Knowing What Time It Is

What to Remember When Waking by David Whyte and Romans 13:8-14

If you were thinking you'd get something light on Labor Day weekend, you're wrong. She was discerning whether to leave Oklahoma when her instincts, her inner voice, her heart told her to stay. She had this sense that it wasn't yet time to go, but she wasn't sure why. Being a person of deep faith, CeCe prayed hard for guidance and she trusted that in time clarity would arrive. And one day it did. She learned about a man named Julius Jones who was scheduled to be executed. And even though she didn't know him, for some reason she felt moved to do something to save his life. She posted on social media asking if anyone else had heard his story and she invited them to a meeting at a church in Tulsa. CeCe thought that if anyone would be there, it would be just a handful of her friends, but instead 25 people came, including members of Julius's family.

CeCe was not an elected official, not a trained organizer, and not in any positions of power as a black woman in OK Oklahoma. But she felt she could not simply do nothing. She believes in God and understands her faith to be something like a fuel for justice. CeCe set up a Tuesday morning meeting with a couple of others who agreed to join her in seeking guidance and praying and asking for blessings for this work.

She kept going and started learning who had the power to stop the execution. She did research and with her young children in tow, she learned as much as she could about the elected officials and anyone involved in decisions related to parole, including the governor of Oklahoma. Eventually, she would get support from other organizers and organizations, social media campaign resources, materials, people to help, and more. But she never asked for that. All of that found her because she was doing something.

The movement kept growing and later CeCe found herself in a meeting with the governor where she directly shared with him. Now CeCe has a Pentecostal background. So that might be helpful in hearing what she said to him. She said, "If you don't do something, the rain is coming." It was a spiritual statement about the kind of discomfort you learn you need in organizing that he would likely experience if he chose to do nothing if he decided to let Julius die. CeCe was speaking about how the growing movement of love would just get louder and louder and louder that it would be almost impossible for the governor to ignore.

Now Cece did not give up. She stayed faithful to her Tuesday prayer meeting with her circle. She kept going. And on November 18th, 2021, Julius Jones death sentence was commuted when Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stit Stit made the announcements just hours before Julius's execution. I met CeCe on Thursday at a dayong faith-based organizer training at the Wild Goose Festival in North Carolina.

And I felt moved to bring her story right back to you today because it's clear to me, and this is why I gave my little disclaimer from where I'm standing, we are in a very dangerous time in our country. A different kind of moment. one that is rapidly shifting towards effort to consolidate power and most urgently prevent some of us from voting.

Are you with me?

And I here's part of what I want to say plainly. Autocracy plus racism equals fascism. I know many are overwhelmed, unsure of what to do with all that is coming at us, with all that is being broken. I know many are weary and worn out from the already fraying safety nets, falling through our social contracts, our collective agreements of what we owe one another. And I am seeing that many are simply too busy, too busy working many jobs to really know what is happening. And I know many are also living in fear and have felt the need to retreat.

CeCe reminded us that leaders who govern like this encroach on our public sphere, relying on fear as a strategy, pushing people out of public spaces and into their private lives. This lessens our ability to feel hope, to organize, and to remember that we are part of something bigger. Making people afraid has already changed behavior.

Have you seen that in some parts of your life? I know I have. How many people are not saying something out of fear of being disliked? How many are not doing something for fear of losing a reputation or a relationship or a position? Fear of harm coming to us and those we love. So, this is what I want to speak to you today. Some of you have already done your time and thank you. And so this might not be the invitation for you. For you, maybe your invitation is to pray for those of us whose time it is. But for others of us, I believe now is the time to begin readying ourselves if we haven't already. Some of us need to be ready not just to be disliked for justice, but hated, maligned, mocked, arrested.

