But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into.
What would you do if someone broke into your home? I often fantasize about the heroics I would perform to protect my family. I could really care less about the stuff. It's their safety that haunts me in those checkered visions.
This weird story from Matthew, often interpreted as an end of days reckoning, has been used to scare us for centuries. Are you taken or left behind? Awake or asleep?
It's downright abusive how this chapter in Matthew has been used to browbeat communities and instill fear in our hearts.
And, it's so, so wrong. I should never be able to write the words abusive, browbeat, and instill fear in the same sentence where I refer to scripture.
Yet, here we are. Those of us who want our faith to be about compassion and justice, about centering the margins and welcoming the stranger, about hope and possibility, have fallen asleep.
Christian nationalism, the thief of our time, has stolen what is good, what is loving, what is hopeful about our faith and life together.
It's time to wake up. Enough is enough.
At end of this first week of Advent -- a time of anticipation, hope, and possibility -- how might you commit to being awake today? What does that look like in your imagination?
(During Advent we'll be doing things a little differently. Our frames will be provided by five members of the leadership team at Juniper Formation. Learn more here.)
--Jason Whitehead
Want to make your commitment to doing things differently stick?
Share it with someone.