Stay Woke
Last weekend we pointed the car north, and drove the three hours to Seattle. We had a lovely time as a family. We were unashamed tourists for the weekend. Normally I’m gathered with all of you on Sunday mornings, but last week we were taking pictures under a bridge with the Fremont Troll. We took our time exploring the Fremont neighborhood before the looming Monday responsibilities pulled us south again.
I’ve only ever done the drive to and from Seattle two other times before this latest trip. I’m still getting familiar with the Washington towns that the I-5 interstage slices through. Just outside the town of Chehalis, by exit 72 is what I now know is an infamous billboard dubbed “The Uncle Sam Billboard.” A cartoonish painting of Uncle Sam occupies the far side of the billboard. The rest of the sign is made up of interchangeable big bold black letters.
For the last 50 years the billboard has displayed archconservative messages to an average of 50,000 motorist every day. Over the 50 years messages have attacked welfare funding, the LGBTQ+ community, Mexican immigrants, and most recently vaccine mandates. For motorists traveling north, the current message reads, “My body, my choice, no forced vaccinations.” As we barreled south I was able to read the other side of the billboard. I can’t quite recall the exact wording, but it went something like this, “If your worship becomes woke, better walk.”
The word “woke” was added to the dictionary in 2017, but may not be familiar to everyone. The dictionary definition for woke is, “well-informed, up-to-date. Now chiefly: alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice.” The African American novelist William Melvin Kelley is considered the first to use the term as we now it today back in the 60’s writing, “If you’re woke, you dig it.” Modern day musicians like Childish Gambino have worked the phrase “stay woke” into his music, who borrowed the phrase from Marcus Garvey who wrote this line in his poem Garvey Lives! “I been sleeping all my life. And now that Mr. Garvey done woke me up, I’m gon stay woke.”
After the murder of Trayvon Martin in 2012, the hashtag “stay woke” was used to bring awareness to the black lives matter movement. But the word “woke” has also been pounced upon by conservatives, critiquing “woke culture.”
When I read the south-facing side of the Uncle Sam billboard it was the first time I had seen the critique of woke culture mixed in with the Church. The sign’s message is a precaution to churchgoers that if your congregation makes conscious choices to address racial and social discrimination, it is time for you to get up and walk out.
I thought my time hanging out with a troll ended on Sunday morning once we left the Fremont bridge, but it is clear that the Uncle Sam billboard and those who put those messages on there are using a physical space much like Facebook trolls use digital space. It is provocative, and well, it provoked me because, well, I couldn’t disagree with that messaging more.
During my first few years of college, many of you know that I began deconstructing almost all elements of the faith in which I was raised. And while there is always the threat of deconstructing to the point of complete loss of faith, my faith began to be re-constructed before I reached that point. Two big things happened between the years 2005 and 2007. One was a 4-month sojourn to the Cascade Siskyou mountains for what ended up being a full immersion into contemplative Christianity, but the other was the discovery of a rowdy group of Christians that called themselves the New Monastics.
I want to read an excerpt from the website of one of the founding institutions of the New Monasticism called The Simple Way, “In 1995, dozens of homeless families had moved into an abandoned Catholic Church building in North Philadelphia. They were told by the Archdiocese that they had 48 hours to move out, or they could be arrested. With nowhere to go, these courageous mothers and children hung a banner on the front of the building that said, “How can we worship a homeless man on Sunday, and ignore one on Monday.” The families held their own press conference and announced that they had talked with the real “Owner” of the building (the Lord Almighty!) - and God said they could stay until they found somewhere else to go.”
This movement in North Philadelphia is what sparked the New Monastic movement, “A few years after the takeover of the church ended — in January 1998 — some of the students who had been a part of that movement pooled their money together and bought 3234 Potter Street. They took an old shoe repair store and made it their home. Before long they grew into other abandoned houses on the block.
Since that experience in 1995, we have been inspired by the early church in the book of Acts, where the Bible says the early Christians shared all their possessions in common, gave freely to those in need, and met in each other’s homes for worship. The Gospel was lived out of dinner tables and living rooms. And now — after two decades — an intentional community has turned into a little village of neighbors sharing life and working together.”
Many of those founding students were alumni of the very school where my own faith was being deconstructed and reconstructed. And their story became the raw materials of my rebuilt faith. I saw in this new expression of Christianity hope, imagination, and a clear purpose and direction for my own understanding of God and the work we are can be invited into.
In short. I discovered an expression of Christianity that seemed to actually care about people, not just about whether or not they could get them to into Heaven, and had it not been the one-two combination of New Monasticism blended with the ancient traditions of contemplative Christianity, I wouldn’t be standing here today.
When I see a billboard admonishing being woke, I also see a billboard praising and upholding an expression of Christianity that has been sustained under the sins of white supremacy, and the doctrine of discovery. I see a form of Christianity that has been intentionally lulled to sleep by those in power. What would happen if American Christians were awakened from this sleep, and actually started organizing, dreaming, and creating the alternative reality of compassionate love and care for our neighbors, as modeled by Jesus Christ himself? Well, in that case, being woke sure is threatening to an institution that has thrived on sleeping people.
And I think this is where I feel the most worked up. Is it no wonder that the American Church is on a steep decline of relevance? As we continue to scratch our heads at the missing numbers of young people, how many faith leaders have wondered if maybe it is because of our sleepy congregations? I continued to pursue the call into ministry because I want to be a part of an awakening.
On Monday, some folks from West Hills Friends met with Friends from Multnomah Monthly Meeting to continue our journey through the police abolition curriculum. On this day we gathered to learn about the purpose of policing and to start wondering about alternatives to the way we currently use police in this country. At the end of the call a Friend from Eugene Friends, David Zeiss joined us to talk about his work in founding a program in Eugene called CAHOOTS. Because of this program, when you call 911 in Eugene the dispatcher will ask you not just if you need police, fire, or ambulance, but now if you need a responder to a mental health crisis.
David spoke about how his work on CAHOOTS sprang forth from his Quakerism, and can I tell you that I left that meeting on Monday tingling with excitement. David Zeiss, seeing the way his faith was awakening him the brutality our Friends facing mental health crises were being treated and killed by police officers, created something that did not exist. A person of faith acting and moving to save peoples lives, and to meet people in a crisis with the profound and life changing compassion instead of violence.
That is what an awake Christianity can do. In Matthew 24 we have the mysterious story told about the Son of Man coming at an unexpected hour, and I couldn’t help but think about verse 42, which in the NRSV says, “Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” Maybe we can go ahead and substitute keep aware for stay woke. These verses were always used to scare us into behaving as teenagers. We were afraid Jesus would come back and catch us smoking cigarettes or watching a rated R movie or something.
But what if Matthew 24 is a plea for us to remember that Jesus left us with a life changing vision for radical compassion for our neighbors, and a warning about sleeping on that vision. What if this is an invite for us to stay woke, to stay in the flow of imagination, to not sit back and wait for some miraculous Heaven cure all for human suffering after we die, but to be actively creating the miraculous, absurd, Heaven reality here and now.
Let’s stay woke.
cover image: Photo by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash