"Woke Spirituality"
Romans 13:11-14 and Matthew 24:36-44
Rev. Dr. Bruce Epperly, Westmoreland UCC
Nov. 30, 2025
On the morning of October 22, 1844, thousands of New Englanders gathered on hilltops to await the coming of Jesus. As followers of William Miller, one of the forerunners of the Seventh Day Adventist church, they believed that Daniel 8 clearly revealed that on October 22, they would be lifted to the heavens to meet the Lord. Hours ticked by and no Jesus, and by midnight many returned home, struggling with what has been called the Great Disappointment.
A 125 years later, I hitchhiked up to San Francisco with my friends Glenn and Al to a Grateful Dead concert in Golden Gate Park. We came upon a concert: although they weren’t the Dead, the music was good, and although the words were drowned out by the screeching of psychedelic guitars, we got into the groove. Until the music stopped and the MC announced, “It’s time for rapture practice. Jesus is coming soon, and we want to be ready. Lift your hands and shout ‘Maranatha.’” We knew that we were in the wrong Love-In for sure!
As a cradle Baptist, I grew up with awareness that a good sermon had at least two movements in its exposition of the scriptures. The first was presenting the bad news. In our case, as Baptists, it was the depth of sin and human depravity, how on our own, we are lost, hell-bound and can’t do anything about it. The second movement was the good news that in Christ, God provided the way to salvation, and in accepting that good news, “with our sins are forgiven, we were bound for heaven.”
On this First Sunday in Advent, I will follow that old Baptist style, immortalized by the Hebraic prophets, John the Baptist, and Revival preachers. In this Advent time of expectation, a season in which Christians throughout the ages have dreamed of a new heaven and earth in which the lion and the lamb lie down together and nations study war no more, I’m beginning with the bad news of false announcements of the Second Coming of Jesus and then will provide the good news of Jesus’ Millisecond Coming that changes everything for us and the world.
All Second Coming preaching has one thing in common: it’s always mistaken in terms of calculating the hour and day. Jesus warns us about this: no one knows the hour, not even Jesus, the Savior warns. False prophesies have made the Second Coming a source of humor in my theological circles, as a friend reminded me the other day, “Bruce, did you know that we’ve missed the return of Jesus twice two since October 5. I think we’ve been left behind.” Moreover, Second Coming theology creates and in-group and out-group, the saved and the unsaved, the loved and the rejected, contrary to Jesus’ radical hospitality, and God’s ultimate plan to save creation in its totality. Third, focusing on the Second Coming turns us from earth to heaven, and suggests that social responsibility and the quest for justice is unimportant to God and shouldn’t be central to our own faith. Years ago, in the Reagan days, Secretary of the Interior James Watt, asserted that “we don’t need to preserve national park lands, and we can lease them despite environmental concerns, because Jesus is coming soon.” Of course, unsaid by Secretary Watt, was that in the meantime, while we’re waiting for Jesus, why not make as much money as possible drilling for oil and mining for minerals?
In contrast to world denying visions of the Second Coming, the prophetic ministry of Isaiah and Amos, Micah and Hosea, and the faith that Jesus affirmed, focused on the price of wheat, the economic status of vulnerable people, justice to the poor, and the well-being of future generations. Feeding a child, welcoming a stranger, healing a body, and closing the gap between rich and poor were acts that touched God’s heart far more than doctrinal purity or separation of the clean from the unclean. God’s realm is here, and we need to heal this earth and not wait for another to come. What we do while we wait depends on what we’re waiting for!
Now here’s good news: There is an open future for us and our planet – a future that we shape by our commitments - just as there’s good news in an Empty Tomb on Easter morning. God’s salvation is nearer than we think! Even though, we can’t calculate the signs of the times, we can rest assured that God is at work in our lives and the world and we need to awaken to God’s vision right where we are. We need to wake up, get out of our spiritual slumbers, and put on the garments of Christ: compassion, integrity, generosity, and hospitality. God is near and God is here, and what we do while we wait, depends on what we’re waiting for!
