Remain Awake

We honor Dr. King today with a call to Minneapolis

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Transcript

Sermons from 

Mission Hills UCC

San Diego, California

Rev. Dr. David Bahr

david.bahr@missionhillsucc.org

January 18, 2026

“Remain Awake”

Romans 13: 11-12 – The Message

But make sure that you don’t get so absorbed and exhausted in taking care of all your day-by-day obligations that you lose track of the time and doze off, oblivious to God. The night is about over, dawn is about to break. Be up and awake to what God is doing!

To hear in Dr. King’s voice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-_qDtKgLD4 

"One day we will have to stand before the God of history and we will talk in terms of things we've done. Yes, we will be able to say we built gargantuan bridges to span the seas, we built gigantic buildings to kiss the skies. Yes, we made our submarines to penetrate oceanic depths. We brought into being many other things with our scientific and technological power. It seems that I can hear the God of history saying: 'That was not enough! But I was hungry, and ye fed me not. I was naked, and ye clothed me not. I was devoid of a decent sanitary house to live in, and ye provided no shelter for me. And consequently, you cannot enter the kingdom of greatness. If ye do it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye do it unto me.' That's the question facing America today."

In the Book of Romans, the Apostle Paul is writing to a small, Christian community living inside the Roman Empire, in what we now call Europe. These are not powerful people. They’re anxious, ordinary folks trying to live faithful lives under an empire that demands loyalty and offers little in return.

They’re raising families, tending to daily responsibilities, and trying to survive in a system they did not choose and cannot control. They are tired and overwhelmed. And Paul does not warn them about laziness. He names a deeper danger.

“Make sure that you don’t get so absorbed and exhausted that you lose track of the time and doze off… Be up and awake to what God is doing.”

He’s reminding them that exhaustion and numbness is how people miss the dawn. So he tells them to stay awake.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reached for the same image in a sermon he preached at the Washington National Cathedral in 1968. To the church gathered for worship, he reminded them of the story of Rip Van Winkle. 

You may recall that Rip Van Winkle lived in a small colonial village near the Catskill Mountains. One afternoon he walked into the hills, sat down, and fell asleep. He slept for twenty years.

When he woke up, he returned to the village and found that the buildings looked familiar, but he didn’t recognize the people and they didn’t recognize him.  They spoke in a different manner and their concerns were different from what he remembered.

Rip noticed a sign hanging outside the village inn. Before he fell asleep, the sign had displayed the image of King George III. Now it was George Washington.  Imagine his confusion.

During the years Rip slept, the American colonies had broken free from British rule and a new nation had been formed. Rip had slept through the entire period.

Dr. King told this story to illustrate the danger of our time. It’s not that revolutions are happening, he preached. The danger is that we can sleep through them and risk living through upheavals in human rights and moral values unaware.  

But, imagine, instead of Rip sleeping 20 years, what if we had been asleep for just this one past year?  We wake up and see that the violent rioters on January 6th, convicted of beating police officers with flag poles and destroying government property, have been pardoned – every single one of them. Freed from prison, now free to roam the streets in uniforms and with weapons supplied by that same government.

• Imagine waking up to see men with no law enforcement authority, faces covered in masks, violently ripping people out of their cars and storming their way into houses without warrants.
• Imagine them standing outside schools, hospitals, workplaces and dragging any person with brown skin, regardless of citizenship status, away to God only knows where, including American Indians.
• Imagine an American city under occupation by its own government excusing the murder of a citizen in broad daylight.  

It’s as though the sign over the inn has changed from King George to George Washington in reverse. Or worse, to the image of Robert E. Lee. A symbol not of shared freedom, but of domination. An enforced hierarchy that brings back the deep cultural memory of slave patrols, racial terror, and lynchings carried out on demand. No explanation necessary.

Dr. King warned that it is possible to know exactly what is happening and still be asleep to what faithfulness requires.  People can know the time and still miss the moment.

Now imagine how this looks from the outside. We’re in the middle of it.  Imagine what it’s like seeing it happening from Europe – perhaps from Rome. Someone looking across the ocean remembering America as a beacon. Not perfect. Not innocent. But anchored to an idea that power should be limited, that leaders answer to the people, and that the law stands above the strong. Remembering America as loud and messy and often wrong, but also self-correcting, capable of regret, able to widen the circle.

But now they watch that country, one of their closest allies, openly threatening to seize Greenland, the territory of a peaceful nation. 

