also asked him, "And we, what
should we do?" He said to them, "Do not extort money from anyone by
threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages."
3:15 As the people were filled with expectation,
and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be
the Messiah,
3:16 John answered all of them by saying, "I
baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not
worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy
Spirit and fire.
3:17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear
his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he
will burn with unquenchable fire."
3:18 So, with many other exhortations, he
proclaimed the good news to the people.
While
We Wait for God, How Shall We Wait?
Stay Woke
in Advent
I’m an old
dog that sometimes has to learn new tricks. I had to learn to teach courses online, even though no one
ever taught me that way. I had to
get used to carrying a phone around with me and to type out text messages if I
wanted to have a chance to communicate with my grown children. And earlier this year, I had to figure
out how to tweet on twitter. I
have to believe I’m not the only one in here today who uses twitter.
I might
still not be a twitter user had it not been for a push from my dean at Shaw
University Divinity School. I
don’t mean that he said, “Mike, go forth and tweet!” But he did urge me to find a way to quickly publish a sermon
that I had preached in chapel. Not
sure where to turn, I decided to check out twitter. I already have a place online for writing. That’s called a “blog,” and you all
have heard of that. Around a
hundred people in various parts of the U.S., and a few in Europe and China read
the things I post there. And then
there is facebook, something David told me about when he was a first-year
student up at Oberlin College in Ohio, back in 2004. Some people follow what I post there, too. So I thought maybe I could expand my
reach in twitter. It’s not such a
fast process to add new followers on twitter. After several months, I have only a few more than 50 people
checking out what I say there. But
all in all, it did give me another audience, if not exactly as many as Dean
Forbes was intending.
Part of
twitter communication is something called “hashtags.” That means you put one of those “pound” or “tic-tac-toe”
looking symbols in front of a word or phrase. Then if other people use the same phrase or word, twitter
organizes all of those similar comments together. This week, a popular hashtag has been #StayMadAbby. It refers to a college applicant from
Texas named Abigail, who got upset when some minority students got admitted to
the University of Texas and she did not.
Her complaint became a lawsuit, and the lawsuit went before the Supreme
Court this week. Many minority
college graduates have been posting pictures of themselves in graduation robes,
posting lists of their degrees and schools. Then they add #StayMadAbby to emphasize that nothing is
going to stand in the way of African Americans, Latinos, and others who are
striving to get an education and make something of their lives. If it makes her mad to see minority
students getting opportunities, she is just going to have to stay mad.
Another
hashtag you are familiar with is the slogan #BlackLivesMatter. This phrase got started through the
organizing work of three young women who responded to the murder of Michael
Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, by organizing people to call for police
accountability. These young women,
some of whom were seminary students at the time, used twitter to help build
connections with like-minded people around their region and around the
country. Those relationships and
the expanding network have become very important as we have become more and
more aware of the widespread violence done against young black men and women,
treating them as if their lives don’t matter at all.
One more
hashtag I need to mention appeared as the Christian year began a couple of
weeks ago. It says
#StayWokeAdvent. This phrase calls
on church people who are journeying through the season of advent to keep our
eyes open, to keep our hearts sensitive, to keep our priorities straight, in
short, to Stay Woke, as we live our faith in this season of longing for the
fullness of God revealed in the teen mother Mary, in the refugee family moving
from temporary Bethlehem home to temporary Egyptian home, in the vulnerable
baby Jesus born among straw and dung in the barn, in the sojourning community
of God’s people never quite at home in this world.
The
examples I’ve given from hashtag phrases on twitter are each reminders of the
way that powers and structures of domination are always nearby, waiting around
the corner, plotting in back rooms and board rooms, in order to continue to
keep power and prosperity in the hands of a few at the expense of the
many. One spotlights the elite
class attacking systems designed to provide educational opportunity to those
who have historically faced barriers and deprivation. Another cries out against the
disturbingly callous act of leaving an unarmed young man in the middle of the
road to bleed and die after a well-trained officer of the law, claiming to fear
the face of a demon on an 18-year-old scared kid, took away that life. And #StayWokeAdvent holds up for all to
see that in the season in which we live, there is a collision between the
Christian tradition of hope and love and a world seemingly controlled by fear,
hatred, prejudice, bigotry, and violence.
