Sermon 11.30.25 Waiting and Waking

Sermon Begins @ 16:42

I’m moved to preach to you this morning: Let’s stop waiting, and let’s start waking.

A few weeks ago, a man who does civil war re-enacting walked into the Second Reading Book Shop in Alton, Illinois.

Speaking to the owner, John Dunphy, who has written books on the Civil War, the man proclaimed that he wouldn’t be buying any of Dunphy’s books, because of all of the misinformation about the topic that has been going around.

Identifying himself as the descendant of a confederate soldier who “never owned a slave,” he then told Dunphy the tattered and worn story of the monster Abraham Lincoln, who wouldn’t let the states be free.

He insisted that the war was not about letting those enslaved be free.

After listening politely, Dunphy offered examples of secession declarations from various states like Mississippi and Georgia, along with the “Cornerstone Speech” given by Alexander Stephens the vice-president of the confederacy.

All of them, All, included the institutions of slavery and white supremacy, the American rapture as the main reason for secession.

The man tried to argue that secession was legal, because of states rights.

But Dunphy told him of the 1869 Supreme Court case Texas v. White, in which though the presenting question was about whether Texas’ reconstruction government was allowed to sue investors who had bought their U.S. Bonds from the secessionist government to fuel the confederate war effort, Chief Justice Salmon Chase delivered the decision that the Union was indissoluble and perpetual.

In other words, secession is illegal.

After listening to these rebuttals, the man bought a book, though not a civil war book, and left amiably.

1700 years ago, there was another civil war going on, but it was on a different continent.

The Roman Empire’s Civil War of the Tetrarchy ended at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in the year 312.

The split began as a way to deal with the Western and Eastern parts of the empire with two main leaders in each area.

By the time Constantine came along, the system involved 4 leaders, thus the designation: tetrarchy (“government of the four”)

After the decisive battle, Constantine remained the sole leader of the Roman Empire.

After consolidating his power, Constantine made Christianity legal in the empire and even looked to promote it.

But what he found among the vast diaspora of Christians in the empire, who were now coming out of hiding was that there was a type of civil war going on in the church as well.

Constantine called Christian leaders throughout his empire to meet together at the Basilica of St. Neophytus on the shore of modern day Iznik Lake-which is how Nicaea is said in Turkish-to resolve theological disputes and to unify Christianity the way he was unifying the empire.

Constantine saw a unified Christianity as a way to stabilize the empire after civil war.

This week, Pope Leo XIV and Ecumenical Patriarch of the Orthodox Churches Bartholemew met together at the ruins of the Basilica to pray together for Christian unity and to uphold the “common heritage of Christians.”

And just in case you don’t think small things matter. Pope Leo also admitted that the word filioque (“and the son” in English) in the Nicene Creed-

You know the part, “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father, and the Son…”

This, “and the Son” was the final straw in the divide between the Orthodox and Western catholic churches, when it was added to the creed during the papacy of Benedict VIII in 1014.

This week, as he travelled to Nicaea, the current pope made the astonishing declaration 1000 years into the use of the filioque that it was an addition not present in the original.

For you news chasers, who follow developments in church polity, this is a bombshell.

The point of Pope Leo’s admission is that with the world in a state of constant strife, as we look for the coming of Christ, one of the only things that can save the world from itself is a re-unified creedal Christianity that asserts a God of mercy rather than a God of vengeance.

The entire point of the creed is to establish and celebrate that rather than having an inaccessible and distant God, we have a God who is always oriented toward us, is always drawing near.

Not just “Yea, Amen, let all adore thee, high on thine eternal throne,” as we sung a few minutes ago, but also, “Lo! He comes on clouds descending:”

An Advent King!

And, Lord, do we need him.

In reading the passage from Isaiah for this morning, it struck me how much we are still in the “days to come,” how incomplete this world is.

Isaiah is looking to the future as prophets often do, and he is thinking about hope, which prophets seldom get the chance to express;

A hope for a future of Jerusalem as the city that unifies all people the way that God is unified.

