Waking Up from Numbness

2026-01
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The First Sunday of Advent (Year A), November 30, 2025

Isaiah 2:1-5 ; Psalm 122 ; Romans 13:11-14 ; Matthew 24:36-44

Happy New Year! But … well, it is kind of a tough time of year. A few mornings ago I lay awake in bed knowing that it was time to get up and go to the gym. But I didn’t do that. I turned over and luxuriated for another ten minutes, and then another ten. Most of us have had the experience of not wanting to wake up. And as I lay there, very much awake but unwilling yet to move, I thought about the word “woke.”

The word “woke” has taken a beating since I first heard it nearly ten years ago. I’m referring, of course, to “woke” as an adjective, not a past-tense verb. Coming out of Black American pop culture as early as the 1930s, it meant being aware and vigilant of potential dangers in racist white America. In the mid-2010s, “Stay woke” became a rallying cry in the nascent Black Lives Matter movement.

Well, the term was effective enough that, as you all know, there was a big propagandistic backlash against it, beginning near the end of the 2010s. Those who benefit from systemic injustice would really rather we not even notice it! So if “woke” sounds like a dirty word to you, just know that this is because influential people arranged for those negative connotations. Being “woke” isn’t an ideology at all, let alone a destructive one. It simply means, “Oh, I didn’t see that problem before … but now I’m awake to it and can address it with my thirst for justice and compassion.”

As a Christian constantly steeped in the Bible, I look at the word “woke” through another lens as well. Jesus keeps urging us to stay awake, and today Paul does the same. But what if we didn’t stay awake? What is the opposite of woke? You could make a case for the unwitting sleep of ignorance, but then, there’s a difference between willful ignorance and the kind that just means you haven’t learned something yet. I think a fairer opposite of wokeness might be numbness—a passive sense that waking up would be too painful to endure, so I’ll just get back to scrolling through cat videos on my phone, thank you very much.

Well, I want to ask for your help. Will you help me not roll over and go back to sleep? Will you help me “stay woke” to the world’s injustices so that we can address them together, according to the mandates Jesus lays on us as Christians? Being a Christian means nothing if it doesn’t demand change in our lives—change that benefits more people than just ourselves.

Today is the First Sunday of Advent, the first day of a new church year, the time when once again the church begins to tell the story of Jesus. It’s a big, high-stakes story, and it unfolds week by week. So if it were up to you to tell that story, where would you begin? In Bethlehem, right?

Not so fast. If we began with Christmas, we might be able to believe it’s just a nice story about a baby being born in unusual circumstances. Like it’s something that happened once upon a time, and that the story need not affect our lives in any significant way. So much for high stakes.

That’s why we don’t start with Christmas. We start with the reason we need Christmas in the first place. In the church, we begin our story every year by saying, “There’s a bad situation here that needs to be reconciled.” We drop into the middle of the story of Jesus and hear him call to us: “Wake up!”

Sometimes I don’t mind leaping out of bed—if it’s a Saturday and I don’t have any big commitments. And I don’t mind waking up super early if I’m on my way to the airport for an exciting getaway. But Jesus is specifically urging us not to sleep in and not to try to escape. There’s something we need to face, and we can’t do it without dragging ourselves out of bed. Jesus is our alarm clock.

Wake up. Look at the world around you, and don’t look away just because it’s unsettling or even horrible. We need to engage with the world as it is. It may look hopeless. It may look beyond repair. That will make you want to run away or crawl back under the covers, but you must not do that! You are a part of the world.

We need to wake up so we can be ready to engage the world honestly and bravely. God knows perfectly well what we’re facing and will never abandon us. Better yet, as Jesus, the Christ, the second person of the Trinity, God is on the way. And God is here. And God has already come.

When you become a Christian, you have to be prepared for mysteries like that, because here we acknowledge that we’re swimming in mystery each and every day, simply by being alive. We’re not just fooling ourselves with nice stories. We gather here because we have a burning hunch that these stories will guide us into far more meaningful life. We get to decide whether to embrace and proclaim these mysteries with our eyes wide open. And we believe that if we do, the rewards will be great.

Along with that joy, though, we may also find a bite taken out of our feelings of security and contentment. This is because we have chosen not to hide ourselves away anymore. Fear not. We are not alone.

We are never alone, because first of all, we have each other. We are never alone, because all of us together, in procession, are moving inexorably toward the coming Day of the Lord. This, too, is a mystery—even Jesus claims not to know the timeline of it, and I certainly don’t know what it means. I only know that it is justice, and mercy, and fear, yes, but even getting out of bed can be fearful. This fear will give way to joy!

Twentieth-century theologian Karl Barth said that we live “between the times”—between the beginning of all things and the end of all things. To hear him talk, it sounds as if the universe is happening in one straight line. But then we come around to the beginning of another year and observe that it’s not just a line. The church has put the two ends together and found it creates a circle.

Yet every time we walk this circle and find ourselves in the same place, it’s not quite the same place. We’re different this time. We’re older, more experienced, with new skills gained in our apprenticeship to Jesus. Our procession is not just from point A to point B. We are all moving in a spiral, ever inward, ever upward.

Even so, the spiral isn’t limitless. Things do begin and end. Life is a series of closing doors. For all of us, there comes a time when it’s too late. Did you finish your paper before the due date? Did you climb Mount Rainier before your body would no longer allow it? Did you say the difficult but heartfelt thing you needed to tell someone? Did you inspire wisdom and joy in those around you?

Every day, we hear the alarm clock: “Sleepers, wake!” So get woke! Wake up and shower in remembrance of your baptism. Get dressed in your Jesus outfit and eat the breakfast of bread and fish and that Jesus serves on the beach so you’ll be well fueled for his lifelong, worldwide mission of justice and mercy. Salvation is nearer now than it was before—not only because we all have one less day remaining, but also because the Holy Spirit keeps setting us up with new opportunities to love. We can put aside the urge merely to satisfy what our bodies demand of us and get out there and share. We can make intentional connections with people we love, people we fear, people we don’t yet know or understand. We can call to Jesus, “I’m awake! I’m ready! Don’t leave me alone in the field with my everyday tasks. Take me for this greater, higher-stakes task!”

Wake up, and don’t hit the snooze button. Stay awake! Not to prevent something bad from happening to you, but so you can participate fully in something good happening to everyone. What if we woke up from numbness? All of us, together? What might the world come to look like? Could this be God’s ultimate hope—that every one of us will stream into a mysterious new Jerusalem and learn to walk the Way of Love?