"Jesus Was Woke", May 11, 2025

 

Jesus Was Woke
By Rev. Jamie Green Klopotoski
Based on John 4: 1-42
May 11, 2025
First Baptist Church of Gloucester

 

The inspiration for today’s sermon comes from words I heard spoken by the President of the United States on March 4, 2025. During his joint address to congress, he said, “Our country will be woke no longer. We’re getting wokeness out of our schools and out of our military. Wokeness is trouble.  Wokeness is bad.”

 

It’s hard to describe how I felt after I heard those words.

 

Numb might be the most accurate.

 

Shocked… but not really, because words like these from his mouth no longer shock me. 

 

Disgusted, upset, sad. Yes, but no. Something else.

 

I wanted to start this sermon with how those words made me feel. I sat and stared at my blank computer screen with its blinking cursor waiting for me to type my next words, to finish my sentence, to describe why the President’s words stung so badly, but my fingers froze on the keyboard. I had no words.

 

And then I read an essay by someone I grew up with in my home town of Beloit, Wisconsin. His name is Tom Johnson. What he wrote really spoke to me and to my experiences both past and present. It helped articulate what it was that I was feeling. I could have written each and every single one of his words, they so accurately describe me. So these next few paragraphs are his words, only slightly edited by me for clarity.

 

“Time to come clean. I was completely radicalized, awakened even, by the ever so sinister network known as… PBS. The Public Broadcasting Service. Like a lot of kids in my generation, I wasn’t just dropped in front of the TV. I wanted it. I sought it out. Especially the shows that helped me read, count, wonder, and explore. But more than that, the ones that helped me understand life.

 

On these shows, we saw people who didn’t look like us. We saw stories about difference. Stories about disability, empathy, curiosity. We watched how crayons were made. We saw instruments come to life. We listened to quiet but powerful talks about grief, mail carriers, race, kindness. Mr. Rogers didn’t just entertain us. He taught us how to care.

 

Watching PBS get attacked now feels completely backward. People who used to preach kindness now mock kids who look or move or speak in ways they don’t understand. The same people who once said compassion mattered now lean into cruelty to score points or hold power.

 

PBS and Fred Rogers showed us a world that wasn’t scrubbed clean. It was wildly human. We learned [to treat people with] dignity. [We learned how to respond to] everyday challenges with honesty and kindness. We saw inclusion not as some agenda but as part of life. Love and understanding weren’t bonus points. They were the whole point.

 

So when I see people trying to rip all that down, [pejoratively] calling it “woke,” I’m past frustrated. What they’re really afraid of is care. What they push away is compassion. What they hate is education. They don’t want kids learning about others. They want to wall them off from truth. I mean, look around the country and tell me there aren’t efforts to suppress the things we know are true about our own, complicated history.

 

I’m proud to be radicalized [by PBS]. Proud to be shaped [by Sesame Street and Reading Rainbow]. Proud that Fred Rogers’ voice still echoes in my mind.”

 

 

I have to thank Tom for finding the words I was looking for to describe my feelings. What is happening now in our country feels completely backward and I am past frustrated.

 

Woke is not bad. Woke is what I was brought up to be. Woke is not only awareness, but care and compassion.

 

 

 

I agree with Tom that PBS programming was foundational for my own wokeness, but something else influenced me much much more. My church. The bible. Jesus. In addition to PBS, I was radicalized by Jesus. Because Jesus was woke.

 

First, let’s get on the same page about the term “woke”.

 

What does WOKE mean?

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “woke” as being aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social injustice). Oxford Languages defines woke as being “alert to and concerned about social injustice and discrimination.” If that doesn’t’ describe Jesus, I don’t know what does.

 

Where did “WOKE” come from?

One of the earliest audio recordings of the phrase “stay woke” comes from the spoken afterward of a 1938 protest song called "Scottsboro Boys" by African American folk and blues singer Huddie William Ledbetter (also known by the stage name Lead Belly). The song tells the story of nine Black teenagers falsely accused of abusing two white women in Alabama in 1931. After the song, Lead Belly speaks words of warning to his black listeners to be aware of racial violence and injustice in the South. He said: "So I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there—best stay woke, keep their eyes open.”

 

In the years since, “woke” has continued to be used by African Americans to get people to be aware of social injustices.

 

In 1965, during his commencement address at Oberlin College, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “There is nothing more tragic than to sleep through a revolution. … The great challenge facing every individual graduating today is to remain awake.” In other words…. Stay woke.