Losing ourselves in a seasonal binge of overconsumption and
overspending, of empty platitudes and shallow optimism, is the opposite of
living in faith and hope.
Pretending for a few weeks that we can buy whatever we want, that we
will all magically get along, that we can make reality out of nostalgia for a
time when we were oblivious to the pain and struggle of life—these get us
nowhere but farther from the God on whom we must depend. Losing our focus, pretending—we can’t
afford these ways. We must be
awake, alert, ready for what may strike.
Stay Woke in Advent!
The
lectionary takes us to the Prophet Zephaniah this week. I have to say that I don’t think I’ve
preached from Zephaniah ever. With
some of the better known prophets, I can remember when and where they did their
work and what their primary message is. I could not remember anything about Zephaniah. Put that kind of obscure text in front
of an ornery professor, and you know I’m going to take the challenge to preach
on Prophet Zephaniah. So I had to
dig out some reference works.
It seems
that Zephaniah probably came along after Isaiah and Amos, and maybe a little
before Jeremiah. We recognize all their names, and some of us remember
when and where they prophesied. In
that time frame, Zephaniah would have come along some time after King
Hezekiah’s reign when Assyria had besieged the city of Jerusalem, causing much
adversity to the people. But God
delivered Jerusalem from the Assyrians through the mighty arm and outstretched
hand, and not by the military power of the armies of Judah.
King
Hezekiah’s son, Manasseh, reigned many years, gaining the reputation as one of
the most evil kings of Judah.
After Hezekiah’s death, it seems that Manasseh aligned Judah with the
imperial power of Assyria, cooperating with the empire in exchange for creating
trading relationships. Olive oil
and other products of Judah’s agriculture became cash commodities and brought
wealth into the land. That might
sound like an era of prosperity that would benefit everyone, but more likely
King Manasseh cut special deals with his cronies, and a rich aristocracy became
richer while the masses of the people lost their land, sold themselves into
servitude, and struggled to meet daily needs.
All the while, Manasseh supported those who wanted
to bring the worship of Ba’al and many other gods back to the Temple, and set
up altars on hillsides all over the land.
The Bible even accuses him of practicing human sacrifice in the ways of
the nations. When supporters of Manasseh’s
father’s views tried to stand up to the king, he persecuted them. He got the reputation as the king that
killed the prophets. Some believe
he even killed the persistent and outspoken Prophet Isaiah.
Zephaniah
was probably directly aware of this history. The book places him also during the reign of Josiah, during
a time when Josiah’s sons were already becoming young men. King Josiah is probably the most virtuous
and most praised of the Kings after David, and he is not known for the same
kinds of great moral failures we know from David’s reign. Then again, much less is written about
any king besides David. Josiah
restored the study and observance of the Torah, the gift of law and life that
God had given to the children of Israel.
He restored pure and holy worship of the one true God of Moses and
Zipporah, of Abraham and Sarah, the God who had called their ancestors and had
brought them out of the land of Egypt.
Zephaniah
knew how this had happened, how Judah’s leaders had by ebb and flow showed
loyalty to the Lord and had turned away from the ways of the Lord. His prophecies give the impression that
he sees that even with Josiah’s reforms, not every part of society, not
everyone in power, has embraced Josiah’s agenda. Even Josiah’s sons seem drawn away from their father’s
strong commitment to faith in the Lord.
The Kingdom of Judah had not yet faced its final destruction at the
hands of Babylon. But Zephaniah
was clearly able to see the possibility that judgment might not be far
away. In a time when social
divisions, class unrest, and cultural conflict remained ever-present and
potential flash points, Zephaniah had a message to deliver.
Zephaniah
did not beat around the bush. He
did not sugar coat his words. Zeph
didn’t warm up slowly. He did not
tell a long story about twitter and hashtags to set things up. He cut to the chase. He went straight to the heart of
it. He left no prisoners. How did Zephaniah’s prophecy
begin? He speaks the message of
the Lord in these words,
“I will utterly sweep away
everything from the face of the earth.”
Well,
there’s not much left to say after that.
God is so sick of the corrupt, unjust, violent ways of the nations of
the world, it’s going to be like the story of Noah. Everything will be swept away. Words like that will wake you up. #StayWokeAdvent.
Probably
too often we find ourselves listening to preaching or Bible study with some
expectation that what is going to be said is what we already know and have
heard time and time again. We
think we have a pretty good idea of anything God might want to tell us. We could just about doze off and not
miss it since we’ve heard it all before.
God loves us. Love
God. Love your neighbor. Repent of sins. Don’t kill. Praise God.
Share your stuff. Yada yada
yada. But then, just before
dozing, along comes Zephaniah saying, “All of it is going away. Everything. The cities, the palaces, the temple, the houses, the jobs,
the fields, the trees, the roads, the streams, the dogs, the cattle—everything.
That will
wake you up. “Wait a minute,
Zephaniah. What did you say? Did you say what I think you said? That’s not what Brother Teacher told us
last week. That’s not what the Rev
preached about on Sunday. Can you
run that by me again?”
In the
season of advent, do we expect to hear a word from God? Do we expect that we are having the
same advent observance we have every year and that all of it will be identical
to last time? Do we ever think
that God might plan to overthrow everything we thought we knew in order to shed
new light on the Scriptures for such a time as this? Could it be we keep giving the same answers when the
questions have changed? Do new
times bring new questions for our faith?
Does the Holy Spirit bring new life even in our time? Are the mercies of the Lord really new
every morning?
Yet when young people come to us with their honest
questions, how often are we tempted to tell them not to question what they have
been told? Do we discount their
questions because we have become comfortable with our own faith and don’t want
the Holy Spirit to rock the boat in our lives? I can’t count how many seminary students who arrived at
school dealing with years of guilt from being rebuked about the questions that
rise up within them. Too often,
their elders and fellow-church members treated the Spirit’s stirring in them as
a sign of unfaithfulness. They are
amazed to be told that God is bigger than their questions and can handle any
question they have. Is this the
message of hope we are prepared to give young people in our church?
I was
blessed to hear Rev. William Barber recently, discussing the story of Jesus’
going into the temple and shutting down the shopping mall that had come to
dominate the temple court. He
called it a den of thieves. If it
had been an honest and proper market giving people fair value for their money,
then he probably would have called it something besides a den of thieves. Commerce and consumption had taken over
the center of worship, and it was commerce of the worst kind that took
advantage of poor and weary travelers, overcharging and otherwise practicing
injustice. If merchants kept
animals for sale in the temple, the house of worship had become a public dung
heap. Jesus saw it all for what it
really was—abusive, corrupt, unjust economic exploitation that was perpetrated
by the powerful, the religious leaders, the high council. Those who should look out for the good
of the people were using their positions to victimize the people.
So Jesus
shut it all down. He turned over
tables. He twisted some cords and
chased the animals out. He
disrupted and overthrew the systems of corruption and abuse and stepped into
that space to reorder it around justice.
This was no respectability politics. Jesus did not pull aside the head man in charge for a
private and discreet conversation.
He did not set up a series of meetings to discuss possible best
practices for the use of the temple court. No, that’s not what he did. He swept it all way.
He cleaned up the place and straightened out the right use of that space
for anyone listening or watching him.
He blessed the poor and marginalized, healing blind and lame people,
freeing them to see, to walk, and to run.
Jesus was sweeping away the old and bringing in the new.
What Rev.
Barber points out is a detail of the story that appears only in the Gospel of
Matthew. All the accounts of the
story note that when Jesus did these and other things, the crowds in Jerusalem
were amazed and astounded and mesmerized.
Mark’s and Luke’s gospels say the people were spellbound. As you might imagine, the chief priests
and scribes, the people in charge of the temple and of life in Jerusalem
generally, were angry. Their
constant stream of revenue had been interrupted. Their mechanism to take money from the poor and give it to
the rich was being threatened.
They got especially mad about one thing that happened.
Barber
points out that after Jesus challenged corruption and took on injustice, and
only after, did the young people start to pay attention. Young people had likely been going
along with the festivities. They
were used to seeing the religion of their parents and neighbors. They also knew their parents and their
neighbors well enough to have doubts about whether all this religious talk was
real. Their eyes and ears were
pretty good hypocrisy detectors, and they were hanging off to the side, waiting
to decide whether they should jump in the flow of things or maybe just toss it
all out.
But when
these young people saw Jesus align his preaching directly with his actions,
they joined in. When they saw him
actually challenge and battle injustice and corruption and not just give
speeches and strike a pose as a defender of justice, their personal faith was
activated. They started crying
out, “Hosannah, to the Son of David.”
They may even have been singing a familiar psalm of worship. This integrity of talk and walk was
what they had been waiting for. Now
they had hope that he could save their lives and their world from the evil so deeply
embedded in them.
Some people
fear that our children have left the faith. They think the young people have given up on God. But more careful study is showing us
that young people are drifting out of our churches not because they are losing
faith in God, but because they are losing faith in existing churches’ ability
to stand up to injustices in the world.
Churches have become bastions of respectability. They are fortresses to keep out the
riffraff while those inside congratulate ourselves for being such upstanding
citizens. Young people “ain’t got
time for that.” Ain’t nobody got
time for that. It’s time to be awake
to the world in which God is active and powerful. We need to stay woke, because Jesus is steadily standing at
the doors of the churches, knocking, asking to be let in, while we continue in
our same old way, never realizing Jesus is outside trying to get in and we are
inside ignoring the people outside the door.
Out in the streets, young people are challenging
injustices with all the vigor and passion of youth. And Jesus is also in the streets. Don’t you think Jesus would have us join him in the
streets? Don’t you think the
struggle to end police killing of unarmed black men and women could use the
experience of elders alongside the energy of young people? Isn’t there a way for the bold words of
youth to and the wisdom of age to teach one another a thing or two? Or will we stay inside because we think
we don’t need what those outside have to offer us?
Too often we
think we have everything we need already.
Zephaniah spoke about people like that. He said that among the comfortable and the powerful there
are many who are self-satisfied.
They are sure they can thank themselves for all the good things they
have in their lives. He says that
they sit on top of their piles of stuff and say, “God is not going to do
anything good for us, and God is not going to do us any harm.” In other words, they count on
themselves, not on God. They don’t
look for God to be in their world.
They take God to be irrelevant.
Everything comes back to their own actions.
But Zephaniah says they have it all wrong. They may build fancy houses for
themselves, but they will not get to live in them. Instead, the Day of the Lord is coming. In the tradition of Amos, Zephaniah
says that we ought not expect that the coming of the Lord will leave things as
they are. The Day of the Lord will
shake us up; it will shake things up.
So we had better stay woke.
We had better be ready rather than ruling God out of our lives.
The New Testament lesson for this third Sunday in
Advent tells about the work of John the Baptist, whose preaching woke many from
their sleep. He told them that
“the axe is at the root.” God was
ready to dig up the whole plant, all the way down to the root, to cut it off
below ground and leave no evidence on the surface that anything had been there
at all. Like Zephaniah, John
discerned that God means to go to any length to get the world right.
Zephaniah said that after God swept away everything,
there would be a new beginning.
After wild animals and birds had become the only occupants left where
once great cities and civilizations had stood, then God would send in a remnant
of the people. Where devastation
has brought down the wealthy, the powerful, and the haughty, God would send in
the lame, the outcast, the ones who had been shamed by the world.
Zephaniah said that all the leaders had failed their
purpose. The officials and rulers
had failed to establish and maintain a just, peaceful world for people to live
in. They must be swept away. The judges had failed to uphold the law
and make sure that everyone is treated according to justice. They must be swept away. The prophets had spun tales and
preached sermons to support the status quo and gain favor with the wealthy and
powerful. They must be swept
away. The priests had sustained
religious practices built on injustice and oppression, offering only empty hope
to the masses. They must be swept
away.