I believe whatever name we have for God, it is summoning us, reminding us that God has no hands but ours. And now is the time for more to wake up fully, completely with our bodies, our minds, and spirits. While prayer is often out of view, our faith, my friends, is meant to be public, pulling us out to heal and help. And CeCe said that our faith should never be privatized. The struggle is that often we feel challenged by the gap between knowing something is wrong and knowing what to do about it.

Are you with me?

And we have that in spades right now. But I want you to hear me say clearly today is we don't have to know all of the how. We don't have to know what to do to get louder about what is wrong.

Are you with me?

We don't need to know the five steps out to take one step toward ending suffering and bringing more justice and love. We don't have to know all the how to do something toward the dream, toward more love.

In this letter from Paul to the churches in Rome, his discourse contends that love is not merely a virtue, but rather the force, the power, the foundation underneath everything. I love that he asked, "What do we owe each other? Let no debt remain outstanding."

As one commentator wrote, Paul is saying that love, the love that is our prayers and time we invest in others wellness is something we owe each other. In the commandment here, he says in verse 9 summed up in this one commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. And he writes something similar that love is the fulfillment of the law. And that word in Greek parapatis so men I probably butchered it I don't exactly know behave it as I said earlier it's really to walk to move out in love.

So what Paul is telling us today is that it's time for more more walkouts powered by love like the students did. It's time for us I believe to bring ourselves out there in creative ways so more can wake up. What I mean is that I believe part of our role as a church right now is to keep shining light publicly, openly, however we can on street corners, newspapers, socials, with our friends on what is happening that it is immoral and undemocratic.

Each of us can claim one piece.

Each of us has a gift to offer to this moment, to this movement. It is not an accident that we are here like this.

I truly believe we are needed right now just as we are awake and out in the public. So here is what I'm wondering. Our church is already doing and doing and doing and doing. We are actively engaged in directly making the world more just in so many ways. And those of us have who have the energy, please, we got to keep doing these things. But here's what I'm wondering more specifically. Are we called to bring these things out in the public more boldly?

Because two days with experts on what is happening, it seems we need to do more to shift things. The spiritual lies underneath this need to be named. The lie that the earth is for extraction and domination that we should just sit back and allow data centers to suck energy and Yosemite to be sold off. No. The lie that not all people belong and are worthy, that we owe one another nothing, that it's fine to send people off to countries to which they have no ties.

No, these are spiritual lies. And what if our main job right now is helping more people see things clearly? What if some are so busy or overwhelmed they just don't know? And all we need is that 3%.

What if we started gathering every Friday on corners everywhere to bring out into the public the fact that we know this is wrong? One of the things we learned on the civil rights pilgrimage in 2024 was the power of faith communities to speak the truth into the spiritual lies of the time. Who can sit at the front of the bus? Whose welcome at the lunch counter? Whose vote counts? Whose voice is worthy?

The churches spoke to that and cast the vision with a moral voice. We can't do everything. But you know what? We can do that. We know how to do that. We know love how to live a vision that is both here and not yet. We know a love beyond comfort. And now we need to bring it out into the public in a bigger way.

We know how to convene people, to connect people, inspire and nourish with our songs and prayers are showing up through hard things. We remind others that they aren't alone in the struggle. What if our task right now is to bring our faith out into the public? CeCe told us that while the courage each of us individually holds is inspiring and important, it is organized courage that gets us to the change we need.

Love is the fulfillment of the whole thing and we need to live this out publicly right now. Maybe you heard the words of Cornell West "Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public."

Each of us has a gift to offer this moment. I know it. And whatever you have, my friends, it is needed. Beloved of God, what we have planned is too small for us to live the way we need to, the way we are called to for this moment. The invitation is to love our neighbor in public, maybe in ways we haven't before.

What's a first step? Should I be at Broadway and Table Mesa on Friday? Let me know. Let us organize our courage fueled by love. That is the heart of the matter. Let us bring us bring it out into the public into the public square like the kids did right here and everywhere.

What urgency calls you? You know what time it is. It is already the moment for you to wake.

May it be so. Amen.