Originally written to a single audience of people that would identify in some way as the House of Jacob,

Isaiah says that “all nations will stream to [the city]”

That many people would come to the mountain top and learn God’s ways.

That the people would turn their arsenal of war into the instruments of peace-time harvests.

And they, “ain’t gonna study war no more, ain’t gonna study war no more, ain’t gonna study war no more…”

Isaiah’s message about the “days to come” serve to remind us-especially in this season of our uncivil political and social skirmishes-

That those days are not here yet.

Now, usually during Advent, we talk about waiting.

This is a time of waiting and anticipation.

“Don’t get to Christmas too early, you’ll ruin the surprise,” is the tenor of many sermons around this time of year.

My message for you is: Let’s stop waiting, and let’s start waking.

There are thieves in the house, they are the evil spirits that we see taking over our souls and the souls of the people in our country and our world;

A moment where “cease fire” and “peace” are re-wired to look like aggression, subjection, insurrection, and retrogression.

In a society and world, where there is so much truth up for question,

We need unity of expression.

As someone who studies the way that culture works and how we organize our deep stories to give us a sense of identity,

What I notice most of all in the disunity of our country, is that our divide is not just political or social or cultural, it is mythical.

As with the story earlier of the civil war re-enactor, we can’t even agree on what our mythology is.

That disharmony is not accidental. It is planned, because the myths of white genocide and stolen freedom are a center of power for the thieves in the house, and they are lucrative.

Too many of us are asleep to the need for unity in a country whose name begins with united.

The story of the Nicene Creed, and of the new pope’s humility in the face of 1000 years of doctrinal and liturgical conceit are the story of a people who woke up to the importance of creed; unity of faith and expression.

The only way to solve our issues in the world and in the country is to find the common, to put on the armor of light so that the devil can’t hide in the darkness of our sleeping souls, stealing pieces of our humanity one treasure at a time.

I think we get the idea of waiting wrong too often.

In this sleepy season of shorter days, we think that to wait in patience means to stand still, or to cuddle up like a cat taking a nap.

But, waiting for Jesus is always an active thing, like when he asks his disciples to wait while he prays only to come back and find them asleep.

The truth of humanity that Jesus came to heal in us is that left to our own devices, we fall into the trap of complacency too easily.

We let thieves into the house, we accept injustice too readily, if it doesn’t affect us, or worse, if it makes us wealthier or safer or better than someone else: “at least I’m not like that tax collector.”

Staying awake doesn’t mean being hyper-vigilant, or to take on a cynical skepticism that makes you question everything anyone else does or says,

But it does mean guarding your heart from the true evil that would find its way into your very soul, if you gave into temptation.

In the letter to the Romans,

Gratifying desires is not just some salacious thing-though for Paul- it is that too-but giving into the flesh is about all the parts of you that would rebel against loving your God and your neighbor and your own soul, if given the chance.

St. Andrew’s let’s not just wait during this Advent, but let’s stay awake.

Awake to the possibility that God is still moving in this world;

That God is still protecting His saints,

That the armor of light is something that can be worn by all Christians,

If we guard our unity.

When Melanie was being ordained to the priesthood, I was sitting next to her aunt Deborah, who attends a non-liturgical church.

After we got done saying the Nicene Creed, I looked over and she was visibly crying.

I looked over to her with a concerned face,

She looked right at me and said, “It says what I’ve always believed.”

There is a power in keeping each other awake to the important things that we share.

The Nicene creed has been a piece of Christian vestment for more than 1700 years.

It’s why I try to introduce it with that context each Sunday.

It’s not just a thing to say, or a rote piece of liturgy to get through before the peace.

It is things like the creed, like our deep stories, our shared heritage that remind us in times of civil unrest that we belong to each other, because we belong to God.

There’s no time to wait, we are closer to salvation now than we were when we first came to believe.

I wonder what the world might look like if we could remove some of the weight of waiting by staying in a state of waking.

Let’s stay awake and find out.