Yet Zephaniah could see that the same God who swept
away oppression would reposition the weak and powerless into a place of praise
and renown. God will gather
them. They will not make it all
happen. They who had lost all hope
were not sure whether they should hope at all. But Zephaniah proclaims above all the despair and
uncertainty that God will do it. Won’t
God do it? God will do it. All that we have dared to dream or hope for, all the justice
and peacefulness and joy that we have waited for—God will do it.
That’s something to stay woke for. In this advent season of awaiting the
birth of Jesus, how shall we wait?
Mary waited through an unexpected pregnancy, through all the bodily
struggles of pregnancy, all its uncertainties, all its dangers, for what she
could only hope against hope to be true.
Joseph waited in his confusion and shame that he had been the greatest
fool in the world to marry this pregnant girl. The shepherds waited out in the fields, doing the dirty work
of the world, wondering if and when their time would ever come.
And in our day we wait for the time when the love of
learning and longing of every soul to achieve matters as much as the anger of
the privileged, a time when everyone can gain access to education at any
level. We wait for the time when
people in authority won’t shoot first and tell lies later, when black lives
matter equally. We wait for the
time when violence toward any is understood as violence against all. We wait for a time when politicians
cannot build a following through stoking the fires of fear and hatred toward
people whose skin or religion is different from our own. We wait for the time that a
preacher cannot get cheers and applause for telling his congregation to get a
gun and be ready to kill the enemy of the moment. We wait for a time when the refugee, the homeless, the
jobless, the orphan, the hungry, the weak, when every one of God’s children has
a place of honor, love, and safety in this world.
If we wait carelessly, sleepily, and without
expectation, we may miss it when God shows up. While we wait, we must wait as awake people. We need our eyes wide open. We need to stay woke. God is moving here and now. If I don’t receive the refugee while I
wait, how will I recognize God’s showing up in the life of a refugee family trying
to save the life of their baby? If
I don’t get into the streets with young people crying out for justice, how will
I know when the King of Heaven goes walking down those streets and alleys to
lift up the lowly and outcast. If
I am not where Jesus is walking, how will I hear the call to follow him?
I must be awake, ready, anticipating the mighty work
of God. When John preached, people
from all walks of life came out to hear and listen. They were shaken by his message. Awakened, they asked him what they should do. In all cases, he pointed them toward a
life of justice. He told them to
wake up to justice in living with their neighbors. He told them to stay ready to do the right thing. He told them to trust in God and not in
the ways they could game the system in their own favor. And the Gospel of Luke says that even
though he told them they had to change their ways, they heard the good news in that message.
God has a better way for you and for me. We are waiting for it, and we can’t
afford to sleep through it’s coming.
We don’t know just when God will sweep away the structures of injustice,
but God will do it. We don’t know
what the means will be, but God will do it. We want to be about the right work when it happens. When a new heaven and a new earth start
to appear, we need to be in God’s vicinity. We need to be awake doing the work God has given us. While we wait, we need to stay woke. Let’s do this together. Let’s stay woke in advent. Let’s stay woke, because God will do
it. Amen.
Maybe you are here today and realize you have never
awakened to God’s call to unite your life to God’s way. You have not taken your first step to
follow Jesus. God is present here
in this place, with us, ready to embrace you will the deep love that only can
come from the one who made you for love.
If you need to wake up to God’s calling and purpose for your life today,
the doors of the church are open.
We join with God ready to receive you into the reconciling power of God
in Jesus Christ. Come today and
profess your desire and commitment to stay woke to God in your life.
Maybe someone here today finds yourself drifting
along half asleep as the world passes by.
Maybe your hope and trust in God have faded over time because of the
cares of the world. Just as Israel
waited through oppression in Egypt and through exile in Babylon, we wait this
season for the God who liberates the oppressed and feeds the hungry. If you are in Durham but not part of a
congregation, know that God has called this gathering of pilgrims together in
this corner of our city to be a people of love and care for one another and for
our neighborhood. If the Holy
Spirit is prodding you to be part of our striving for faithfulness, there is no
better time than now to unite your life to ours as we try to stay woke for what
God will do.
As we stand together, as the musicians lead, let
this be the day we commit to stay woke in advent and walk in readiness for what
God will do.
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