If anyone can, they recognize the pattern that Europe has lived through before. They have watched democracies hollow out from the inside.  They have seen how quickly rights become conditional, how easily neighbors become enemies, how fast institutions crumble once contempt replaces commitment.

And so they are afraid not only for America but for what this means for the world. And what frightens the world most is not the noise. It is how quickly Americans seem to have fallen asleep.  Not everyone.  But how easily exhaustion becomes acceptance. 

From across the ocean, they’re saying: Wake up!  Asking, don’t you see what is happening? Don’t you remember who you have been trying to be for 250 years?

Dr. King tells the story of Rip Van Winkle to warn us about sleepwalking through moral revolutions.  After naming the danger of a nation losing its soul while congratulating itself on its strength, King imagines the God of history speaking.

One day, he says, we will stand before the God of history and marvel that we built gargantuan bridges to span the seas. We built gigantic buildings to kiss the skies. We made submarines to penetrate oceanic depths. We brought many things into being with our scientific and technological power.  And the God of history will say, but “I was hungry and you did not feed me. I was naked and you did not clothe me. I was without shelter and you did not house me. And therefore, you cannot enter the kingdom of greatness. If you did it to the least of these, you did it to me.”

King is talking about greatness, but in the biblical sense. Not greatness measured by dominance or wealth, but by character, courage, and care for the least. Not by how high we can climb, but by how faithfully we kneel beside those the world has forgotten.

That is why Dr. King called for what he named the fierce urgency of now. He warned that a nation can reach a moment where delay itself becomes a decision, where silence is no longer neutrality but surrender. “The judgment of God is upon us,” he said, “and we must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

And yet even with all his urgency, King refused despair. He believed that history is not closed and that God is not finished with us yet.  As he said, “Right temporarily defeated is still stronger than evil triumphant.”  

So yes, in the meantime, “we must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” That is one of King’s most important questions facing America today.  Can you hold on to hope?

Hope rooted not in our strength alone, but in God’s faithfulness. And if we open our eyes and look at what God is doing right now, we can see it clearly in Minneapolis.

• Volunteers delivering groceries, diapers, medicine, and school supplies to families too afraid to leave their homes.
 • Ordinary people giving rides, watching over one another’s children, and checking in on elders who feel targeted and alone.
 • People choosing to support immigrant-owned businesses, refusing to let fear starve entire communities into invisibility.
 • Protesters gathering in the streets, not because they enjoy conflict, but because silence would mean consent.
 • Lawyers and trained observers showing up to document abuses, teach people their rights, and place limits on unchecked power.
 • Faith communities opening their doors for prayer, vigils, meals, and quiet refuge, insisting that sanctuary is not a metaphor but a practice.
 • Pastors have been on the front lines and this week, from around the country, clergy are mobilizing and heading to Minneapolis to answer Dr. King’s call to Selma.  Wearing the symbols of multitudes of religious traditions, they will stand together in public to name violence for what it is and to say clearly to this nation that cruelty does not come from God and the violent occupation of marginalized communities cannot be baptized as law and order by any government claiming moral authority.
 
 

And here, this afternoon, in front of the detention center in Otay Mesa, people are gathering for an Interfaith Vigil in honor of Dr. King.

These faithful actions reflect neighbors who are not sleeping through this moment. They enact what Dr. King meant when he said the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice. It does not bend on its own. It bends because people stay awake long enough to put their hands on it.

Stay awake to what God is doing, a hope that does not deny the pain of the present moment. It just refuses to let that pain have the last word through our actions and our prayers.  

Not a prayer that soothes our conscience,
 but a prayer that wakes us up.

Not a prayer that asks for ease,
 but a prayer that gives us courage.

Not a prayer that laments how difficult it is to hope,

but a prayer that offers gratitude for hope and gives us the strength to act.  And so we pray:

Litany

One: O God, when violence becomes ordinary and survival leaves little room for rest.

All: Keep us awake.

One: When truth is inconvenient and silence feels like the cost of safety.

All: Keep us awake.

One: When we confuse patience with delay and order with justice.

All: Keep us awake.

One: When we are tempted to honor the courage of ancestors without practicing courage in the present.

All: Keep us awake.

One: When fear tightens our grip and weariness dulls our capacity to love.

All: Keep us awake.

One: Prepare us not for comfort, but to protect one another.
 Prepare us to choose love that costs something.

All: Keep us awake.