Remain Awake

Year A - The Great Vigil of Easter, April 9, 2023

Remain Awake

Last Sunday, Palm Sunday, we began worship at the Chapel door and hoofed it up Capitol Street to the Belltower doors, waving palms chanting “Blessed be the one who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest,” making a spectacle.

Why would a proper Episcopal Cathedral do such a thing? To emulate the walk Jesus and his disciples planned into Jerusalem. A march of civil disobedience that would say to the Roman Empire, “This is what a King in Jerusalem looks like!” a humble Messiah, riding a donkey, accompanied by a joyful crowd.

That march set Jesus on the inevitable path to the cross. Resisting the empire ideology of hate and fear, Jesus held the powerful accountable to the common good and challenged comfortable citizens to act for those who suffer. Jesus of Nazareth and his followers, like the Hebrew prophets before them, and our modern martyrs, gave their lives to God’s vision of a cosmos marked by peace and joy for all Creation.

In last Sunday’s sermon, I asked you to draw a line from Christ’s life to our world today and look for Christ-like leaders. Consider…

Who are you following and where are they headed?

This week we walked the Via Dolorosa, the Way of Sorrow, Christ’s Passion. The lectionary guided us here for weeks through the Gospel according to John. We met Jesus in the middle of the night with Nicodemus.

We drank water from the well with the Samaritan Woman as Jesus told us all we had done.
We sat with the man born blind, a beggar, until Jesus opened our eyes.
We wept with him beside the sisters in Bethany at the tomb of Lazarus
and witnessed our brothers’ rescue from the grave.
We knelt at the foot of his crucifixion and held his grieving mother.

Today it is the empty tomb we read about: dawn on the third day, with Mary Magdalene we feel the earthquake, see the stone rolled away, witness the angel, and, with ecstasy, embrace our Savior on the way to the other disciples.

Having made this journey in worship together, we are now sent as followers of the Jesus Movement on another way. It is not a path of sorrow, it is not a campaign of vengeance, it is not the bramble-filled trail of hate and fear.

We are sent on the Way of Love: a way demanding greater strength, more courage, and deeper devotion than walk we would make on our own.

In the Way of Love Christ commands us to love one another, to find a friend in every neighbor, and even to tend our enemies. We are sent to change the flow of history from sin and evil to redemption and reconciliation.

What is the first step? As The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached 55 years ago, the first step is “Remaining awake through a great revolution.”

He went on, “One of the great liabilities of life is that all too many people find themselves living amid a great period of social change, and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes, the new mental responses that the new situation demands and they end up sleeping through a revolution.”

The paradigm yearned for 55 years ago is the same we need today: a world in which being human is our common bond and the full-spectrum of diversity is celebrated.

A world that aligns with God’s economy, Christ’s community, and embraces the peace of the Holy Spirit.

In five decades, we have advanced equity and peace only a few steps. That short progress is on unstable ground today. Awaken for this Christ’s revolution.

To be awake, we must remove our blinders and dismantle myths that keep us separate. Explore how our status quo keeps our neighbors in a cycle of poverty. Examine what erodes our own physical, mental, and spiritual health. Be curious about injustice. There are church workshops on dismantling racism and addressing sexism. Our friends at Tri-Faith Community hold events correcting antisemitism and Islamophobia. If ‘isms are too abstract, lean in to all the ways we can protect children from poor health, trauma, and violence of all kinds. You don’t need a rally or a protest sign to walk with Jesus.

You must, however, remain awake and set your feet every day on the Way of Love. Amen.

Dean Vanessa Clark+