For the message of the cross is
foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being
saved it is the power of God. 1 Corinthians 1.18
Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the
kingdom of heaven has come near.” Matthew 4.17
Has the word
“woke” crept up on you over the last couple of years? It is has on
me. It seems quite quickly to have taken on an additional
meaning. Perhaps you are not only fully aware of this, but
already bored with it as a new piece of political jargon. Or perhaps
it has passed you by so far.
When I began
to hear people described as “woke” in this new way, I think it was obvious from
the context approximately what people were meaning by it. Not so
much waking up from sleep as becoming aware of our blind spots, particularly in
areas of discrimination.
For example,
our culture might be quite confident that we deal with people equally, but then
someone puts out a set of identical CVs for lots of jobs while quietly changing
the applicants’ names on different applications to imply a different sex or a
different racial background - and discovers that it is those who appear to be
male and white who get short-listed much more often than those who appear to be
female and black – which wakes us up to the fact that discrimination is much
more embedded in our culture than we might like to think and that we need to
take action to tackle this.
Once I have
woken up to something like this it because hard to close my eyes on it.
In fact, I
discover that using the word “woke” in this way has its origins among American
black activists becoming aware of how much they needed actively to challenge
the culture around them. So originally not actually so much people
like me becoming “woke” but people like me realising that people not like me
are newly fully alert and active in challenging the discrimination in which
they are caught up.
A strange
thing is that almost as soon as I noticed how much the word was being used in
this way, I also noticed how it was being used in a negative
manner. I came to a head when I was reading The Sun on Thursday (it had been
left out for those like me waiting in the queue to have my hair cut) and a
columnist disparagingly used the words “woke propaganda” apparently assuming
his readers would know exactly what he meant.
His main
beef appeared to be that those who are “woke” seem to be campaigning for those
in minorities in our culture and people in different parts of the world, whereas
he wanted to champion the values with which he was brought up.
Those who
think they are “woke” are simply wrong – our British culture is fine as it is,
bending over backwards to accommodate those who campaign for, let us say,
transgendered recognition is wrong, and so on.
Those who
think they are “woke” are actually naive – respecting cultural diversity could
quickly slip unthinkingly into allowing extremist opinions to become normative.
Those who
think they are “woke” are not consistent – adopting radical opinions which are
briefly fashionable rather than doing the hard self-critical
analytical work our society really needs if it is to change.
Those who
think they are “woke” are just using words – preening themselves as being newly
insightful but not actually make the changes in their own life style which
should follow from this.
So “woke” as
a positive term – newly aware of our own inner biases and the affect they have
on minorities. And “woke” as a negative term – judgmental liberalism
which can actually be quite intolerant.
Why do I
spend the first third of a sermon this Sunday going over all
that? Because it strikes me very strongly this week that these
positive and negative uses of the term “woke” provides a lens which helps me
focus freshly on the key text in the middle of today’s Gospel reading.
Jesus
finally begins his teaching ministry – we’ve spent almost the whole of the last
two months anticipating Jesus’ birth and then telling the stories which lead from
then up to this point. Now Jesus starts to minister. And
what does he do? ‘He began to proclaim “repent, for the kingdom of
heaven has come near”’.
Repent. In
English the word has probably ended up meaning particularly being really
sorry. The roots of the Greek word of the Gospel writer is meta-noia,
literally “after-mind”, which can’t be the whole meaning either, but which
sounds more like a fundamental change of attitude. The Aramaic which
Jesus spoke might have had a word which meant “turn round”.
Kingdom of
heaven, kingdom of God. Not a place, but a state of affairs in which
God reigns, God’s approach to things, is the reality. Not the rules
assumed in a worldly god-less society.
So, “repent,
for the kingdom of heaven has come near”: a fundamental change of understanding
and of heart; a reorientation around God’s ways; deep regret for having got it
so wrong for so long; a commitment to be different from here
onwards.
And it is
just here - in what Jesus will teach and in what Jesus will
do.
Wake up to
the fact that the things we value people for – being attractive or celebrated
or wealthy – isn’t how God values people.
Wake up to
the way in which any tit-for-tat, let alone any serious revenge, isn’t how
things should work, in which even paying back isn’t as normative.
Wake up the
way focussing on my own needs or the needs of my tribe isn’t the priority – one
of the first Christian communities being written to in our first reading has
already failed to spot that as its members appear to be jostling for the
superiority of the party to which each of them happens to belong.
You know
very well that we are going to spend most of the next two months being
confronted with much more than this again and again – all leading up to
watching Jesus “the servant King” sacrifice himself rather than betray any of
it.
And,
strikingly, Jesus is going to say ‘be alert’ and ‘stay awake’ quite a lot as he
does so.
But the
parallel which strikes me most isn’t just that. It is the negative
reactions which will quickly follow.
Jesus was criticised
for spending too much time with outsiders – being critical of the faults of the
culture in which he was brought up – partying with collaborators, sinners and
prostitutes.
Those who follow
this new Christian approach are simply wrong. It is actually there
at the very end of the first reading: the message of the cross, the power of
God to us, is foolishness to many. That is – people looked at the
first Christian communities and thought they were simply stupid for thinking or
trying any of this.
Those who
follow this new Christian approach are naive. Turning the other
cheek and trying out ways of forgiveness and release from debt – it will simply
result in us being taken for a ride or, worse, following Jesus’ on a “way of
the Cross”.
Those who
follow this new Christian approach are not consistent. It gets a
little uncomfortable for me here. At our worst, being judgemental
about some things other’s do while remaining quite relaxed about or even
unobservant of where one falls short of what the Gospel demand oneself;
certainly not doing the hard self-critical analytical work which is really
needed if the changes God wants are to happen to me, to the church, to society
around us.
Those who
follow this new Christian approach are just using words. This gets
very near the bone. I say that being radically newly awake to God’s
approach to human living and dying is what it is all about – but would any
examination of my priorities and lifestyle really bear this out?
Two months
ago, we began Advent creating and putting up this
banner, and praying as we lit each of our Advent candles “Now it is time to
awake out of sleep for the night is far spent and the day is at hand; now is
our salvation nearer than when we first believed; let us then cast off the
works of darkness; let us put on the armour of light; for now it is time to
awake out of sleep”.
I think we
were praying to be “woke” Christians.
Next week,
exactly forty days after Christmas, we will complete the church’s seasons of
Christmas and Epiphany, and we will finally take down the banner with its
Christmas message. We will only be a few weeks away from the
beginning of Lent – and the focus is already changing. Jesus is
beginning to spell things out again.
As today’s
second reading continued it told of four Galilean fishermen hearing and
beginning the radical change to which he calls.
Many people
will find them, and every Christian since, mistaken, naive, inconsistent, and
self-satisfied. I have to admit that they will be right often
enough.
Yet, I pray,
also always awake to new possibilities, and a totally different way of seeing
the world, all opening up in front of us, beyond anything we would have
thought. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
The picture is St James’, Cross Roads.