 

 

 

 

In 2014, woke gained popularity at the start of the Black Lives Matter movement. The many protests that year spotlighted the social injustices faced by the Black community following the fatal shootings of innocent black men: Trayvon Martin in Florida, Michael Brown in Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York.

 

Dr. Elaine Richardson, professor of African American literature at Ohio State University, states that the term woke, “comes out of the experience of Black people knowing that you have to be conscious of the politics of race, class, gender, and systemic racism, and [be aware of all the] ways that society is stratified and not equal.”

 

Can you see how Jesus fits the description of being woke?

 

Not only was Jesus conscious of the politics of race, class, gender, and systemic racism and aware of all the ways that society is stratified and not equal, he spent his life trying to do something about it.

 

The Gospel record is filled with accounts in which Jesus challenged the imaginations of his listeners with an invitation to the wokeness of the diversity, equity, and inclusion of the Kingdom of God. Jesus preached that the kingdom of God is not limited to those who look, think, talk, feel, and act like us. He preached that the kingdom included all people: Jews, Gentiles, Romans, Syrians, Greeks, Samaritans, sinners, saints, men, women, children, people with disabilities, people of all ages, classes, backgrounds, social statuses and belief systems.

 

And Jesus practiced what he preached. Jesus drank wine with sinners, ate dinner with tax collectors, healed unclean lepers, touched the untouchable, invited poor people to banquets, welcomed the little children, fed the hungry, and spoke up for the most vulnerable members of society.

 

Especially as this is Mother’s Day, I want to remind you of Jesus’ extraordinarily woke actions towards women.  He spoke with women, showed them respect, chose them to be the first people he revealed himself to on Easter morning, invited them to follow him, and gave them leadership roles in the early church.

The story of the Samarian Woman at the Well is just one of many examples of Jesus being woke in his ministry.

 

To fully understand the significance of this story, here is some background:

 

The Samaritan woman lived during a time of intense social and religious tensions between Jews and Samaritans. Jews considered Samaritans "half-breeds", unclean, heretics, second class citizens, outsiders. Jews often avoided travel through Samaria, and always avoided contact with Samaritans.

 

The Samaritan woman also lived during a time of intense patriarchy. Men were generally not supposed to speak to women, especially those they didn't know well, especially those outside of their own religious group, especially in public.

 

But Jesus chose to travel through Samaria, a deliberate act of defiance against the prevailing social norms of the time. But even more radically, while in Samaria he chose to initiate a conversation (the longest of Jesus’ conversations recorded in the bible) with someone who ought to have been avoided at all costs- a person who lacked power and wealth, a person who faced social stigma due to multiple marriages, a person who was both a woman AND a Samaritan.

 

By asking the Samaritan woman for a drink at Jacob’s well, Jesus was breaking racial, social, religious, class, and gender barriers. Jesus was woke.

 

Perhaps the most woke thing Jesus ever said was “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” He said it summed up the entire law and prophets. It was Jesus’ highest ethic – the Golden Rule.

 

A few weeks ago I was driving through Topsfield and I saw a yard sign that said Follow the Golden Rule (and it had a little asterisk). At the bottom of the sign, the asterisk was explained: some exceptions apply.

 

NO. No no no no no. There are no exceptions. I am past frustrated that something as simple as the golden rule can be so wrongly misunderstood. Jesus loves all people. No exceptions. Thus, we are to love all people. No exceptions.

It is Good News that Jesus is woke, that Jesus is awake to systemic injustice, that Jesus preached and practiced a radical message of love, forgiveness, and justice, that Jesus is attentive to and caring about the needs of the marginalized in our society, that Jesus wants all of us, everyone, to flourish. And Jesus calls to be woke, too, to be loving, and forgiving, and attentive to the needs of others.

 

There is a quote going around social media attributed to the new pope, Leo the Fourteenth:  “To be woke is not a threat. It is a calling.”

 

I couldn’t find confirmation that he actually said that, but based on other things he has said and done, it is not totally out of the realm of possibility that he at least believes in that sentiment. I certainly do.

 

To be called woke in a world that sleeps through suffering is no insult. It is Gospel. Woke means awakened by compassion. Guided by truth. Humbled by grace. Committed to justice – not just for some, but for all. We will build the kingdom not with walls but with love. So be awake. Be loving. Be woke.  No asterisk. No exceptions.  Amen.

 

 

Works Cited:

https://www.vox.com/culture/21437879/stay-woke-wokeness-history-origin-evolution-controversy

 

Essay by Tom Johnson, facebook post May 9, 2025