Paul and Jesus were clear that some persons are waiting for the wrong things. Persons and nations live under judgment: we are imperfect children of imperfect parents, and there are times that we turn away from God’s vision of Shalom “on earth as it is in heaven.” If we want to use old school language, let’s just call this sin!
Yes, there’s plenty of sin to go around: as the comic strip Pogo said of the Vietnam War, “we have met the enemy, and it is us.” The Good News is that sin has no final power over us. We are not victims of our sins or the sins of our families or national leaders. We can, by God’s grace, wake up, challenge the chaotic and materialistic spirit of our culture and our national leaders, and see God’s light coming on the horizon. For now is the day of salvation.
We don’t need to wait for a false Second Coming, constantly recalculated and updated. God’s salvation is right here. As Jesus says, the Realm of God is among us, and as the old translations affirmed the Realm of God is within you. We don’t have to wait for God’s Advent or the Incarnation of Christ in the world, it’s already here. That’s the meaning of woke spirituality in a world in which many of our companions, including our national leaders, often prefer slumber and ignorance over the truth of God’s Realm of Shalom being born in our midst.
Now, I am a cradle evangelical, and I know there is a wisdom in Billy Graham’s Altar Call question, “Where would you be if on the way home you died in a car crash?” When the question was posed at a Billy Graham crusade I attended as a nine-year-old, it was aimed at sinners in the hands of an angry and judgmental God, and our choice would lead to heaven or hell.
In contrast to Billy Graham, I believe we are sinners in the hands of a Loving God. I believe the question is much more important than a binary saved and unsaved world view. With Jesus and Paul, I believe that each moment is important. In each moment, God calls to us – softly and tenderly and sometimes loudly and insistently – wake up. Be woke! Move from the shadows of fear, anxiety, hate, inhospitality, domination, and exceptionalism to God’s realm where lion and lamb, child and snake, friend and foe sit down together in laughter, play, justice, and Shalom.
One of my favorite plays is Thorton Wilder’s “Our Town.” Young Emily dies giving birth to her second child and now dwells with other spirits in the Grover’s Corner cemetery. She yearns to go back to one day of her lifetime, a happy day, her twelfth birthday. Her wish is granted, and she returns to embodied life. But she quickly retreats to the cemetery with a lament: "It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another…all that was going on, and we never noticed" My friends, as the mystics say, when we wake up to tragic beauty of our lives and our vocation as Gd’s companions in healing the world, we discover we are already in heaven.
The day of salvation is near, and the day healing is here. This is the day that God has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it. Don’t cling to darkness. Be woke to beauty, love, compassion, and justice ...
I believe in the Millisecond Coming of Jesus. I believe that in each moment of our lives, we live in a heavenly environment, that’s what Omnipresence means, God is present in all things working for salvation, from Bad Bunny to Donald Trump, from endangered beastie the Pangolin to a child at play, from a traumatized undocumented worker to a troubled billionaire for whom nothing is ever enough.
You may have heard me tell the story from Jim Wallis at Sojourners. A woman at the soup kitchen greets all the tired, unhoused, smelly, and sometimes grumpy people coming down the line with a smile and a good word. When Wallis asked her how she can be so happy in her greeting of these vulnerable and unhoused people, she responded, “One day, Jesus is coming down the line, and I want to treat him real good.” Isn’t that what it means to be woke? To live in light of Jesus’ Millisecond coming. To rejoice in each precious second, and to live out our unique gifts, to know that each moment shares in God's Eternity. That Jesus is meeting us in every encounter.
Now is the day of salvation. Not in some earth destroying spectacle. But, in loving your children and grandchildren, enjoying a snack after church, volunteering at the soup kitchen or Wheaton Woods, protesting injustice. God is here: speaking to us each moment, “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for." Salvation is nearer than you think. Put on the clothing of Jesus. For this the day that God has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.
From Romans 13:11-14, you know what time it is, how it is already the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone; the day is near. Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us walk decently as in the day ... let us put on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.
